Yolanda Retter, Lesbian Activist and Archivist, Dies
Yolanda Retter, an activist, archivist and scholar who devoted the last four decades to raising the visibility of lesbians and minorities and preserving their history, died Aug. 18 at her home in Van Nuys after a brief illness. She was 59.
Widely respected in the Los Angeles lesbian community despite her abrasive style and radical stances, Retter called herself a “gadfly on the body politic” who took on many roles in her drive to achieve social justice for overlooked groups, particularly lesbians of color. 
She was a pivotal advocate for lesbians during the early years of the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center, the country’s first social service agency to exclusively serve gays. She helped organize lesbian history repositories at USC, UCLA and in West Hollywood. For the last four years, she was the librarian and archivist for the UCLA Chicano Studies Resource Center, where she was instrumental in expanding holdings related to Latinas as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
Calling herself a “herstorian,” she created the Lesbian History Project website, which was once rated by Lycos as one of its most popular sites. It is off-line, but friends of Retter expect to relaunch it within a few weeks.
Retter also co-wrote or co-edited three books, including “Queers in Space” (1997), a collection of essays and other writings that addressed how gays have shaped their environment; and “Gay and Lesbian Rights in the United States: A Documentary History” (2003).
“She knew that not to be seen was to not exist. She wanted women of color to be seen and she wanted lesbians to be seen. She thought visibility was the way to get our rights,” said Jeanne Cordova, a veteran lesbian activist who knew Retter for 37 years.
Born in New Haven, Conn., in 1947, Retter spent most of her childhood in El Salvador, where her father, Henry, a Yale-trained architect, worked for a State Department program. Most of his clients were members of El Salvador’s ruling class.
Retter was named after her Peruvian mother, Yolanda Vargas, an adventurous woman who learned to fly an airplane in the 1940s. Her mother came from an artistic family that included Alberto Vargas, Retter’s uncle, whose sensual paintings of pinup girls became World War II-era icons, and Max Vargas, Retter’s grandfather, a renowned photographer in Peru.
In high school in Connecticut, Retter knew she was attracted to other women and struggled to keep her identity in the closet. She moved to California to attend Pitzer College in Claremont in 1966, when it was still a women’s college.
She came out as a lesbian in 1969, the year of the Stonewall riots in New York City that gave rise to the gay liberation movement.
She spent the next decade helping to organize the nascent lesbian liberation movement through her involvement in such groups as Latin American Lesbians of Los Angeles and Connexxus Women’s Center/Centro de Mujeres. The latter group brought an important archive — the June L. Mazer Lesbian Collections — from Oakland to Los Angeles, and Retter helped guide it as a volunteer.
Retter also led efforts to build a collection on lesbian history for the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at USC. In 1978 she co-founded, with Cordova and others, a specialized business directory called the Los Angeles Women’s Yellow Pages
After graduating from Pitzer with a degree in sociology, Retter worked briefly as a prison guard at the California Institution for Women in Corona and managed a halfway house for displaced women in Los Angeles.
She also learned cabinet-making and became a licensed airplane mechanic before returning to school in the 1980s to earn master’s degrees in library science and social work from UCLA. At the University of New Mexico, she received a doctorate in American studies with a dissertation on lesbian activism in Los Angeles from 1970 to 1990.
She considered herself a lesbian separatist, believing that gay women could empower themselves without men. She was one of three separatists invited to appear on Oprah Winfrey’s television show in 1988.
According to an autobiographical account published in the recent book “Time It Was: American Stories From the Sixties,” Retter responded to hostile questioning on the show by saying “Oprah, if six black activists came on the show they would probably not be asked ‘Why do you hate white people?’ So why is it that the question we always get is, ‘Why do you hate men?’ ”
Retter did not hate men; she was confrontational, but in a gender-blind manner that earned her the nickname “Yolanda the Terrible.” She was often called on to oversee security at events such as the Sunset Junction Street Fair in Silver Lake and the Los Angeles Dyke March.
In 1978 she directed a program at what was then the Gay Community Services Center to address the needs of lesbians. She played a major role in the successful effort to change the name of the agency to the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center in the early 1980s, but later left in a disagreement over the service she headed and her belief that it should remain separate from the men’s programs.
“She was always afraid that assimilation, whether into mainstream culture dominated by Anglos or by men, would obliterate minority voices. That was her message. That was what she railed against,” said Torie Osborn, a former executive director of the center who is now a senior advisor to L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
Retter is survived by her partner of 13 years, Leslie Golden Stampler; her father, Henry, and stepmother, Dottie, of Florida; Stampler’s two children, Belinda and Martin; and six brothers and sisters.
A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. Sept. 29 at Metropolitan Community Church, 8714 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. Memorial donations may be sent to the Yolanda Retter Foundation, c/o Law Office of Karen L. Mateer, 618 S. Lake Ave., Pasadena, CA 91106.
Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times
Thank you, Yolnada
I can’t say I know a lot about you, but forty years of activism and working for the Lesbians and the ‘Other’ is a life worth living. My thoughts and prayers for one who knows what it is to be different and be invisible in America. Yolanda in my mind you are alive and well.
How good I feel just to know about you, mere words could never express.
Un abrazo muy fuerte,
Homie Gilberto
As a straight woman I thank you for the courage with which you lived your life.
Thank you for your dedication and the work that you have done. God bless you Yolanda.
What were the circumstances of her death? Fifty-nine is quite young. VJ
dear subway…you got off at the wrong station…bigotry and mean-spirited illiterates meet at the stop furthest to the right….
A measure of the worth of a person is in their life’s work, not their appearance. Being so disrespectful to somebody who is different than you shows a galling lack of character. You should be ashamed subwayalbina… but I suspect you won’t - and THAT is shameful.
I can’t tell you she wasn’t ugly and I can’t tell you she was ugly because beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Moreover anyone can have a bad photo taken. Do you think maybe the photo chosen was because of who she was with?
It is not the place of anyone to call someone else ‘worthless.’ Mother Teresa wasn’t beautiful - was she worthless? And as for her sexual orientation - it’s totally childish to refer to someone who may not be like you as worthless. Jade got it right… You got off on the wrong stop.
Using terms like ‘dyke’ and ‘wetback’ destroys any credibility you might have had..
As I said, you have no credibility. You aren’t worth my time.. good night..
Subwayalbina,
I don’t a thing about you, but your language says a lot about an angry person. You are still a human being and will die too. My thoughts and prayers will be there when your time comes, as it will for all of us…Perhaps you won’t give a shit or a fuck and that’s ok too because that’s what we are nothing but shit and dust in the end…for others like Yolanda her spirit was never shit nor ugly.
Gilberto
I am reluctant to post this. The user “subwayalbina” is here because of me. He’s a troll and part of a group that has essentially been cyberstalking and cyberbullying me for some time now. His username is a jab at me and my personal life. I have contacted the webmaster regarding this user. I urge everyone else to do the same and then to ignore him on the forums. His homophobic and racist remarks are designed to call me out and illustrate one reason why these people hate me, I am a heterosexual white male who does not share their views.
These people are right-wing cowards who hide behind their computers and personally attack people who dare frequent the same forums they do and who dare to express political views opposite to theirs.
I apologize. I didn’t expect these people to come here to start trouble.
Oh I must be important to you. After all you keep following me around and trying to call me out.
You’re a coward and an immoral, decrepit piece of garbage. You need to go straight to hell along with all of your greivous cohorts.
Thank you, iwarrior for your honesty, and all this will come to pass too.
Gilberto
iwarrior,
Thanks for the heads up.
Lay low, man. Shit eventually sinks to the bottom.
It is sad that this kind of vicious idiocy is dominating the comments about Yolanda Retter’s passing. She was a serious person who devoted herself to her activism and her scholarship on behalf of the lesbian community. Who cares what some dimwit says about her looks? He should look at his reflection in the mirror or look into his own eyes to see the putrefaction within.
Bon Voyage Yolanda … I remember those days well … You were often a pain in the buns … but you got the job done … and you worked hard for the women!!!
………. Rest in Peace…………
Hi Rosie P. second what you said ….
Hey iwarrior, as Conan O’Brian used to say “It’s cool baby…” Although said perpetrator seems to have already been expunged, IMHO that’s exactly the type of person who should be invited to CD. We can shine some light into their souls.
As far as the picture, I see a vibrant person cut short in life. But we should focus on what she did.
I don’t know what this subway guy posted but I don’t think his post should be deleted. What about free speech? I thought that was a constituional right. It’s even clearly written in the constitution just like the right to bear arms and you can’t see that But somehow you can find the right to an abortion in the constitution which was never mentioned at all. What kind of glasses do progressives wear?
Now don’t hate me for this post but without a dissenting voice you would all be blowing so much smoke up each other’s asses you would look like the balloons at the Macy’s Thanksgiving day parade.
I appreciate the support, but forget about that person who was trolling here. Again, he was here because of me and only wanted to make trouble. I thank the webmaster for taking care of it. I’m very sorry about that.
Let this thread be about Yolanda Retter.
“real world” ?? … get real !…
Free speech does not include the right to have spewed obscenities, bigotry, prejudice and hate mail sent/printed on a site not controlled by the idiots who post them .. the guy who rides subs can do whatever he wants on his own friken website … but not here!!
and that’s the “real world” barf boy!!
gabi.
Go to any conservative web site and read the hate speach directed at ann coulter or michael savage to use just two examples. Then let me know your opinion of those “barf boys”
Free speech is not the right to not be offended. I strive to find common ground with those whose opinion is different from mine. I get just as tired of hearing the people on conservative sites agree with everything their columnists write. Open your mind.
I believe everyone has a right to speak their peace. And I support the constitution - in the case of this woman, sadly support it. But otherwise proudly.
What I have seen of the results of the lesbian and feminist movement and its effect on God and country, all I can say about this woman and others like her is good riddance and may God have mercy on her soul.
I am sure there will be a lot of lips flapping and gnashing of teeth. But since I will not come back here, you will be assured I will not be listening to you. A waste of my time. Instead, it will only be preaching to yourselves - rationalizing your own greed, pride and heardened satanic hearts. So by all means, lamblast my post so you can all feel warm and fuzzy and proud of your arrogance, pride, the destruction of family values, two wage earners driving up the cost of homes, and otherwise dividing families, peoples and nations.
All because you want to be like me… a real man.
And may God have mercy on your souls.
The Wildlander
I’m coming late to this discussion, but Wildlander, I appreciate your comments. I’m not certain that I understand them and so I ask for your help.
From the way I read your post, lesbians (and possibly, by extension, all homosexuals) are a destructive force to family values. Have I read your post correctly?
If so, could you define more precisely what you mean by the term ‘family values’? I would very much like to know because it has been my experience that precisely defining the subject of discussion leads to a more constructive dialogue for all parties involved.
Looking forward to understanding your point more clearly. Thanks, in advance, for engaging with me.
I know your laughing at all the hoopla over joe shmo, but isn’t it all the point. Back in the day, when you too were a member of the “gang of four” I thought you were a little bit rough, but so right on. Since those days at UNM I’ve thought of you often, and often with wonder as to how you got me to read, out loud, in our ‘departmental’ meeting that letter you wrote, and without even questioning you as to why you wanted me to read it. I know why. I’m not ashamed to say, thank you. Good for you. And good for us. It was an eye-opener as to how supposed “friends” in the department (who complained about this, that, and the other) could not find their voices when push came to shove; when women of color asked for back-up. Lessons are made to be learned. As Fox would say: “Trust no one.”
I apologize again that I had to work and could not make it to your Dis defense, but I’m sure you were quite capable of taking on the disbelivers.
Thank you for having what most lack: courage, intelligence and, most of all, integrity. I’ve only know a few in my lifetime with all three. Here’s to you. Watch over us. We all still need you. Love, annette