TGF Founder JoAnn Roberts has passed away
JoAnn Roberts, a founding partner of this publication, has passed away. JoAnn was 65-years-old. She is survived by her wife Jaini, daughter Brie and sister Donna.
JoAnn was diagnosed with lung cancer in February of this year. She went through a round of chemotherapy treatments and they appeared to be successful in stopping the cancer in her lungs and liver. Radiation treatments were begun last month to eradicate a tumor on her spine but were halted last week when it was determined that the cancer had spread again. JoAnn opted to go into hospice care and she passed away peacefully on Friday evening, June 7, 2013.
JoAnn, like many of us, had been attracted to women’s clothing since she was a young boy in the Philadelphia, Pa. area. She was living in California in the 1970s when she saw Virginia Prince on a television talk show discussing her organization for heterosexual crossdressers, the Society for the Second Self (Tri-Ess). JoAnn was shocked, amazed and delighted to learn that there were other men who felt the way she did about dressing up.
Work brought JoAnn and her family back to the Delaware Valley region of Pennsylvania in 1983 and she began to look for other crossdressers in earnest.
I had begun to explore crossdressing in the early 1980s and had subscribed to Tapestry magazine. Along with your subscription to the magazine you got a personal ad. One day I got a letter from JoAnn Roberts. My post office box (necessary for TG communication at that time) happened to be in the town outside Philadelphia where JoAnn was raised. She wanted to know if I was from the same town. That first letter lead to a correspondence and then a phone conversation and finally a meeting. We learned that in addition to crossdressing we both loved science fiction and rock music. JoAnn had met some other crossdressers and we all became friends.
JoAnn was a spark plug. She thought big and she had the energy and skills to make things happen. She started her own publishing company and began producing LadyLike Magazine. In 1985 she wrote and published Art & Illusion, A Guide to Crossdressing.
Alison Laing, Angela Gardner, Trudi Henry, JoAnn Roberts, Melanie Bryant and Paula Jordan Sinclair
In 1987 JoAnn proposed to our circle of CD friends that we start an organization to raise awareness, provide support and educate about transgender issues. It would be a legitimate organization with a 501 [c] 3 nonprofit status. Alison Laing, Trudy Henry, Melanie Bryant and I were among the group she got together to discuss and then create The Renaissance Education Association, Inc.. (Later renamed The Renaissance Transgender Association, Inc..)
JoAnn was the first managing director. Her plan for Renaissance was that each year there would be an election and the organization would stay fresh by having new leadership. All of the founding members did their time as managing director.
In 1996 JoAnn partnered with Cindy Martin and Jamie Faye Fenton to create Transgender Forum. In 2006 JoAnn took full control of Transgender Forum and somewhere along the line it became TGForum. At the beginning of this year JoAnn sold TGF to new owners who have vowed to keep what made TGForum unique and help it grow as the best place on the Internet for accurate information about transgender issues.
JoAnn was the heir to a crossdressing event in the Pocono Mountains that had been run in the ‘80s by a TG named Joyce Dewhurst. Under JoAnn’s guidance it became Paradise in the Poconos and quickly outgrew the small venue that Dewhurst had used. The event was held every year in the Poconos until the host venue was sold or shut down. JoAnn moved the party to Rehobeth Beach, Delaware and it continued till last year as Beauty and the Beach.
JoAnn helped found several TG organizations besides Renaissance and served on the boards of IFGE, and AEGIS (chair from 1992 to 1996). She was the author of the Gender Bill of Rights in 1990. She published a Who’s Who of the TG community and was the driving force for The Second International Congress on Crossdressing, Sex and Gender hosted by Renaissance in suburban Philadelphia in 1997.
JoAnn was a whirlwind of energy and a force to be reckoned with. As TGF contributor and author Dallas Denny says, “JoAnn was a fierce advocate for transgendered and transsexual people and wasn’t afraid to say what needed to be said when it needed to be said. As a member of the IFGE board she called for an audit, which resulted in attack from other board members. She rightly took IFGE to task more than a dozen times in editorials.”
In the past few years JoAnn had withdrawn from the TG community as an active leader and was devoting time to her wife, their two cats and their dogs Spike and Bear. Her first love was model trains and she enjoyed working on her basement O scale layout. She was taken from us too soon. The world, and the TG community, could use more people like JoAnn Roberts.
Amanda Richards has created a Facebook page to celebrate JoAnn’s life. Please visit it to leave your memories of her.
This article was corrected on June 10, 2013. Melanie Bryant was incorrectly called Melanie Bryan.
Category: Transgender Community News
About the Author (Author Profile)
Angela Gardner is a founding member of The Renaissance Transgender Assoc., Inc., former editor of its newsletter and magazine, Transgender Community News. She was the Diva of Dish for TGF in the late 1990s and Editor of LadyLike magazine until its untimely demise. She has appeared in film and television shows portraying TG characters, as well as representing Renaissance on numerous talk shows.Subscribe
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