Rose Walton, influential Long Island LGBTQ advocate, dies at 85 

To the East End LGBTQ community of the 1980s and '90s, Rose Walton was a hero.

She headed the quest to bring HIV/AIDS care to eastern Long Island and was an early advocate for gay rights at a time when doing so could bring personal and professional risks. She was quiet, yet fierce. Warm and nurturing, but whip smart and steadfast in her convictions, those who knew and loved her said.

“Rose was the most loving, compassionate, dignified … she was truly an unbelievable person,” said her wife and partner of more than four decades, Marjorie Sherwin. “She had a force about her that people gravitated to her without her saying very much.”

Walton, for whom the Rose Walton HIV Care Services Center at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital is named, died of heart failure April 9 at her home in Sunset Beach, Florida, with her wife and niece Robin Pascarella by her side. A longtime resident of Remsenburg, she was 85.

Tom Kirdahy, an LGBTQ rights attorney and theater producer, said he knew of Walton’s work and “worshipped her from afar” until they became friends through the former East End Gay Organization many years ago.

“Rose was a fearless pioneer and Long Island is a safer place to be for people living with HIV and AIDS because of her,” said Kirdahy, who was married to the late playwright Terrence McNally. “People say ‘don't meet your heroes.’ But in this instance, I was so glad to meet mine because the woman I met was even more extraordinary than the person I admired.”

The HIV center had 1,800 visits and served 342 patients in 2021, said Robert Chaloner, chief administrative officer for Stony Brook Southampton Hospital. While it once focused on case management, today it also focuses on prevention, he said.

“We still have a fairly robust group of services for testing and prophylaxis and also prevention,” Chaloner said. “But it [HIV] is not a death sentence the way it was, obviously, anymore.”

Walton was born in 1937 and was raised in Oak Hill, West Virginia, Sherwin said. She went on to receive a bachelor’s in physical education at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania, a master’s at what was then Peabody College and is now Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and a doctor of education degree from Nova Southeastern University in Davie, Florida.

She later took a job teaching education at Stony Brook University, where she “blossomed into a phenomenal person,” Sherwin said. She had relationships with women but didn't come out until she moved to New York for the Stony Brook job at age 40, Sherwin said.

She embraced her identity, and she and Sherwin were the only pair to consent to have their photos run in a 1990 Time magazine story titled “Couples: The Lesbians Next Door.” Both women received letters of support after the story ran.

Walton became an administrator at Stony Brook University’s School of Allied Health, where she began her work in HIV/AIDS education and outreach. She taught other educators on SUNY campuses, went on to speak before Congress and raised millions of dollars of funding for the HIV/AIDS resource center at Stony Brook, where she served as director.

Jimmy Mack of North Sea, a gay man who was diagnosed with HIV in 1987 and later developed AIDS, said he would not be alive today if not for the care he received at the clinic.

He said he had an immense respect for Walton and her work and was grateful to befriend her and Sherwin in their later years. Mack, an EMT, and his husband, Brian Mott, would happily help transport Walton, who suffered from multiple sclerosis, for medical care. He saw it as a way to repay her for her life’s work.

“It's so important to give back whenever, wherever I can,” Mack said. “I was so blessed to have that opportunity with Rose.”

Walton advocated on a grassroots level and had total trust from the community, Chaloner said. That was one of the reasons why the hospital renamed the center in her honor in 2011. It is now under the umbrella of the Edie Windsor Healthcare Center and located in Hampton Bays.

“That sense of community advocacy was probably her greatest contribution,” Chaloner said. “Every patient that I've met, and I've met a lot of them, are fiercely loyal to the center.”

By Vera Chinese

vera.chinese@newsday.com@VeraChinese

Vera Chinese joined Newsday in 2017 after working as an editor for the East End lifestyle publication northforker and a general assignment reporter for the New York Daily News.