'I could have been one of those people' —Wayne April '74

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Don Milici Photography

Wayne April '74 graduated both energized and exhausted from the gay rights fight and the "mind-boggling celebrity status" it had temporarily thrust upon him. After living in Alaska, where he helped start a gay community center in Anchorage, he moved to San Francisco just when people were starting to notice an ominous, unnamed disease.

As the AIDS epidemic unfolded, "it was like living in a medieval plague city as people sickened and died while the band still played disco," April says. "Whole neighborhoods were emptied. I feel very, very lucky to have survived." He coped by volunteering, training volunteers and eventually running a residence for people living with AIDS. Today April is a social worker living happily in Pasadena with a long-term partner and three dogs.

Though his name will forever stand opposite the university's in the lawbooks—the state case is called "University of New Hampshire v. Wayne April and Gay Students Organization"—April holds no grudges; in fact, he donates to the university.

April's campus memories focus on specific moments, like the day a professor, a married man with children, stopped him on campus. If he had life to do over, the professor said, he'd choose a path more like April's. "That's why I'm glad that I did what I did," April says. "I could have been one of those people who live a kind of false life, who never live genuinely. We opened up something that was waiting to be opened up for a long time, and people jumped at the opportunity to express themselves." —J.H.