Garry Bowie, a community leader in helping people fight HIV/AIDS in the Greater Long Beach and Los Angeles areas, died this week from complications related to the coronavirus, his husband, Jeff Wacha, said Thursday, April 9. He was 59.

Wacha said Bowie, executive director of Being Alive, in West Hollywood, and the former executive director of the Long Beach AIDS Foundation, started showing flu-like symptoms on March 19 and, with his condition not improving, was taken by ambulance on March 28 from his home in Lakewood to Kaiser Permanente in Downey. He died Tuesday. When Bowie, who has HIV, arrived at the hospital, tests showed his immune system was normal, Wacha said.

Wacha said he has received hundreds of messages of condolences on Bowie’s death.

Bowie was “an incredibly kind and compassionate person who fought for wellness and health in the gay community,” Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia said. “He was a leader in the fight against HIV/AIDS and impacted many, many people in Long Beach. Our hearts go out to his family and friends.”

Reba Birmingham, the president of the Long Beach Bar Association and an active member of the city’s LGBTQ community, echoed that sentiment.

“Garry had a million friends,” Birmingham said. “He learned everything he could about HIV/AIDS and communicated that to people he helped. The gay community learned how to take care of itself through Garry’s work. He worked so tirelessly we wondered if he ever slept.”

In addition to his advocacy work in the gay community, Bowie was co-owner with Wacha of Toto’s Revenge, 2947 E. Broadway, a popular Long Beach gift shop with unique cards and items from 2000 to 2007. The store is now the site of La Parolaccia, an Italian restaurant.

Bowie was born on Jan. 24, 1961, in Portland, Maine. His father was a civil engineer for the military and moved the family many times, eventually settling in Huntington Beach and Fountain Valley. He graduated from Fountain Valley High School and moved to Long Beach, where he started work in video editing and music videos.

In 1983, when he was 22, Bowie contracted HIV and feared for his life.

“In those days, you thought you were going to die,” Bowie said in a 2016 interview with the Southern California News Group. “Those of us who were early diagnosed people had to live off of hope. That was our life. That was all we knew.”

Because the first drugs that became available to treat the virus in the United States cost thousands of dollars a year, Bowie said, he and his mother drove to Tijuana, Mexico, and bought dozens of boxes of azidothymidine — AZT, for short — for $6 each and hid them in their car, hoping the border guards would not catch them.

By 1991, Bowie estimated that AIDS had killed many of his friends, and he became more fearful of his life. Then, on Nov. 7, 1991, he was in his Long Beach apartment watching television, when Magic Johnson came on the air and announced that he was HIV-positive and was going to retire from the Los Angeles Lakers. He said he was going to be a spokesman in the fight against HIV/AIDS, adding that he still had a long life to live.

In his interview with the Register, Bowie said Johnson’s public statement meant he and others could start dealing with things like HIV/AIDS that people didn’t want to talk about.

“What Magic Johnson did is bring it into the public dialogue and bring a sense of normalcy to living with HIV,” Bowie said. “It just gave a new face to what HIV looks like in our communities.”

In 1999, Bowie, who was doing work in property management, met Wacha at the Avon Breast Cancer Walk. Both Bowie and Wacha were motorcycle fans, Bowie belonging to the Satyrs Motorcycle Club and Wacha a member of the Oedipus Motorcycle Club.

The cyclists from each club would help participants in the Cancer Walk by blocking off intersections and protecting walkers.

“It was love at first sight,” Wacha said Thursday.

Garry Bowie with his husband, Jeff Wacha. (Courtesy photo)

Bonnie Lowenthal, former State Assembly member and current LB Harbor Commissioner, Garry Bowie and Vanessa Romain, community activist. (Courtesy photo)

Garry Bowie holding an AIDS Walk shirt circa 2004. (Courtesy Family

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Garry Bowie



In a short period of time, Bowie and Wacha began their lives together, opened up Toto’s Revenge and continued advocacy work in the gay community.

Along the way, Bowie met Tami Graham, who started a nonprofit called Artful Thinking and organized the Dyke March. Graham, who has since moved to Oregon, said she remembers Bowie fondly.

There was a controversy involving the Long Beach AIDS Walk, she said, and how it should be organized in the early 2000s.

“Garry was embroiled in that battle, but because his heart was always in the right place and his priority was always helping people,” she said, “he succeeded and took the AIDS Walk on to greatness.”

Bowie became a founding board member and executive director of the Long Beach AIDS Foundation in 2004.

“Garry led us through some very turbulent waters,” Birmingham, a founding member of the foundation, said. “I will always remember that nothing deterred him from moving forward (and) helping people.”

In 2008, the Long Beach Lambda Democratic Club named Bowie “Man of the Year.”

Then, in 2014, he became executive director of Being Alive, which has the mission “to end HIV by ending stigma, engaging people in wellness, removing barriers to care and restoring dignity.”

Wacha said Bowie’s passion in life was helping people.

“It was his lifelong goal to help anyone he could,” Wacha said. “He was very proud of his work; it’s what drove him so much, not accolades or credit. He wanted to leave a legacy of helping people.”

In an emotional Facebook message, Wacha described his last moments with Bowie in the hospital emergency room March 28.

“I was able to talk to him for a couple of minutes at a time, most of which was just reminding him how much I love him, and him telling me how much he loves me,” Wacha wrote. “I had no idea it would be the last time I spoke to my husband, my reason for living, the man who has supported me emotionally the previous 20 years and kept me alive.

“I try not to think that his love of his community and providing care for those in need and those less fortunate may have been the factor in his exposure to the COVID-19,” he added. “I lived for Garry. He was my entire world.”

Besides Wacha, Bowie is survived by his mother, Tomoyo Bowie, and many members of Wacha’s family.

A celebration of Bowie’s life will be held later, Wacha said.