Remembering Jack Nichols

March 16, 1938 - May 2, 2005

 

Lilli Vincenz writes:

The soul stays around for a while, at least till after the funeral or memorial service.  I can feel his presence, his humor, and his love.  I am grateful to have had longish phone conversations with him twice recently.  His view of life and attitude were so beautiful and accepting of everything.  I will keep communicating with him.

Jack was a GREAT pioneer in so many ways.  He always chose love over fear, had a wonderful sense of humor, was enormously creative, spoke fearlessly for truth, and did great justice to his role model Walt Whitman in pursuing joy and celebrating life!  Maybe he was even the reborn Walt.
 

Steve Yates sends this item by Ingersoll that Jack liked:
 

The simple truth

Robert G. Ingersoll

The simple truth is what we ask. Not the ideal;
we’ve set ourselves the noble task to find the real.
If all there is, is not but dross, we want to know and bear our loss.
We will not willingly be fooled by fables nursed;
Our hearts, by earnest thought, are schooled to bear the worst;
And we can stand erect and dare all things, all facts that really are.
We have no god to serve or fear, no hell to shun,
No devil with malicious leer when life is done
An endless sleep may close our eyes, a sleep with neither dreams nor sighs.

We have no master on the land--No king in air--
Without a manacle we stand, without a prayer,
Without a fear of coming night, we seek the truth, we love the light.
We do not bow before a guess, a vague unknown;
A senseless force we do not bless in solemn tone.
When evil comes we do not curse or thank because it is no worse.
When cyclones rend--when lightning blights, 'Tis naught but fate;
There is no god of wrath who smites in heartless hate.
Behind the things that injure man there is no purpose, thought or plan.
We waste no time in useless dread, in trembling fear;
The present lives, the past is dead and we are here,
All welcome guests at life's great feast…
 

Bob Kunst writes
 

He died early this morning and I got a call around 8AM.
I'm stilll in shock. Below is his bio from www.gaytoday.com, but I know Jack for nearly 30 years on a whole different level and wish to share this experience with you as much as I can.
We've been speaking weekly for many years, and the call this morning came from a guy about Jack, I met at the Mango Strut in Coconut Grove this last December.
I was there pushing "No More Bushit" stickers (over 40,000 out there, and I saw 3 last week on Miami Beach), and he mentioned him being a friend of Jack's in Cocoa Beach.
Jack and I met in 1976, when he came to one of our Transperience workshops with groups of 'swingers' in Broward County, where we did consciousness-raising sessions for months and very successfully.
This was a prelude to Dr. Alan Rockway and myself introducing and passing the world famous 'affectional and sexual preference' ordinance, which Anita Bryant and Jerry Falwell led opposition to. We would lead in a 3 year campaign, and in 3 elections, the most visible and successful 'coming out' of America, via Dade County-"The Holyland of Gay Rights," and go from a minority to a majority and prove that the Right Wing could be used and beaten in the ballot box, while getting millions out of their closets and thousands of groups formed as a result and the battle still raging to this day.
The movement still doesn't get it.
Jack understood our process of keeping sex and lifestyle alive, telling the truth, doing it non-violently and winning the war. Every effort and every coming out was our victory.
...
Jack knew what we were talking about and agreed with our answer in relationships.
So when I was shlepping in a lifetime of activism, Jack and I communicated weekly by phone and many visits to Cocoa Beach, where he lived or his visits here.
We did chapters of Oral Majority and Cure Aids Now in Brevard County.
...
Jack spoke Farsi, from Iran, besides the language of love, and knew the grassroots there was not behind the Mullahs.
We enjoyed together several space shots from Cape Canaveral.
When John Glenn went back into space, we had a memorial for Mathew Sheppard, who was murdered in Montana for being gay. We had many folks from a local gay bar join with us, and the multitudes who came by us on U.S. l for the space shot, also saw our protest and statement, which was indeed powerful, besides the media who gave us more exposure.
This was Jack, gentle but powerful. An artist, like myself, I could banter with in conversation and he'd know and be a part of.
His original father was an FBI agent, who rejected Jack for being Gay. That rejection from his dad, helped to formulate his activism.
I remember standing on his balcony in Cocoa Beach and being photographed and interviewed by Fla. Today, who called on him many times for commentary on lots of issues.
Jack was particularly holding the local police accountable for entrapments of gays, while real criminals were running loose, and how the local Baptist church wanted cameras in the toilets among the musings of Cocoa Beach. Any wonder they can't find terrorists?
Jack was 67, but acted with all the brilliance and vitality of many his junior, only better.
He led a great life, and I'm glad to have been part of it.