For as far as WBUR-FM’s signal reached 50 years ago, listeners throughout New England tuned their radios to “Gay Way,” a pioneering LGBTQ call-in show that Ann Maguire cohosted in the 1970s.
Her voice was a beacon for those who were out, and those who weren’t. And the conversations didn’t end when she switched off her microphone. Listeners who couldn’t risk speaking on the air, where their voices might be recognized, kept calling when the show was over.
“We would go off the air and the lights would just be lit up for calls coming in, for people to just ask a question, to just thank us,” Ms. Maguire recalled in a “Stonewall Portraits” interview posted online.
The show, one of many safe spaces that Ms. Maguire helped foster, had a lasting impact. “I have met thousands of people over the years who have said, ‘Thanks for “Gay Way,” ’ ” she said.
A groundbreaking advocate for LGBTQ rights and breast cancer research in Massachusetts and across the country, Ms. Maguire was 80 when she died Dec. 29.
Twice diagnosed with breast cancer, she had been suffering from failing health and had moved in recent years with her spouse, Harriet Gordon, from their longtime Provincetown home to Marblehead to be closer to their daughters.
A savvy political organizer, Ms. Maguire managed the first Massachusetts House campaign for Elaine Noble, who in 1974 became the first openly lesbian or gay candidate elected to a state legislature.
In 1993, Ms. Maguire managed Thomas M. Menino’s first winning mayoral campaign, and in the decades afterward was a go-to sage for candidates, particularly those seeking their own “firsts.”
“Being the trailblazer she was, she made it possible for a person like me to run, and to run successfully,” said Governor Maura Healey of Massachusetts, the nation’s first openly lesbian governor.
“I have a deep and profound appreciation for what Ann did. She was out there before many people, leading the fights,” Healey said.
Tim McFeeley, a founder, with Ms. Maguire and others, of what was then the Greater Boston Lesbian and Gay Political Alliance, said that in an era when being out could hobble or end careers, “she was completely unashamed, unabashed, unfazed by the fact that she was a lesbian, and fearless about talking about that with people, and fearless about promoting the cause with straight people. It took a lot of courage.”
Whether she was going door to door with Noble in 1974′s groundbreaking legislative campaign or lobbying city, state, and national officials, Ms. Maguire “wouldn’t stop talking until you said yes,” said McFeeley, a former executive director of Human Rights Campaign in Washington, D.C. “She had a way of getting people to yes, one by one by one. Not by shouting at them, but by having conversations with them in very quiet places.”
As a founder and first board president of the Massachusetts Breast Cancer Coalition, and as a leader of the National Breast Cancer Coalition, Ms. Maguire’s impact on promoting breast cancer research was just as far reaching.
“I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1989 and, like many others, was moved to action as I learned more about this epidemic,” she said in 1991 while leading the state organization.
Back then, there was plenty of information about treatment, but she found almost no research into its cause, so she began pushing for funding on the state and national levels.
“Ann will go down in history as one of the greatest activists of all time,” said Cheryl Osimo, executive director of the state organization, in a tribute on its website. “Ann had the courage and commitment to change the world for future generations.”
Ms. Maguire also held leadership roles in other organizations, including what is now the National LGBTQ Task Force.
High-profile advocacy was only part of her expansive efforts, however.
Decades ago, she managed the lesbian bars Sisters, in Provincetown, and Somewhere, in Boston — each providing a haven for patrons.
In 1984, Mayor Raymond L. Flynn appointed her to be his administration’s liaison to the city’s gay and lesbian community. During the 1980s, she also directed Boston’s Emergency Shelter Commission and was the force behind an annual census that tried to count the number of people who stayed in homeless shelters or lived on the streets, a program other cities imitated.
After Ms. Maguire managed the first of Menino’s five successful mayoral campaigns, he named her to oversee the city’s health and human services programs.
“She did these big things that people knew about and saw, but she also did these things that nobody knew about,” said Woburn District Court Judge Marianne Hinkle, a friend for more than 40 years.
Ms. Maguire might quietly work an overnight shift at a homeless shelter, Hinkle said, or sell T-shirts in front of her Provincetown home on behalf of a children’s sailing program, or help raise funds and awareness for Provincetown-based Helping Our Women, which assists women with chronic, disabling, or life-threatening conditions.
“Ann was also a connector in a good way, in the most positive way,” Hinkle said. “She connected somebody who needed something with someone who could provide it. She was always trying to think of ways she could help people.”
Born in Worcester on July 20, 1943, Ann Marie Maguire was the daughter of Esther and Joseph Maguire.
Her parents and her brother, Joseph, “loved me for who I was,” she said in the “Stonewall Portraits” interview with Brian McNaught, adding that her family’s acceptance “was one of the best things that ever happened to me in my life.”
She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in health education from what is now Bridgewater State University and received a master’s in health sciences from Boston University.
Ms. Maguire and Harriet Gordon, a couple since soon after they met in 1985, married in 2004.
“She would walk out the door every day on some mission, things large and small,” Gordon said. She just felt that the world needed to be fair and just, and embrace some common sense. And that’s who she was.”
At home, though, “she was just my Ann to me,” Gordon said.
When they became a couple, Gordon’s daughters were teenagers and Ms. Maguire welcomed the unanticipated chance to help raise two children — Jennifer Pratt and Alyson Aneshansley, both of Marblehead — and later four grandchildren.
“What a joy it was to me for them to have Ann Maguire as a role model,” Gordon said.
A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. June 1 in Arlington Street Church in Boston.
Ms. Maguire “was brave and she was authentic and she was herself at a time when things were different, and for that I’m personally grateful,” Healey said. “I’m grateful for the doors that a trailblazer like Ann Maguire opened for me.”
In interviews, Ms. Maguire often paraphrased anthropologist Margaret Mead’s well-known quote about how a small group of people, thoughtful and committed, can change the world.
“I truly believe that,” she told McNaught, adding that she felt called to do all that she did.
“I have met too many people over the course of my life that didn’t have the benefit of love from parents, didn’t have the benefit of love from their religion, didn’t have the benefit from lots of things. Didn’t even have basic things to get by every day,” Ms. Maguire said.
“I truly believe in giving back. I just believe in that,” she added. “I’ve been very blessed.”
Bryan Marquard can be reached at [email protected].
