Distinguished Service Award to Patsy Lynch

Presented by GLAA Secretary Barrett L. Brick

GLAA 35th Anniversary Reception
Washington Plaza Hotel
Thursday, April 20, 2006

Native Washingtonian Patsy Lynch has been working as a photojournalist for over two decades. She has covered international, national, and local news for a variety of news agencies, newspapers, and magazines. Patsy enjoys the challenge involved with covering social and corporate events and editorial assignments. Her core values are quality, creativity, and customer satisfaction. She is highly skilled in both digital and film imagery. Patsy’s work has appeared in numerous magazines, books, newspapers, and trade publications around the world. In addition to her editorial work, she has worked on assignment for several government agencies, including the National Park Service, the Department of Health and Human Services, and, most recently, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In fact, she cannot be with us this evening because she is on assignment with FEMA in Missouri.

In addition to covering breaking news stories, Patsy Lynch has documented thirty years of gay and lesbian activism in Washington, DC through the lenses of her cameras. In addition to her own online galleries, Patsy has lent a sample of her work to the Rainbow History Project’s website. The selection includes images from the 1979, 1987, and 1993 Marches on Washington, as well as images of AIDS protests in our streets. It was through these protests that I first met Patsy, and came to know her keen photographic skills, her marvelous wit, and her gift for deep friendship. We cemented our friendship as members of a group of activists and educators brought by the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission to St. Petersburg and Moscow in August 1991 for two weeks, meeting with, teaching, and learning from local activists from across the dissolving Soviet Union. Patsy’s photos have been used to work change here as well, appearing, for example, in the Yes on 59 campaign brochures in favor of medical marijuana.

One of Patsy’s most poignant contributions to our community was the display of her photographs recording the history of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Washington, documenting the epidemic’s impact on our city’s residents, part of an exhibit titled “Our Heroes: A 20-Year Journey of AIDS Through Our Eyes,” that was housed at five locations through DC during December 2004, one of the largest displays depicting the history of HIV/AIDS in the United States. Most recently, Patsy was a key source for photographs for the book “Gay and Lesbian Washington D.C.” in the Images of America series.

Patsy brings a passion for quality and excellence to everything she does. It is my pleasure to honor that passion tonight, by presenting Patsy with GLAA’s award for distinguished service. Because she could not be here, she sent a stand-in (Mark Meinke).