‘His reach was very far.’ A pioneer of the Charlotte LGBTQ community dies at age 66

Dan Kirsch, a pioneering leader of Charlotte’s LGBTQ community who was an organizing force at a time when public support for gays and lesbians was hard to come by, died Friday after a sudden illness.

He was 66.

Kirsch had his hand in starting or helping cultivate a long list of groups devoted to gay and lesbian causes, but he’s best known for several he launched during the 1990s and early 2000s: the One Voice Chorus, the Lesbian & Gay Community Center, the Lesbian & Gay Fund and OutCharlotte, an educational and cultural group.

In recent years, he formed and led a group called Charlotte LGBTQ Elders, which serves as a resource for people ages 55 and older.

“At a time in Charlotte when people were still learning about marginalized communities, he gave the LGBT community more of a sense of pride in themselves, through the things that he did and created,” said Ann Hooper. She was a close friend who met Kirsch more than two decades ago when she served on the OutCharlotte board.

When he started the LGBT singing group One Voice Chorus in 1990, many participants declined to have their last names printed in event programs for fear the public would discover they were gay, Hooper recalls.

Kirsch heard those concerns and actively fought for inclusion of gays and lesbians in Charlotte. He raised funds to open a Lesbian & Gay Community Center in Plaza Midwood in 2004, which he hoped would serve as a place for people to gather and hold events in a place where all were welcome.

“Through how he operated in the city, he wanted to create visibility,” Hooper said. “He wanted the community center to be smack dab on Central Avenue so people would see it when they drove by.”

Fingerprints remain

The community center closed after about five years, but Kirsch’s fingerprints are still all over town: the One Voice Chorus remains in operation, while the Lesbian & Gay Fund continues to grant projects through its endowment at Foundation for the Carolinas.

And many point to his cultural events such as OutCharlotte as planting the seed for what has become Charlotte’s now-thriving annual Pride Parade.

After getting many of his initiatives off the ground, Kirsch, who had a professional music and theater background, spent nearly a decade away from Charlotte from the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s to take theater jobs in San Diego and Fayetteville. During that time he also worked at a Jewish community center in Arlington, Va.

Even in the years he was absent from Charlotte, his influence was felt in the city, Hooper said.

“He had such a legacy all over town. What he had created was continuing, and you felt like he was here, even if he wasn’t,” she said.

His goal was to return to Charlotte, and he did, about three years ago. At the time of his death, he was interim executive director of The Choir School at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in uptown Charlotte.

One of Kirsch’s passions, friends say, was making sure the groups he created were fully inclusive — not just in terms of gender and sexual orientation, but in every way possible.

“Dan, in forming his organizations, really started with making sure that everyone was at the table,” said Tom Warshauer, a friend who worked alongside Kirsch on the Lesbian & Gay Fund and other projects. “He sought to make sure that everyone in the community was represented — black or white, rich or poor.”

“He was so good at intersectionality. He could bring the old guard together with new people and understand what everyone needed in the community, at a time when many people were much more anonymous,” Warshauer said. “He really was a tireless worker.”

‘So much enthusiasm’

Keith Bernard, a friend of Kirsch’s who help launch One Voice and served on the board of the Lesbian & Gay Community Center, called Kirsch “the perfect person for a startup.

“He had so much enthusiasm and it was infectious, and people would listen to him and want to get involved,” Bernard said.

Navigating the needs of the community was tough at times for Kirsch, Bernard recalls.

Some wanted to push for more visibility, but others were worried about repercussions of having their sexual orientation known publicly, such as with the issue of whether to publish names in the One Voice programs.

“He was getting it from both sides,” Bernard said. “He just helped manage that sort of thing really well — not glossing over (conflict) but dealing with it in a positive and constructive way.”

Hooper says Kirsch’s death has had a huge effect on the many who knew him.

“The community has come together in such a gigantic way because of his passing,” she said. “His reach was very, very far.”

A celebration of life for Kirsch will take place March 29 from 2-4 p.m. at the Mint Museum Uptown. A Dan Kirsch Memorial Fund has been set up under the umbrella of the Charlotte Lesbian & Gay Fund. Donations can be made through Foundation for the Carolinas: https://www.fftc.org/collective_giving.

This story was originally published February 26, 2020 at 1:51 PM.