Annalee Stewart, U social work professor and gay rights advocate, dies at 89

Annalee Stewart was an outspoken activist for peace and against racism, but for years she remained silent about one issue close to home: gay rights.

The University of Minnesota social work professor and her partner each adopted sons from Korea as single women — a groundbreaking move in 1970s Minnesota. For 20 years, to Stewart's family and friends, the two women were roommates. But when Stewart came out in her 50s, she gradually staked out a public role as a Twin Cities gay rights advocate. At a time when many in her social circle still balked at identifying as lesbian in the media and other public forums, she spoke openly about aging in the gay community and became an early proponent of gay marriage.

Stewart died this month of complications from Alzheimer's disease. She was 89.

"My mom lived an interesting life, and it was always about helping your neighbor," said her son, Steven. Stewart is also survived by a granddaughter.

Stewart grew up in the Boston area in a family of two Methodist ministers. She moved to Minnesota in the 1950s, where she worked in juvenile probation with Hennepin County and later with the state. She got a master's degree from the University of Minnesota School of Social Work and went on to teach there for the rest of her career.

During her time in graduate school, she met her first partner. They eventually became the first in Minnesota to adopt internationally as single women. Her son said Stewart's experience working with young offenders had inspired her to change the life of a child. He was 10 when he arrived in Minnesota.

Stewart had joined demonstrations to integrate a playground in 1950s Washington, D.C., protested the Vietnam War and gotten arrested several times during protests against defense contractor Honeywell.

"Annalee saw the surrounding community as a living laboratory for us and wanted us to go out and engage in a way that pushed our boundaries," Morrissey said.

Coming out as a lesbian was one personal boundary Stewart waited for years to cross — and then only gradually and tentatively. In 1978, she went to a Council on Social Work conference in New Orleans, where she attended a gay caucus meeting. Afterward, she decided to become involved in opposition to a proposal to remove sexual orientation from a St. Paul human rights ordinance. First, she came out to her son, then a high school senior, acknowledging how nervous she was about his reaction. "What did you think I was going to do? Fire you?" he said.

"I remember her telling me how important it was to her to come out and finally be who she really was," Steven Stewart said.

When a TV crew came to the headquarters of the opposition, she had the option of going to a backroom. She hesitated, but in the end, she told an interviewer with the Minnesota Historical Society's Lesbian Elders Oral History Project, "To me, it was a value issue that I shouldn't try to hide from this." As a compromise, she presented her profile to the camera as she worked at a collating machine.

Gradually, she became more comfortable with being out: to her students, in a 1995 front-page Star Tribune story about the challenges of aging outside the mainstream, in a slew of speaking engagements across the metro. Margaret Purcell, with the national group Old Lesbians Organizing for Change, said Stewart was anxious once again when she moved to a senior condo. But she quickly realized some of her new neighbors had also demonstrated against Honeywell; a couple had seen her on a public television program about the gay community and ageism.

"She was a strong, visible, forceful advocate, and that was unusual in the 1980s," said Morrissey.