Obituaries

Ms. Spector served on the board of the Rainbow History Project, an organization that documents gay life in the Washington area, and was active in an array of groups, including Queer Nation, the Lesbian Avengers and the Arlington Gay and Lesbian Alliance. She helped organize several marches and was grand marshal of a D.C. gay pride parade in 1998.

She attributed her activism to the 1985 suicide of a brother, who was gay and had AIDS.

Ms. Spector was a presence in the city's nightlife, having first worked as a disc jockey at gay clubs in the early 1980s. She was also part of an effort to bring to Washington the "drag king" performance culture of women who dress as men.

She was born in Lakewood, N.J., and raised in Toms River, N.J. She was a 1980 broadcast journalism graduate of American University.

She kept her archive at her Arlington County home, which in June was destroyed by an electrical fire. Many of her thousands of pictures, slides and videos survived. She was diagnosed with her illness just after the fire.

She received the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington's 2004 distinguished service award and is scheduled this month to receive a posthumous inspirational award from the Mautner Project, a national lesbian health organization.

Her memberships included Metropolitan Community Church and Bet Mishpachah, houses of worship in Washington serving LGBT communities.

Survivors include a sister and two brothers.

-- Adam Bernstein

Helen M. WaymothAdministrative Secretary

Helen Elizabeth Mooney Waymoth, 88, a former administrative secretary with Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, died Aug. 25 at her home in Silver Spring. She had complications from a fall in June.