Steven "Skip" Rosenthal, founder of the South End News, died of pancreatic cancer on June 7, 2019 at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. Originally from Mattapan, his home at the time was in Phuket, Thailand. He was 68.
When he and I met in 1979, he was working as a social worker for Jewish Vocational Services, with a second job as night watchman in a Chelsea funeral parlor. He had been associated with Gay Community News for years, had a hand in the advertising and technical end of at least one other gay publication, and managed a gay bar in downtown Boston. Laid off from JVS that fall, he became determined to find meaningful, independent work, which turned out to be a South End community newspaper.
Involved as editor from the beginning, my most vivid memory of the weeks prior to the first issue of the South End News in February 1980 is of Skip and I running up and down the stairs between our apartments, constantly spilling over with new developments, ideas and nerves, so the time between trips was often only a minute or two.
At the time, Skip's partner was James Hoover. When Skip moved to El Paso, Texas, in 1985, he sold the South End News to James, and James bought Bay Windows a year later. In El Paso, Skip founded International AIDS Empowerment and was its executive director for 17 years. Toward the end of his life, he became actively involved with GNP+, the Global Network of People Living with AIDS.