Rodger McFarlane, a pioneer HIV/AIDS and LGBT activist and fundraiser died Friday, his friends and family have announced in a statement released through GLAAD and the Gill Foundation.

An official with the Denver-based Gill Foundation, where McFarlane worked from 2003 to 2007 as executive director, said Monday that McFarlane’s body was found by state police at a park in Truth or Consequences, NM. His remains were found in a remote desert area that McFarlane often visited as an avid hiker, Washington Blade reports.

“He was a great lover of the high desert,” said Tim Sweeney, current executive director of the the Gill Foundation – one of the nation’s largest providers of grants to LGBT causes. “It was a place where he found peace and solitude.”

“Rodger took his own life in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico last Friday,” the statement from his friends says. It continues:

In a letter found with his remains, Rodger explained that he was unwilling to allow compounding heart and back problems to become even worse and result in total debilitation. We know that Rodger was in a great deal of pain. Already disabled in his own mind, he could no longer work out or do all the outdoor activities he so loved.

Pioneer AIDS activist Rodger McFarlane dies [contd.]

McFarlane was among the first volunteers and became the first paid executive directory of New York’s pioneering Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), the nation’s first and largest provider of AIDS client services and public education programs.

With his domestic partner, Larry Kramer, and other New York AIDS activists who had become frustrated with Reagan/Bush-era response to AIDS, McFarlane later became a founding member of ACT UP – NY, the now legendary protest group that agitated for changes to public policy as well as drug treatment and delivery processes.

From 1989 to 1994, he served as executive director of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, an AIDS fundraising and grant-making group.

He was later instrumental in the creation of the Gill Foundation’s sister organization, Gill Action, which funds LGBT-supportive political candidates.

McFarlane co-authored several books, including The Complete Bedside Companion: No Nonsense Advice on Caring for the Seriously Ill (Simon & Schuster, 1998), and most recently, Larry Kramer’s The Tragedy of Today’s Gays (Penguin, 2005). In 1993, he co-produced the Pulitzer Prize-nominated production of Larry Kramer’s The Destiny of Me, the sequel to The Normal Heart.

Source: Statement by Friends & Family of Rodger McFarlane | GLAAD
AIDS activist, GMHC leader McFarlane dies | Washington Blade (SOVO)

rodger mcfarlane