REED ERICKSON, who passed on this date, (b: 10/13/1917) was an American engineer, activist, and philanthropist, as well as a transgender man who, according to sociology specialist Aaron H. Devor, largely informed “almost every aspect of work being done in the 1960s and 1970s in the field of gender affirmation in the US and, to a lesser degree, in other countries.” He founded and ran the Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF), a nonprofit philanthropic organization. Through the EEF, Erickson contributed millions of dollars to the early development of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) movements between 1964 and 1984.

Reed Erickson was born in El Paso, Texas to a German-Jewish family. When Erickson was still quite young, the family moved to the Olney neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Erickson attended Wagner Junior High and the Philadelphia High School for Girls. In high school, Erickson started using the nickname Eric when among friends.  In 1940, he and his family moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where Erickson’s father had transferred their business. In Baton Rouge, Erickson worked in the family business and attended Louisiana State University (LSU).

After graduating from LSU, Erickson lived in Mexico for two years before moving back to Philadelphia. In Philadelphia he worked as an engineer until losing his job for refusing to fire a woman who was suspected of being a communist. During this time Erickson lived as a lesbian and was in an intimate relationship with a woman for several years. Like many LGBTQI people at the time, the couple supported Henry A. Wallace’s 1948 campaign for presidency and were active in civil rights groups, as well as in gay and lesbian social circles. It is believed their political involvement led to harassment from the FBI and resulted in Erickson being blacklisted from jobs.

Unable to find work as a female engineer, Erickson and his partner moved to Baton Rouge, where he resumed working in the family business. He started an independent company, Southern Seating, making stadium bleachers. During this time Erickson was described as “looking masculine” due to his short hair and tailored clothes. He had begun cross-dressing when travelling outside of Baton Rouge and in the late 1950s he claimed he had travelled to Casablanca and Tijuana to begin taking testosterone.

After Robert Erickson’s death in 1962, Erickson inherited a major interest in the family enterprises, Schuylkill Products Co., Inc., and Schuylkill Lead Corp., and ran them successfully until selling them to Arrow Electronics in 1969 for approximately $5 million. Erickson continued to be financially successful, eventually amassing a personal fortune estimated at over $40 million, most of which came from canny investments in oil-rich real estate, with Erickson’s income often amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars per month.

In June 1964, Erickson launched the Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF). The foundations’ goal was “to provide assistance and support in areas where human potential seems limited by adverse physical, mental or social conditions, or where the scope of research was too new, controversial or imaginative to receive traditionally oriented support.” The EEF was initially funded and controlled entirely by Erickson.

This included the creation of the Harry Benjamin Foundation, the founding of the Johns Hopkins University Gender Identity Clinic, and other important research projects, including the National Transsexual Counseling Unit. The foundation also developed and maintained a referral network of service providers, like physicians and psychologists, mostly located in the United States.

The EEF held public offices in New York and Baton Rouge which were used to provide one-on-one emotional support and counselling for transgender people. They served as a referral service to peer support networks throughout San Francisco and New York City.

The organization kept an archive of newsletters and periodicals relating to transgender people, including work by Rupert Raj, that they would disseminate copies to anyone on request.

Grants from the EEF supported the work of the early homophile organization, ONE, Inc., with their first collaboration on the Bibliography Project, resulting in ONE publishing the An Annotated Bibliography of Homosexuality in 1966. This work was further expanded, with a finalized two volume Annotated Bibliography of Homosexuality being published by Garland Press in 1976. The collection contained over 12,700 entries relating to homosexuality.

He also funded New Age Movement (an example being paying to print the first edition of A Course in Miracles), acupuncture, homeopathy, dream research, and John C. Lilly’s dolphin communication studies. Sociologist Aaron Devor has written about Erickson’s influence on the community through EEF and ONE Inc. However, the main center of Erickson’s attention through the EEF was transsexualism.

In 1963, Erickson became a patient of Dr. Harry Benjamin. Erickson’s official name change took place in 1963 with his sex reassignment surgery following in 1965, setting legal precedent in the state of Louisiana.

In 1965, he married for the first time. He remarried three times and was also a father to two children with his second wife.

Erickson acquired a leopard whom he named Henry. He and Henry became close, with Erickson even bringing Henry on plane rides. Guests to Erickson’s home recall being introduced to the Henry and watching as Erickson play wrestled with the leopard.

In 1972 Erickson moved to Mazatlán, Mexico with his wife, children, and leopard. They lived in an extravagant home that Erickson had built and called the “Love Joy Palace”.

Throughout the 1980s Erickson began increasingly using ketamine, becoming addicted to the drug. During this time, he was repeatedly arrested for drug offenses and often failed to appear in court. This led to the forfeiture of part of Erickson’s estate and fortunes.

At some point Erickson moved from Mexico to Southern California. However, at the time of his death in 1992, he was again living in Mexico and addicted to illegal drugs. Due to US drug indictments, he was a fugitive and unable to live in the United States.