Honoring Lois Thetford
I have had the honor and privilege of knowing Lois Thetford, and I am deeply saddened—as I know so many others who loved and learned from her are—by the news of her passing on Sunday, May 24, 2026.
Many people knew Lois for her tireless work advancing community health and housing stability, and for helping build one of the Pacific Northwest’s earliest queer liberation movements. To me, Lois was not only a movement leader but a personal inspiration. She was also a co-founder of Queer Power Alliance (formerly LGBTQ Allyship), helping lay the foundation for the work we continue today.
Lois was a longtime LGBTQIA+ activist, healthcare provider, and organizer whose leadership helped shape queer liberation and community care efforts across Washington state for more than five decades. Beginning in the 1970s, Lois played a key role in developing community-based medical clinics in King County to serve low-income and unhoused families, including work with the Fremont Women’s Clinic and, later, in 1985, as a founding member of the 45th Street Clinic in Wallingford.
In 1971, Lois co-founded the Seattle Gay Liberation Front, helping build one of the region’s earliest organized queer liberation movements in the wake of Stonewall. At a time when visibility came with immense risk, Lois helped create spaces for LGBTQIA+ people to organize, build power, and demand dignity.
Her commitment to community continued across decades. In 1975, Lois served as President of the Gay Community Social Services Board, strengthening supports and services for Seattle’s LGBTQ community. In 1976, she helped found Leftist Lezzies, a lesbian feminist organizing space rooted in social justice, political education, and collective action. Between 2004 and 2006, Lois also helped launch the Washington Lesbian Organizing Project, contributing to statewide lesbian leadership and movement building.
Throughout her life, Lois served as a board member, steering committee member, mentor, advocate, and trusted leader for countless LGBTQIA+ and community-based efforts. Her work touched healthcare, housing, liberation, and justice—not as separate struggles, but as deeply interconnected parts of building a better world.
Lois’s impact cannot be measured only by the organizations she helped found or the movements she strengthened, but by the generations of people she inspired to continue the work. Her legacy lives on in the communities she helped build, the systems she pushed to change, and the people she encouraged to lead with courage and care.
I am proud to work in a place shaped by Lois Thetford’s leadership and vision. Queer Power Alliance will continue to carry forward her legacy through our work—building collective power, fighting for justice, and caring for our communities. We are stronger because Lois helped show us what was possible.
May we honor her by continuing the work to which she dedicated so much of her life.
