Richard Spector, 58; Clinical Social Worker

Richard Spector, 58, a licensed clinical social worker who specialized in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual issues, died May 4 of a heart attack in his Washington apartment.

Mr. Spector was born in Chicago and moved with his family at age 11 to Silver Spring. At Montgomery Blair High School, he organized a civil rights group called High School Friends of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and helped run a coffeehouse in a nearby Unitarian church called "The Real Dirt," named for a passage in the Jack London novel "Martin Eden."

He graduated from Montgomery Blair in 1966 and received an undergraduate degree from Beloit College in 1970. He received his master's degree in social work from the University of Maryland in 1979.

Mr. Spector was a founding member of Everyday Theater, a community-based company that performed musicals based on the real-life stories of District residents. He was affiliated with the company from 1979 to 1985.

He also was a member of the Job Co-op Collective in the Adams Morgan and Dupont Circle neighborhoods. The group offered career counseling to young adults and assisted gay teens forced out of their homes by homophobia. From 1981 to 1986, he was a member of Men Against Sexual Violence.

"He was an artist at heart and also concerned with people," said his former wife, Ann Becker. "Social work allowed him to combine both interests."

Mr. Spector studied with pioneering family therapist Jay Haley at the Washington-based Family Therapy Institute, and for 10 years was a senior therapist and instructor at the institute.

From 1987 until his death, he was a senior therapist with the Fairfax-Falls Church Community Services Board. As adult community services manager for special populations, he worked with the elderly and multicultural groups.

He also maintained a private practice in the Dupont Circle area and was part of a therapist collective called Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Trans Counseling.

He practiced what he called "a pragmatic yet caring approach to counseling and therapy," an approach that involved collaborating with his client to think about problems in solvable ways, determining goals, discovering solutions and putting those solutions into practice.

He was a volunteer therapist at the Whitman-Walker AIDS Clinic, beginning in 1987, and served on the clinic's board of directors from 1994 to 1997.

Spirituality was important to him, said Larry Cohen, a colleague. He was a member of Congregation Bet Mishpachah, a congregation for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Jews, and a Buddhist meditation group.

Mr. Spector loved photography, filmmaking and the outdoors and enjoyed a hiking trip in Bhutan last year.

He grew up immersed in music, particularly folk and roots music, and was packing for a trip to the New Orleans Jazz Festival at the time of his death. Misha Berson, an old friend he had planned to meet in New Orleans, recalled hanging around the gospel tent awaiting word from the always-punctual Mr. Spector. As she waited, she listened to the rhythm and blues artist Irma Thomas sing "Down by the Riverside," "His Eye Is on the Sparrow," "I'm So Glad" and other gospel classics Mr. Spector would have appreciated.

"I felt like I'd been to a memorial service for him," Berson said.

Mr. Spector's marriage ended in divorce. Survivors include a sister.