Mina Kay Meyer

1940 - 2016

January 30, 1940 - July 29, 2016 Mina Kay Meyer, spouse of Sharon Raphael, was a Lesbian Feminist activist and pioneer in the Gay Rights Movement since 1971. Mina and Sharon have been a couple since 1971 though they knew each other as children growing up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. They remet many years later in Hermosa Beach serendipitously at a brunch place. Soon after Mina moved in with Sharon and they lived together the next 45 years. In Yiddish this meeting was called "beshert" fated to be. Together they worked on Lesbian and Gay Movement issues and devoted themselves to making their world a better place. Mina took the lead at the first organization providing social services to Lesbians called the Gay Women's Service Center in 1971-72. Soon after she served on Board of the Gay Community Services Center and started the first women's clinic that provided Pap smears and artificial insemination for Lesbians in LA, a first and much needed service. Mina worked at the famous and now closed Feminist Bookstore Sisterhood Bookstore for 16 years in the eighties and nineties and early 2000. Customers loved her knowledge and friendliness. She met famous Feminist writers and aspiring ones. She even sold books to Maureen Reagan, the Feminist daughter of President Ronald Mina also helped found AIDS Healthcare Foundation formerly known as The AIDS Hospice Committee. She helped set up the first residential hospice in Elysian Park near Dodger Stadium. She and Michael Weinstein and friends worked tirelessly to end discrimination against HIV positive persons and people with AIDS thru late eighties to the present. Mina received a Master's in Sociology at CSUDH and wrote the first thesis ever written on the topic of The Older Lesbian. Later she coordinated pioneering conferences LGBT aging issues and managed the first celebration and conference by and for Old Lesbians. She served as Co-Chair of the Steering Committee of OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change). Mina created a local OLOC chapter and Lez Chat in Long Beach, a brunch group for lesbians who identified as older. She was committed to helping Lesbians and all women to see old age as a positive time in their lives with tools to fight ageism. Mina is survived by her spouse Sharon Raphael and her devoted brother Cliff Meyer and his wife Cathy Root and her many cousins. Memorial Services for Mina are pending, to be in Long Beach, CA.