Richard Turner
Age: 83
Categories:   Health   Civic/Community   Business  

Turner has been active on local and national GLBT and AIDS issues for decades.

Turner has been the Manager of Corporate Contributions for Peoples Gas and North Shore Gas since 1999. He is responsible for corporate grantmaking and the employee volunteer program. Previously he has been with The Chicago Community Trust as Director of Development and Communications and with The Elizabeth Morse Charitable Trust as Director and Senior Program Officer. He has also served as Executive Director for Funders Concerned About AIDS. He was a founding member of the Funders Concerned About AIDS and served as national president before becoming Executive Director. He is a past vice chair of the Donors Forum of Chicago and past national president of Communications Network in Philanthropy. He is currently the chair of the board of trustees of the Chicago Academy for the Arts. Turner is also a former president of the board of the AIDS Foundation of Chicago and a former member of the national boards of the Human Rights Campaign and the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. In 1990, he received the Chicago House Founders Award and that same year he was selected for the inaugural class of inductees into the City of Chicago’s Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame. In 2004, he received the Association of Fundraising Professionals Professional Grantor Award, given for grantmaking leadership. He is a graduate of Northwestern University where he was a member of Alpha Tau Omega fraternity and has a master’s degree from Arizona State University.

Turner's partner of 13 years, David Jenkins, aka Gaston Justice Jenkins, died Dec. 13, 2007 at age 75. Jenkins was born November 13, 1932, in Baltimore. He served 13 years on active duty as a pilot in the U.S. Navy at bases and on aircraft carriers around the world. He was among the elite pilots stationed at Guantanamo immediately after the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

After active military service, Jenkins enlisted at the front of the ”war on poverty” during the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. Working in the Office of Economic Opportunity, he designed and supervised anti-poverty programs that blended economic opportunities, social services and educational programs. Over his 20-year tenure in the federal government, he traveled throughout the United States to implement the programs in small towns and urban areas. Jenkins also concurrently continued military service for 19 years as an officer in the Naval reserve and retired as a Captain in 1985. During his four plus years of living with Parkinson's, Jenkins was fortunate to have an extraordinary caregiver, Gilbert Magallanes, who became an integral member of the family.

  Video Interview Date: 2007-05-24 Interviewer: Tracy Baim





Out and Proud in Chicago: An Overview of the City's Gay Community, the book is edited by Tracy Baim and features the contributions of more than 20 prominent historians and journalists. It is published by Surrey Books, an Agate imprint, and is hard cover, 224 pages, 4-color, with nearly 400 photos.
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