Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame


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William W. Greaves, Director/Community Liaison

Email William W. Greaves, Director/Community Liaison

[GLHF Committee Member][ACLGBTI Council Member]

In 1995, Bill Greaves was invited to join what is now the City's Advisory Council on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues. In 2000 he was asked to be the Council's Director, and he has served in that capacity since. It is an honor and an unending education for him to serve the LGBT communities of Chicago.

Bill Greaves was born and raised in Queenstown, Maryland (pop. 350), where he learned that everyone has a story, and everyone is important, because the town could not survive without a single member of its community.

Bill earned his bachelor's degree in chemistry and English literature from Bucknell University where he was introduced to activism in 1973 and his PhD in inorganic chemistry and journalism from Iowa State University in 1978. Upon graduation, Bill moved to Chicago to work for Amoco and, in the middle of the blizzard of 1979, came out.

From 1984 through 1986, Bill was the physical sciences editor at Science magazine in Washington, D.C., when Science was the U.S. journal of record for AIDS research. The discovery of the HIV virus was published soon after he joined the editorial staff. Because Bill was a chemist and not a biologist, he was assigned the epidemiology of AIDS and became in those two crucial years one of the world's experts on the spread of the virus. At the same time, his friends were suffering and rapidly dying from AIDS. He stopped counting the funerals he attended when the number reached forty, and his anger at the government's neglect in a time of crisis has never ceased.

Returning to Chicago in 1988, Bill joined Frontrunners/Frontwalkers Chicago (the city's LGBT running club) and was soon deeply immersed in the growing LGBT communities of Chicago. The running club and the LGBT communities became important parts of his family of choice, and he gave his time as a volunteer to help strengthen both. In 1993, Bill served as President of Frontrunners/Frontwalkers, and in 1995, as a result of work he did with the running club, he was invited to join what is now the City's Advisory Council on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues. In 2000 Bill was offered the opportunity to be the Council's Director, and he accepted with enthusiasm. It is an honor and an unending education for him to serve the LGBT communities of Chicago.

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