BOB HATTOY, American activist died (b. 1950); an American activist on issues related to gay rights, HIV-AIDS, and the environment. Hattoy worked in the White House under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1999. He also served as chairman of the research committee of the Presidential Commission on HIV/AIDS, having himself been diagnosed HIV positive in 1990. He won renown as an outspoken critic of presidents Clinton, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush for their policies on issues such as conservation, the response to HIV/AIDS, and the ban on gay or bisexual men and women serving openly in the U.S. military. In 2002 he started working for the California Fish and Game Commission. He was appointed president of the commission in February 2007, shortly before his death from AIDS-related causes.

This writer and Bob Hattoy worked together for the Los Angeles City Council in the late 70’s. Hattoy was Deputy City Councilman for Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky and I was deputy for Councilwoman Peggy Stevenson (West Hollywood before the partition.) Equally one of the wittiest and most exasperating people I have ever known, he had a mind like a steel trap and was enormously proud of having been employed as Winnie the Pooh at Disneyland while in high school. He was also one of the funniest people I knew. He is missed. There was no one else quite like him.