The Memorial Wall

Roger Thibault, who was legally joined with Theo Wouters in Quebec’s first same-sex civil union, has died.

He passed away at their home in Pointe-Claire in Wouters’s arms. They had been together for 50 years.

Thibault was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease six years ago. Wouters cared for him at their home until the end. He died from complications from the disease. He was 77 years old.

“He was the kindest man, and he loved me to bits,” Wouters said. “Even in his last moments, he really loved me, and I loved him.

“I have so much to treasure in my memories with him.”

On July 18, 2002, Wouters and Thibault became the first same-sex couple to be legally joined by civil union in Quebec, two years before the province would legalize same-sex marriage.

In an interview with the Montreal Gazette on the 20th anniversary of their union, the couple said they had no idea what a momentous occasion it would turn out to be until they arrived at the Montreal courthouse, greeted by a throng of photographers and reporters. Strangers rushed across the street to bring them a bottle of wine. Lawyers and clerks lined the upper levels of the courthouse to get a glimpse of the historic moment.

After years of advocacy, the civil union had been established by the Quebec government a month earlier. Since same-sex couples still couldn’t legally wed, it worked as an option that would give them many of the same legal benefits as married couples.

The civil union would soon be overtaken in popularity by same-sex marriage, but it was hailed at the time as a progressive step forward for the province.

“(Quebec) became one of the first places in the world to put forward that two people of the same sex could legally unite together, sharing the same rights and obligations,” said Patrick Desmarais, president of Montreal’s Fondation Émergence, which specializes in fighting homophobia and transphobia, on the 20th anniversary of the union. “And it brought on this push for equality between all people.

“I think it did a lot to educate and sensitize the general public in Quebec and Canada,” Desmarais added. “It really opened the public’s eyes to the fact that it could be possible, and could be legal, and that two people of the same sex uniting didn’t change anything in anyone else’s lives.”

For Wouters and Thibault, the union was largely symbolic after nearly three decades together, beginning when the two met at a gay bar on Mackay St. in Montreal. But they felt it had to be done as part of the greater good, and to send a message.

“At first we said we don’t really need to get married,” Wouters said. “We were already committed in life. But then we thought it over because we were so well known.”

Once it was done, Wouters said, they were also happy to be protected by the same laws that applied to other couples, “because we had been hearing so many horror stories when families get involved when one partner dies.”

Ironically, the couple’s historic union was born partly of hatred. They had been the subject of homophobic slurs, insults, and threats for over a decade, which ultimately spurred a march outside their Pointe-Claire home that drew thousands who showed their support of the couple. That would lead to the creation of the International Day Against Homophobia, and their civil union.

“We were sort of forced to do so because of the situation here,” Wouters said. “It lasted for 10 years, this horrible, horrible hatred — I still cannot believe that people can hate for absolutely nothing.”

While the union brought them fame and accolades, Wouters noted that the hatred continued, and still does to this day. The current political climate, particularly in the United States, means that “we have to be very vigilant that this doesn’t slip into Canada,” he said.

When they first met, Wouters, who is of Dutch heritage, didn’t speak a word of French, and Thibault couldn’t speak any English. So they communicated by sign language, and a relationship that would last half a century was born. Wouters was a fashion designer, creating clothes and hats for Canada’s rich and famous. Thibault was a photographer, working in the department of industrial design and architecture at the Université de Montréal.

“We were quite committed from Day One,” Wouters said. “We were very much aware that we were blessed because, in the gay community, it is not a usual thing for people to stay together for so long.”

The union stayed strong in part because they shared many projects together, including collecting more than 140 tons of rock “from everywhere” to create their elaborate garden in Pointe-Claire.

“When you do projects together in everything, as part of your daily activities, then you have a much better chance to really stay a lifetime together,” Wouters said.

Another project became battling homophobia, which would cost them countless hours, over $240,000 in legal fees, and the loathing of people they had never met.

“It was difficult sometimes to scrape the funds together to pay the lawyers, but we managed,” Wouters said.

In May of this year, Thibault and Wouters were made honorary citizens of Montreal in recognition of their decades-long fight to advance LGBTQ2+ rights.

“We’re very happy that it inspired so many people. We never thought that that would be the case,” Wouters said. “But it was the case.”

Lew Perkins, former athletic director at the University of Kansas and Wichita State University, died Tuesday morning in Lawrence at the age of 78. Perkins’ passing was the result of side effects from Parkinson’s Disease, a family member told The Star. A former college basketball player who graduated from the University of Iowa in 1967, Perkins was Athletic Director (AD) at Wichita State from 1983-87 and KU’s AD from 2003-10. He also served as AD at UConn (1990-2003,) Maryland (1987-90) and South Carolina-Aiken (1969-80). He was associate AD at Penn from 1980-83.

Perkins was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Board of Trustees in 2005. He served on the NCAA Championships & Competition Cabinet and the NCAA Bowl Certification Committee. Perkins was athletic director at KU in 2008 when the Jayhawks won the NCAA men’s basketball title and the Orange Bowl. The Orange Bowl victory capped a school-record 12-win season. KU also won the 2008 Insight Bowl — marking the first time in school history that KU played in bowl games in back-to-back seasons.

“Lew was first and foremost an advocate for student-athletes and coaches,” former KU associate athletic director Jim Marchiony told The Star. “He expected 100% effort and strove for excellence with every fiber of his being. Those expectations rubbed off on an impressive number of people who worked for him and went on to enjoy very successful careers in college athletics.” Marchiony, who worked with Perkins at UConn and KU, added: “Lew spoke often and fondly about his days at both KU and Wichita State. The fact that they (Perkins and wife Gwen) stayed and lived in Kansas after his tenure at KU speaks volumes about what he thought of the state of Kansas and the Midwest.”

After retiring from his post at KU in September 2010, Perkins and his wife moved to New Orleans for a brief period of time before returning to Lawrence. There were many facility upgrades during Perkins’ KU tenure, including $10 million worth of renovations to Allen Fieldhouse completed in 2005-06. At the time, another $15 million was approved for fieldhouse upgrades. Also, the Booth Family Hall of Athletics was added to the fieldhouse at a cost of $5 million. The Anderson Family Football Complex officially opened on July 30, 2008, adjacent to the football field at Memorial Stadium, at a cost of $31 million.

In 2009, $42 million in improvements for a new basketball practice and training facility, locker rooms, donor atrium, concourses and other upgrades to Allen Fieldhouse were completed. Another $8 million was spent for improvement of KU’s student-athlete housing. Other projects during Perkins’ tenure included new baseball and softball facilities and a boathouse for the rowing team. In 2008, TIME magazine named Perkins one of the top 35 sports executives in the world. He was the only college administrator on the list.

“Lew did a lot of good things in his time here at KU,” KU basketball coach Bill Self said. “He was a big contributor in us changing the mindset of the athletic department and also competing for championships on a more consistent level. Our hearts go out to Gwen and the family. The one thing I will remember most about Lew was he always put the student-athletes first, and the student-athletes that got to know him well all loved him.” Current AD Travis Goff said: ““Lew made an indelible impact on Kansas Athletics and served his role at KU with passion and vigor on a daily basis. We will forever be grateful for his dedication to this university and athletic department. We are thinking of Lew’s amazing family during this time and sending our deepest thoughts and sympathies.”

Perkins’ tenure at KU also included a scandal involving the KU athletic department ticket office. Federal charges were filed by the FBI and IRS against five employees of the athletic department, as well as one consultant. Perkins was not implicated in the scandal but some of the employees charged with crimes were either hired by Perkins or promoted during his years at KU. Of the scandal, he said in May 2010: “We had the wrong people hired for the wrong jobs.” Of being an AD, he told The Star’s Vahe Gregorian: “Being an athletic director, I don’t care where, it’s not easy. People think it’s just fun and games. It’s a hard job.”

Perkins served on the Big 12’s Basketball Issues Committee and was chair of the Big 12 Board of Athletics Directors. He was a member of the Big 12 Television Committee and the Gatorade Board of Directors. After Perkins announced his retirement in September 2010 at age 65, then-KU chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little said: “There is no question that Kansas athletics has benefited from Lew Perkins’ leadership. One need only look at the academic success of our student-athletes, at KU’s trophy cases and at our state-of-the-art athletic facilities to see those benefits. I appreciate his service and understand his decision (to retire).” At the time, Perkins said: “I am grateful that Chancellor (Robert) Hemenway allowed Gwen and me to come to Lawrence to be part of the great university. We love this community. We consider it home. This decision will give us a chance to stay involved in the community in different ways. It will also allow me to explore other professional opportunities.”

He was honored in 2000 as the National Athletic Director of the Year, as selected by Street & Smith’s Sports Business Journal and the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA). At Perkins’ urging, the Connecticut state legislature funded a $90 million, 40,000-seat stadium for UConn in Hartford, Conn. It opened in August 2003. A native of Chelsea, Mass., Perkins was inducted into his high school Hall of Fame in 1989. He played basketball at Iowa (1965-67) for KU graduate Ralph Miller, a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Perkins earned his undergraduate degree at Iowa in 1967. Perkins served as athletic director (1969-80) and head basketball coach (1969-79) at the University of South Carolina Aiken. He received his masters degree in education (1975) from the University of South Carolina. Perkins delivered the commencement address and received an honorary Doctor of Education degree at USC-Aiken in May 2005. 

Terrence B. “Terry” Byrne, 79, passed away on July 13, 2023; beloved husband for 48 years to Kathy Byrne (nee Perret); loving father of Jennifer Byrne Zaher, Michael Patrick Byrne and his wife Laura; dear brother of Dennis B. Byrne, Virginia “Gin” Hines and the late Michael B. and Kevin K. Byrne; adoring grandfather of Laila Zaher, Corbin, Nolan and Cooper Byrne.

Born in Scottdale, Pennsylvania, he was the son of Frank Byrne, an industrialist, and Helen Brennen, a homemaker.

He was a 1962 graduate of the old Immaculate Conception High School in Connellsville, Pennsylvania. He earned a degree at West Virginia University and, after moving to Baltimore, was a graduate of the University of Baltimore School of Law.

He joined the Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. as an insurance adjuster and later became a loan officer at the old Commercial Credit Corp.

He met his future wife, Kathlyne “Kathy” Perret, while she was working at Commercial Credit as a summer replacement secretary. Their first date was to the Wishing Well Lounge in Parkville and later they went to a steak and egg restaurant.

“We talked until four in the morning,” his wife said. “He was bright and kind and most known for his sense of humor.”

They married on August 11, 1974 at her home parish, the Church of the Nativity in Timonium. They settled in Rodgers Forge.

Mr. Byrne started his law career with attorney Ron Levasseur in Towson. He then joined John Dilli and Seymour R. Goldstein’s firm in Mount Vernon, which became Goldstein and Byrne.

In 2001, he established the law office of Terrence B. Byrne on Chesapeake Avenue in Towson, specializing in workers’ compensation and personal injury. In 2019 he became of counsel to the law offices of William O’Brien Finch Jr.

“He was a dedicated and zealous advocate for his clients and had an unmatched work ethic,” said his son, Michael Bryne. “I don’t know where he got the energy.”

As a child he spent summers at Chautauqua Institution, a resort in New York, and sailed on his father’s classic Chris-Craft, the Tingy Pete on Chautauqua Lake.

“His childhood years created an impression on him and he loved being on a boat,” said his wife.

In 1997 he bought a home at Sherwood Forest Club on the Severn River.

“He loved operating a ski boat, the Irish Wake,” said his wife. “Then came Hurricane Isabel [in 2003]. He had pulled the boat out of the water and put it on land only to have a tree fall on it. He was devastated.”

He later bought a Cobalt boat for trips in the Severn River, but never named it.

He and his family traveled to Arizona, New Mexico and later expanded their destinations to Europe, Argentina and Uruguay.

Mr. Byrne cultivated a wide social circle in and around Towson. He and his friends gathered for dinners and planned trips together. They began with cruises and created their own excursions to China, Scandinavia and along the Rhine River.

Mr. Byrne owned a series of classic cars: a Mustang, Jaguar XKE, Austin Healy and a Crossfire.

His Austin Healy became his personal restoration project.

“He had the energy to work on it — he took it apart and put it back together. And after all that labor, he did not drive it much,” said his son, Michael. “He also decided to put central air conditioning in the house. He went to the supply house and loaded a station wagon with ductwork. His system worked and took a few months to install.

“A legal client helped him with that job. Terry developed strong friends among his clients,” said his son.

When he lived in Rodgers Forge before moving to Stoneleigh, he built bookcases, a sectional sofa, fences and decks. They later settled in Stevenson Mews.

“We learned together, building things,” said his wife.

Mr. Byrne also enjoyed reading works of history, newspapers and following world issues.

A celebration of life will be held at 11 a.m. on Friday at the Lemmon Funeral Home of Dulaney Valley, 10 West Padonia Road.

Survivors include his wife of nearly 49 years, Kathlyne “Kathy” Perret Byrne, a Good Shepherd School preschool teacher and Annie E. Casey Foundation library consultant; a son, Michael P. Byrne of Chagrin Falls, Ohio; a daughter, Jennifer Byrne Zaher of Loch Raven Village; a sister, Virginia “Gin” Hines of Dumfries, Virginia; a brother, Dennis B. Byrne of Camp Hill, Pennsylvania; and four grandchildren.

David Richards, a theater critic whose lively and accessible prose style made him a Pulitzer Prize finalist at The Washington Post and who had a brief stint as the New York Times’s chief drama critic, died June 24 at a hospital in Warrenton, Va. He was 82.

The cause was complications from Parkinson’s disease, said his husband, theater director Leonard Foglia.

As a child growing up in a stoic New England family in the postwar years, Mr. Richards often said the rule at home was to cloak all emotion and “never make a scene.” His eventual introduction to community theater in his teens was a revelation — people making scenes for a living, eight times a week. “I was hooked,” he liked to say. “I learned about life from the theater.”

After a varied early career, including a stint as a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa, as a French instructor at Howard University and as a writer for the Voice of America, Mr. Richards worked as drama critic at the Washington Star for a decade until the newspaper folded in 1981.

Mr. Richards spent the next nine years at The Post and was disinclined to stay within strict boundaries as a theater critic. He covered cultural news stories and profiled stage luminaries such as director Jose Quintero, playwright Edward Albee and actors Julie Harris and Carol Channing. Some of them may not have relished his revealing dive into their off-the-clock personalities.

“Channing does not indulge in introspection eagerly,” he observed in a 1984 article. “She would clearly prefer to dwell in the shallows of her show business anecdotes. … If you try to get behind them, you encounter stiff resistance. She has always given every bit of herself on a stage, and any implication that there is, perhaps, another Channing, a private Channing, under the feathery eyelashes and extravagant wigs and generous dollops of rouge, makes her profoundly uneasy.”

With some “raw-nerve” touched by his line of questions, Mr. Richards reported, Channing began a sour but telling soliloquy: “Nobody likes to take himself dead-on seriously, like we’re doing now, laboring over my innermost thoughts. I can be as funny as a crutch, and we could laugh and have a good time. But if you don’t want me to be lighthearted and amusing, fine!”

Mr. Richards was a Pulitzer finalist in 1989 and was lured the next year to the Times as Sunday drama critic. He relished the position, which allowed him the freedom to write at length about whatever play appealed to him. The Sunday job was also considered a rejoinder at times to views expressed by the show-making/show-breaking chief theater critic Frank Rich, especially when the latter was displeased with a production.

Where Rich torpedoed “The Will Rogers Follies” in 1991 as “the most disjointed musical of this or any other season,” Mr. Richards praised the “sumptuous production numbers, exquisite chorus girls, phosphorescent rope tricks in black light, a dog act, songs you actually want to hum, a stairway to paradise (or somewhere thereabouts), close harmony, shapely legs in kaleidoscopic patterns, and a thoroughly engaging star performance by Keith Carradine, as the laconic cowboy-philosopher from Oklahoma.”

“The Will Rogers Follies,” an audience hit, ran for two years. In 1993, Mr. Richards replaced Rich, who left his longtime perch covering theater to become an op-ed columnist at the Times. Foglia said his husband felt he could not refuse the offer to take over the main position, but it was an ill-suited fit almost from the start.

Mr. Richards quit after a year. There were varying reports about the circumstances of his leaving, all of which amounted to his general unhappiness in the job in which he suddenly was the most influential theater critic in the country and had significantly less autonomy in the shows he could choose to spotlight.

“It struck me as a very isolating job,” he told The Post at the time. “It’s one of those jobs that look enviable from the outside, less enviable from the inside. People resent the Times’ theatrical power and therefore resent the person who wields it.”

He noted that he had seen 5,000 plays during his career and was tired of the overwhelming amount of mediocrity. “You end up having to write about nebulous, gray, shapeless, formless plays,” he said, “and it’s a hard thing to do and be interesting about it.”

Of solitary disposition to start with, he found himself increasingly wary of invitations from boldfaced figures in New York journalism and society. As Foglia recalled, “He used to say, ‘They don't want me. They want the critic of the New York Times to fill up the spot on the table.’”

Friends in Washington encouraged him to return to The Post, which he did for two years as a national cultural affairs writer before leaving journalism.

David Bryant Richards was born in Concord, Mass., on Oct. 1, 1940, and spent his early years in Lexington, Mass. He was 9 years old when his father, a home builder, died. His mother, an interior decorator and real estate agent, remarried and settled with David and his younger brother in Scottsdale, Ariz.

In Arizona, his mother took him every week to the local playhouse, and Mr. Richards soon found himself entranced. “Good theater stretches our notions of people and events,” he once observed. “And a stretched mind never returns exactly to its original shape.”

He graduated in 1962 from Occidental College in Los Angeles with a bachelor’s degree in French, followed by a master’s degree in French from Middlebury College in Vermont in 1963.

In addition to study at the Sorbonne in Paris, he spent two years in the Ivory Coast with the Peace Corps, where he taught French. He completed a master’s degree in speech and drama from Catholic University in 1969 and acted with the university’s touring theater group.

Mr. Richards had published articles in Arizona newspapers starting at 17 and had long considered a career in journalism before his interest in drama led him to the critic’s seat at the Star.

In 1981, he published “Played Out,” a biography about the troubled movie star Jean Seberg, who had been targeted by the FBI for her support of the Black Panther Party and died by suicide two years earlier.

Mr. Richards and Foglia became a couple soon after meeting in 1993. They married in 2014, when same-sex marriage became legal in Virginia. They co-wrote suspense novels and lived many years in Mexico, where Mr. Richards received a master’s degree in art history from the Universidad Autónoma de Queretaro.

In addition to his husband, survivors include a brother. In 2010, Mr. Richards and Foglia settled on a 21-acre property in rural Washington, Va., near Shenandoah National Park, and he grew tomatoes. His visits to the theater became infrequent as his physical condition worsened.

“The theater allows us to encounter a far greater tangle of human behavior than we ever do in the course of daily living,” he once wrote of his driving motivation as a critic. “It is a celebration of our multiple possibilities as human beings. At its best, theater leaves us with one sure thought: There but for the whimsies of fate, go I.”

By Adam Bernstein

Warren McGraw, a former West Virginia Supreme Court justice who spent five decades in public service, has died at age 84, a Supreme Court spokeswoman said Thursday.

Court spokeswoman Jennifer Bundy said McGraw died Wednesday. Blue Ridge Funeral Home & Memorial Gardens in Beckley said it was in charge of funeral arrangements, which were incomplete.

McGraw had retired as a county circuit judge in 2021, citing the physical impairments due to Parkinson’s disease.

Mike Pushkin, the state Democratic Party chairman and a member of the House of Delegates, said Warren was “a tireless advocate for working people and those who are too often left behind.”

”Warren McGraw never forgot that a society is measured by how it treats its weakest members. From the school board to the legislature, to the halls of the supreme court, he fought with every ounce of his ability to improve the lives of the poor and those struggling to make a better life for themselves and for their families,” Pushkin said.

McGraw earned a bachelor’s degree from Morris Harvey College and a law degree from Wake Forest University. He served five terms in the Legislature as a Democrat, including four years as Senate president.

After losing in the 1984 primary for governor, McGraw later was elected to the Wyoming County school board. He also was the prosecutor in Wyoming County from 1996 to 1998 before being elected to fill an unexpired six-year term on the state Supreme Court in 1998.

McGraw lost his bid for a full 12-year term to Republican Brent Benjamin in a hotly contested election in 2004. Advertisements financed largely by then-Massey Energy President and CEO Don Blankenship targeted McGraw.

During an annual Labor Day picnic and rally that year, McGraw warned the largely union crowd that corporate interests were focused on him because of his lifelong support of “the working man.” McGraw said he believed the attacks stemmed not so much from his six years on the Supreme Court, but on his push as a legislator to tax coal in the 1970s.

“It’s been this underlying factor,” he said. “I was the sponsor of the coal severance tax in West Virginia. Millions and millions of dollars have been paid on that tax, and I’m sure the coal industry has never forgotten.”

Benjamin become the first non-incumbent Republican to win a state Supreme Court seat since the 1920s. Judicial elections in West Virginia became nonpartisan in 2016.

“As the son of a disabled coal miner, McGraw knew the struggles that faced coal mining families in West Virginia, and he dedicated his life to fighting for miners and their families,” United Mine Workers of America President Cecil E. Roberts said in a statement. “We have lost a warrior. We have lost a friend.”

After his defeat, McGraw was elected as a circuit judge in Wyoming County in 2008 and reelected in 2016 before retiring in 2021. His brother, Darrell V. McGraw Jr., also served in the Supreme Court and was a five-term state attorney general.