Jeanne Manford, PFLAG founder, dies

Jeanne Manford (center) marches in New York's Christopher Street Liberation Day March, a precursor to Pride parades, with her son Morty in 1972. Jeanne Manford (center) marches in New York's Christopher Street Liberation Day March, a precursor to Pride parades, with her son Morty in 1972. Photo: -, Courtesy PFLAG Photo: -, Courtesy PFLAG Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Jeanne Manford, PFLAG founder, dies 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Jeanne Manford, who founded a national support organization for gays and lesbians after a simple and brave demonstration of her love for her gay son after he was beaten, died Tuesday in her Daly City home. She was 92.

Mrs. Manford, who started Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays in 1972, had seen her health slowly fading for months, said her daughter, Suzanne Swan.

"Her body was shutting down," Swan said. "The doctor just called it old age."

Mrs. Manford was a mother of three and a New York City elementary school teacher when her defiance in the face of violence thrust her onto the national stage and led her to found an organization known as PFLAG, which now has more than 200,000 members and more than 350 affiliates across the nation.

In April 1972, one of her sons, the late Morty Manford, was beaten at a gay rights demonstration in New York by a former amateur boxing champion, and police failed to respond, Swan said.

Mrs. Manford penned a letter to the New York Post later that month that read: "I have a homosexual son, and I love him."

Not long after, she marched with her son in New York's Christopher Street Liberation Day March, a precursor to present day Pride parades, carrying a sign saying: "Parents of gays: Unite in support for our children."

"She never thought twice about it. She fought for him," Swan recalled. "This was a 5-foot-2, thin, blond woman who had a spine of steel. She just did what she knew to be right."

Participants flocked to Mrs. Manford during the parade, hugging her and begging her to talk to their parents, according to the organization.

"That's how PFLAG started," Swan said.

At the time, homosexuality was still classified as a mental illness, sodomy laws were on the books in many states, and there were no legal protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation.

"For her to step into the street to declare support for her mentally ill, outlaw son - that was no small act," said state Sen. Mark Leno of San Francisco. "But it was what a mother's love does."

Mrs. Manford and her husband, Jules, went on to appear on radio and national television programs to raise awareness, Swan said.

About 20 people attended the first formal meeting of the group, held in 1973, according to the organization. At the time, and for years later, individuals who came out as gay or lesbian were often shunned by their families.

Karen Sundheim, program manager of the James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center at the San Francisco Public Library, recalled a childhood friend whose parents refused to speak to him after he came out, even as he was dying of AIDS in the mid-1980s.

She pointed to an indelible moment during a San Francisco Pride parade she watched from the sidelines about 20 years ago.

"When PFLAG came by, everybody was roaring," Sundheim said. "People were just moved to tears seeing parents and family marching for their gay children."

Mrs. Manford, whom President Obama praised at a Human Rights Campaign banquet in 2009 for a "love more powerful than any insult or injury," was born in New York in 1920. She was the third of five daughters.

She attended college in Alabama before completing her degree at Queens College in New York, family said. She lived most of her life in Queens, leaving New York in 1996 for Minnesota before moving in with her daughter in Daly City.

She is preceded in death by her husband, Jules, and two sons: Charles, who died in 1966, and Morty, who died of AIDS complications in 1992.

In addition to her daughter, she is survived by her son-in-law Richard Swan of Daly City, a granddaughter and three great-granddaughters.