Collections by Michelle Brown WSG Judith Kasen-Windsor (Part 2)

Judith Kasen-Windsor continues her conversation about her life with LGBTQ icon Edie Windsor. Judith first met Edie Windsor in 2010 at an LGBTQ event. Their encounters over the years led to conversations that led to romance and eventually marriage in September 2016, Longevity is not an indicator of intensity. Although Windsor died in 2017, theirs’s was a relationship filled with love.

Windsor was the lead plaintiff in the 2013 Supreme Court case  which overturned Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act and was considered a landmark legal victory for the same-sex marriage movement in the United States, 

Edie's memoir "A Wild and Precious Life" was released on October 8, 2019. She worked on the book with Joshua Lyon until her death. He finished the book using the hundreds of files Edie left behind that included files on all her family members, letters, photographs, musings and detailed day calendars dating back to 1953 among other things. This allowed him to trace every move of her life and provide details to bring the story to life, but the meat of the book is all Edie. And she told her story from childhood to the end, “warts and all’ as only she could tell. It was like sitting down, not reading a diary, but having Edie tell you her story herself. 

Preserving Edie’s legacy keeps Judith going these days. Since Edie’s death, SAGE (Services & Advocacy for GLBT Elders) named their drop-in center for Edie Windsor; A Cultural medallion from New York’s Historic Preservation Center has been placed on her residence; her hometown Philadelphia named a street “Edie Windsor Way;” and The South Hampton hospital not only named their HIV/AIDS center after her but they plan to expand to two more locations that will also provide services related to women’s health and LGBTQ elders.