I held my third service for the Transgender Day of Remembrance yesterday. This one felt different and is a bit more difficult to write about. Many people had expressed interest. But we got rain most of the night and well into the morning. Thus most people probably decided to skip it this year. Nevertheless, a couple from my church, (D. A.) and our new minister, Pastor D. came to attend and help with the service. We arrived early and had plenty of time to chat while we waited for others. That was nice because Pastor D. just started at our church three weeks ago. So we got to know each other a bit better.

I wandered over to the other two pools and took some pictures. For some reason, the water level in the Model Boat pool, the first one, was quite low. I'm not sure if it was just the river water level which has been quite low this summer. Or, perhaps, they were letting it drain for some reason.

Fortunately, the rain had blown over and the sun had come out. So the weather was cool, but nice.

When no one else had shown up, we started the service.
Pastor D. was First Reader and read Death Be Not Proud by John Donne.

I gave an improvised singing version of All Too Human by Andrea Lena DiMaggio again.

And A. was the Third Reader, reading No Man is an Island, also by John Donne.

Then we read the names and K. broke off blossoms from four branches of white hydrangeas and tossed them into the little flow-through rivulet.

This year's list was different with 73 names. About half of them were victims of external violence, gunshot or stabbing. Most of the rest had died by suicide. One of my sources listed a couple older trans women who had recently passed away and we remembered them.

I had read that five black men had been found dead, hanging from a tree, this year and adjudged to be suicides. This is extraordinary and tragic, especially given the history of lynchings in America. Colin Kaepernick had paid for a second autopsy of one which discovered impact injury to the top of the skull. We remembered the four names I was able to find.

Also, two senior members of our community passed away and at the end I spoke a little about each of them.

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Miss Major Griffin-Gracy (October 25, 1946 – October 13, 2025), often referred to as Miss Major, was an American author, activist, and community organizer for transgender rights.

Griffin-Gracy came out publicly as trans in Chicago in the late 1950s

In a 2014 interview with the Bay Area Reporter, Griffin-Gracy said that after moving to New York City, she found the Stonewall Inn "provided us transwomen [sic?] with a nice place for social connection" and that few gay bars otherwise allowed entry to trans women at the time.[7] She was a regular patron of the Stonewall, and was there on the first night of the 1969 Stonewall rebellion.[7][5] As she recalled, Police raids were common for LGBT bars, but "This one night, though, everybody decided this time we weren't going to leave the bar. And shit just hit the fan."
Griffin-Gracy began work in community services after moving to San Diego in 1978.[7] She worked at a food bank and then in direct community services for trans women.[7] Her work expanded into home health care during the AIDS epidemic in the United States.

In 2004, Griffin-Gracy began working at the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP),[2] shortly after it was founded by Alex Lee.[10] She became the executive director of the organization, which is focused on providing support services to transgender, gender variant, and intersex people in prison.[2][5][11] Her work included visiting trans women and men in California prisons to help coordinate access to legal and social services, and testimony at the California State Assembly and United Nations Human Rights Committee in Geneva about human rights violations in prisons.

Griffin-Gracy moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, after visiting the city for a screening of MAJOR!, the 2015 documentary about her.[4] She developed a property she initially called the House of GG into an informal retreat center for trans people.

Griffin-Gracy died on October 13, 2025, while she was under hospice care at her home in Little Rock, Arkansas. She was 78.

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Sir Lady Java (August 20, 1942 – November 16, 2024), also known simply as Lady Java, was an American transgender rights activist, exotic dancer, singer, comedian, and actress. Active on stage, television, radio and film[1] from the mid-1960s to 1970s, she was a popular and influential personality in the Los Angeles-area African-American LGBTQ community.

Sir Lady moved to Los Angeles, California, where in the mid-1960s she met and befriended Little Richard; they remained close for decades.[4] By 1965, she had become a mainstay of the nightclub circuit,[5] where she was associated with such figures as Redd Foxx, Sammy Davis Jr., Richard Pryor, Flip Wilson, Rudy Ray Moore, LaWanda Page, and Don Rickles. Lady Java cited Lena Horne, Mae West, and Josephine Baker as inspirations for her performances, which involved dancing, impersonations, singing, and comedy.

In the early fall of 1967, after a successful two-week engagement at Redd Foxx's club which Java was seeking to extend, the Los Angeles Police Department began shutting down the now-famous Java's performances, citing Rule Number 9, a local ordinance prohibiting the "impersonation by means of costume or dress a person of the opposite sex", and threatening to fine clubs that hosted her.[7][5] In response, Java picketed[8] Redd Foxx's club on October 21 and partnered with the American Civil Liberties Union in a bid to overturn the rule.[9] The court rejected Java's case with the ACLU, stipulating that only club owners could sue. Rule Number 9 ultimately was struck down after a separate dispute in 1969.

In June 2016, she was a guest of honor at the 18th annual Trans Pride L.A. festival alongside CeCe McDonald.

Java died in Los Angeles on the evening of November 16, 2024, at the age of 82.

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At the end, we sang "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" by A.P. Carter and the Carter family. Oddly enough, I had driven by a white hearse on the main road going over to the freeway on the way down to the service!

Here is a wonderful performance by a true group of All Stars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjrPIMVtGL0&list=RDhjrPIMVtG...

At the end, Pastor D. said a prayer and we gave each other hugs before departing.

It is difficult to read the name of so many who died needlessly without being affected. And it left me in a real funk, which lingers just below the service.

I decided to drive to Dairy Queen for some ice cream therapy and perhaps just meditation. And on the way, I got a call from my trans friend, M. She had planned to attend, but was interrupted by a work discussion. So I told her where I was going and she offered to come up and join me. The help and support of our friends is always appreciated!

She had a late lunch and we chatted about this year's service, what she had been up to and other things, including NFL football. She is a Denver Broncos fan, while I am a Kansas City Chiefs fan. But we keep it friendly.

We talked some more and I drove home with my spirits lifted somewhat.