Robert Rafsky, 47, a writer and publicist whose televised confrontation with presidential candidate Bill Clinton galvanized the anti-AIDS movement, died Feb. 20 at New York University Hospital. He had AIDS.
A warm and witty man in private, Mr. Rafsky turned himself into a loud and relentless spokesman for the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP) after he found out in 1987 that he was infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. He was arrested several times, participated in dozens of demonstrations, and was profiled on the CBS program "60 Minutes" for his work against pharmaceutical companies allegedly overcharging for and slowing the release of AIDS drugs.
His most publicized moment came March 26 during the New York primary when he slipped into a Clinton fund-raiser and shouted at the future president, "This is the center of the epidemic. What are you doing about it?"
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The videotape of the rest of the confrontation was shown throughout the world. When Clinton said he was concerned about AIDS and advised Mr. Rafsky to calm down, Mr. Rafsky replied, "I can't calm down. I'm dying of AIDS while you're dying of ambition."
That brought a rare display of Clinton's temper: "Let me tell you something," he said. "If I was dying of ambition, I wouldn't stand up here and put up with all this crap I've put up with over the last six months. I'm fighting to change this country."
Michelangelo Signorile, a columnist for the Advocate, said Mr. Rafsky "was responsible for Clinton making a whole lot of promises on AIDS to the gay community."
Mr. Rafsky grew up in a politically involved family in Philadelphia and became managing editor of the student newspaper, the Crimson, while at Harvard University. He was famous there for his humor and his perfectionism, crumbling up 10 or 11 opening paragraphs of an article he had written before coming up with one he liked.
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He developed a successful public relations career in New York, working for the state Urban Development Corp., Howard Rubenstein & Associates, and Pro-Media.
In 1987, he and his wife, Babette, separated and began an amicable joint custody of their daughter, Sara. He began telling friends he was gay.
He became the chief spokesman for ACT-UP and used his publicity skills to win the organization prominent national coverage. "He was articulate, contentious, persuasive, dogged and very often right," said Los Angeles Times correspondent Victor F. Zonana, organizer of the New York chapter of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association.
Mr. Rafsky wrote very personal essays on AIDS that were published in the New York Times, the Village Voice, the New York Daily News, OutWeek and QW. He was working on a book, written in the form of letters to his daughter, at the time of his death. He was an omnivorous reader and film buff who was delighted that his daughter, at age 7, knew several Broadway musicals by heart.
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In QW last September he wrote of being asked to designate a "health-care proxy" to make decisions if he became comatose. "I'm between lovers right now, desperately trying to convince myself it's not my natural state. Whom can I choose?" he said. "I stared at the health-care proxy form for a while. Then I left it on my table, in plain sight, as a reminder to me to get a life, if only at the last moment."
Mr. Rafsky became an active member of the Treatment Action Group, whose demonstrations were successful in persuading several drug companies to lower the prices of their AIDS drugs and improve their distribution. On a one-to-one basis "he was enormously influential," said Peter Staley, a founding member of the group. "On '60 Minutes' people saw the really forceful and demonstrative side of him, but he was also incredibly personable and warm on a one-to-one."
Mr. Rafsky occasionally joked about his "bad timing" in becoming an active homosexual in the middle of an epidemic. When "60 Minutes" correspondent Ed Bradley asked if he took responsibility for his infection, he said, "Yes, I do. The question is what does a decent society do with people who hurt themselves because they're human; who smoke too much, who eat too much, who drive carelessly, who don't have safe sex? . . . I think the answer's that a decent society does not put people out to pasture and let them die because they've done a human thing."
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In addition to his daughter, of Brooklyn, N.Y., his survivors include his parents, William and Selma of Philadelphia, and a brother, Lawrence of Livingston, N.J.
He ended his September essay on his health-care proxy, which he never signed, with his own living will:
It said: "I'm the same as I was in the fullness of my life: confused, uncertain, knowing next to nothing. The only difference is that the disguises I wore over my confusion are now beyond my grasp.
"Be kind, if you can. There may come a perfect moment between my parting being too brief and my suffering being too long. If you see it, go for it, and give the order not to resuscitate. If no such moment emerges, improvise.
"Whatever you must do for me or to me, I want you to know I forgive you. I love you, too. Goodbye."
GERALD G. PORTNEY
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Accounting Firm Partner
Gerald G. Portney, 58, a partner with the consulting and accounting firm of KPMG Peat Marwick, died of liver cancer Feb. 21 at his home in Potomac.
A former Internal Revenue Service official, he had been with Peat Marwick since 1983, serving as national director for tax practice, procedure and controversy. He often testified before congressional committees on tax matters.
Mr. Portney was born in Stoneham, Mass. He was a graduate of Boston University and Suffolk Law School and received a master's degree in tax law from Boston University. He also studied at Harvard Business School.
He worked for the IRS for 25 years, starting in Boston. Before moving to the Washington area in 1979, he served in Baltimore as district director for Maryland and Washington.
He was assistant commissioner and associate chief counsel in Washington, and he received the IRS Commissioner's Award.
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Mr. Portney was a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. He was president of the United Way of Central Maryland and served on boards of the Red Cross, United Services Organizations and groups assisting battered women in the Baltimore area.
His marriage to Marilyn Strohecker ended in divorce.
Survivors include his wife, Clara Knoop Portney of Potomac; three children from his first marriage, Pamela Phipps of Hydes, Md., Peter Portney of Boston and Dean Portney of Gaithersburg; and four grandchildren.
SOPHIE R. DALES
Government Economist
Sophie R. Dales, 78, who worked for the Social Security Administration for 27 years before retiring in 1977 as an economist and editor, died Feb. 19 at Georgetown University Hospital after surgery for a heart ailment. She lived in Arlington.
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Since her retirement, she had been active in the League of Women Voters, Arlingtonians for a Better County and the Democratic Party in Arlington. She also had worked to register voters.
Miss Dales, who came here in 1950, was a native of Kingston, N.Y. A graduate of Queens College, she received a master's degree in public administration from Syracuse University. She served in the Women's Army Corps during World War II and worked for the Army in postwar Germany.
She was a founding member of Temple Sinai in Washington.
She leaves no immediate survivors.
OREN L. JUSTICE
Seed Researcher
Oren L. Justice, 85, a government research botanist who was an international authority on rules for testing seeds, died of pneumonia Feb. 13 at a nursing home in Sarasota, Fla. He had Alzheimer's disease.
A resident of the Washington area and a seed researcher with the Agriculture Department for three decades, Dr. Justice moved to Sarasota from Silver Spring 18 years ago.
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For most of his career, as chief of the federal seed testing and seed quality laboratories, he formulated rules for uniform testing of seeds, work that helps guarantee seed quality. He was president of the International Seed Testing Association.
He retired in 1974 as assistant branch chief of the Agriculture Department's field crops and animal products branch.
Dr. Justice, a native of Pikesville, Ky., was a graduate of Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, where he also received a master's degree in botany. He received a doctorate in economic botany from Cornell University.
He worked at a government seed laboratory in Montgomery, Ala., before moving to Washington.
Dr. Justice received awards from the Agriculture Department and the Official Seed Analysts of North America.
Survivors include his wife of 58 years, Helvia K. Justice of Sarasota; two sons, Roger L. Justice of Doylestown, Pa., and Keith O. Justice of Strongsville, Ohio; a sister, Amanda V. Lewis of Proctorville, Ohio; four brothers, William Justice and Curtis Justice, both of Willow Wood, Ohio, and Kenneth Justice and Everett Justice, both of Kitts Hill, Ohio; and seven grandchildren.
RHODA S. UDELSON
Assistant Editor
Rhoda S. Udelson, 96, a retired government technical reports assistant editor, died Feb. 16 at her home at Leisure World in Silver Spring, where she had lived since 1966. She had osteoporosis.
She worked for the government for 17 years before retiring in 1966. She had been employed by the National Bureau of Standards and then the Army's Harry Diamond Laboratories here.
Mrs. Udelson, who had lived in the Washington area since 1949, was born in Newark, N.J., and raised in Manhattan.
Her marriage to Albert D. Udelson ended in divorce.
Survivors include two sons, Burton J., of Manassas, and Daniel G., of Boston; six grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.
WILLIAM LLOYD FOX
William Lloyd Fox, 71, a historian who taught at Montgomery College for 29 years before retiring as professor emeritus in 1976, died of lung cancer Feb. 21 at Washington Adventist Hospital. He lived in Takoma Park.
From 1971 to 1975, he served as president of the Maryland Conference of the American Association of University Professors. He also had served as chairman of the D.C. Historians.
Dr. Fox, an authority in the social history of medicine, had been a visiting professor at the University of Maryland and at Frostburg State, George Washington, and American universities.
He was an author or editor of five books. He wrote "Dandy of Johns Hopkins" and a history of Montgomery College, and he edited "Maryland: A History 1632 to 1970." He also worked on oral history projects and wrote articles for technical journals.
Dr. Fox, who came to the Washington area in 1947, was a native of Cleveland. He was a 1943 graduate of what was then Western Reserve University, where he also received a master's degree in history. He received a doctorate in history from George Washington University.
He was a 33rd-degree Mason and had been a Scottish Rite historian. He also was a member of the Cosmos Club.
Survivors include his wife of 40 years, Lynn G., of Takoma Park; two sons, William Jr., of Chevy Chase, and David L., of Takoma Park; a daughter, Deborah L. Fox of Cleveland; a sister, Marjorie F. Reusch of Baltimore; and a granddaughter.
ANNE J. GORDON
Church Member
Anne Jackson Gordon, 72, a member of Christ Congregational Church in Silver Spring and of its senior fellowship and Bible reading group, died Feb. 9 at her home in Silver Spring. She had diabetes.
Mrs. Gordon, who had lived here since 1966, was a native of Tennessee. After graduating from LeMoyne College in Memphis, with a degree in social work, she was a social worker for a time in Tennessee and Atlanta. She worked for the War Department in Washington and New York.
She accompanied her husband to Africa and Europe on his government and journalism assignments.
Mrs. Gordon was a member of the Association of American Foreign Service Women Writers Group. She had done volunteer work for the League of Women Voters in Montgomery County.
Surviors include her husband of 48 years, William Gordon of Silver Spring; three sons, Dr. William Gordon Jr. of Houston, Dr. David Gordon of Ann Arbor, Mich., and Anthony Gordon of Silver Spring; and three grandchildren.
JUDITH L. LUSKEY
Judith Lynn Luskey, 52, an archivist who had been president of Visual Resources Consultants of Washington since 1990, died Feb. 16 at her hotel in San Francisco. She had a heart ailment.
A native and resident of Washington, she was in California on both business and vacation when she was stricken. She had been working as head archivist for a film documentary on American Indians.
Miss Luskey, a graduate of Surrattsville High School in Clinton, earned an anthropology degree at the University of Colorado, where she also was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
She worked for the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African Art and the anthropology department of its National Museum of Natural History during the 1980s. Before that, she had been a consultant to museums and the Agency for International Development and had worked for the Commerce Department and a group of Washington architects. She also had lectured on the history of photography.
Miss Luskey was co-author of "The North American Indians in Early Photographs," which was published by Harper & Row in 1986, and "Grand Endeavors in American Indian Photography," which is to be published this fall by the Smithsonian.
She was a member of the National Press Club, where she had served as coordinator of its events committee in 1991 and 1992.
Survivors include a sister, Phyllis A. Cox of Clinton.
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