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The people who loved Blue Lunden mourn her on August 4 death from a brief but painful struggle with cancer. Blue, 62, a lifelong activist, devoted herself to social justice issues such as the anti-nuclear and peace movements, the lesbian and gay and women's movements. She was jailed many times for civil disobedience. More recently, she became involved with OLOC (Older Lesbians Organize for Change). In Key West, she was an active and well-loved member of the Unitarian Universalist Church, and a founder of the Paradise Club at the Key West Lesbian and Gay Community Center. She was involved in many local and global issues.
Blue lived at Sugarloaf Women's Village for the last 18 years. The community was founded by Barbara Deming and Jane Verlaine as a place where women could live "gently on the earth." Women visit the village from all over the world to share their ideas, skill, projects, art, and politics. They go to replenish themselves and celebrate their lives in a place where each woman is important for herself. In the past few years, Sugarloaf has worked with HOWL, the women's land community in Vermont, as a sister community.
Blue cherished her deep relationship with her daughter Linda, of whom she was very proud. She delighted in visiting Linda, her husband Sam, and their son Drew. She marveled at her grandson and his willingness to share his inner life. In a recent note to Blue, Drew wrote "You've made my world a wonderful place...I want you to know I am as much as I am because of my relationship with you." Blue's brother Tom DuBois, with whom she had a strong bond, also suffers her loss.
A film about Blue's life, "Some Ground to Stand On," was completed last year and has been shown at 30 festivals both here and abroad. The winner of numerous festival prizes plus the National Education Media Apple Award, it tells about Blue's odyssey of coming of age as a butch lesbian in 1950s New Orleans, of multiple arrests, and of eventually being harassed out of town for "wearing clothing of the opposite sex." For the next 20 years she lived in New York City coping as a single parent, becoming sober, and transforming her life through her activism. Blue attended many of the screenings and in each case her purity of heart and her vision as depicted in the film were further evident in her articulate and inspiring talks to the audience. In New Orleans, the town she was forced to leave, there was a reception in her honor in conjunction with the screening at the New Orleans Film Festival.
Blue was a working class lesbian/feminist who cross-dressed in the 1950s as an act of unconscious resistance before an organized lesbian and gay movement began. She was self-educated and her politics became clarified by her experience, the women she met, and the very extensive reading she did.
She was a woman with a wide range of interests who had the courage to be herself from a young age. She lived consciously and created community wherever she was. She inspired us all to bring about a better world. Her friends, family, and lovers will forever miss her.
Remembrances can be sent to the Sugarloaf Women's Land Trust, 19657 Date Palm Drive, Summerland Key, FL 33042.
