The students who hang out in the Dr. Jesse R. Peel LGBTQ Center of East Carolina University (ECU) are welcome guests in a dynamic, welcoming space. Among them are all manner of gender expression and burgeoning sexualities. You’ll find them lazing on couches or typing at work tables in the colorful lobby area throughout the school year, discussing whatever topics capture the minds of Gen Z these days. Just above them, a portrait of their benefactor keeps a protective watch, even if his eyes might twinkle conspiratorially at any youthful shenanigans.
“I told them I wanted that LGBTQ center smack dab in the middle of the new student center building,” Jesse Peel told me a year ago, as he proudly showed me around before I spoke at a World AIDS Day event. “I didn’t want us to be hidden somewhere in the back of the building. I wanted these students to feel safe to be out and proud.” Jesse’s generous donation toward the new LGBTQ center didn’t just emblazon it with his name. It ensured the LGBTQ Center was positioned exactly where he wanted it.
Those ECU students, blessed with a safe space that honors and nurtures them, represent the spiritual progeny of Dr. Jesse Peel. But make no mistake, there are many, many more.
Jesse Peel died last month at the age of 84. He was a fierce HIV/AIDS advocate and long-term survivor who spoke up early and forcefully about the health crisis, long before others had the courage, and was a founder of every major HIV agency in Atlanta. He supported and loved the performing arts. He maintained an active social calendar, usually in service of bringing together his enormously broad circle of friends.
But beyond his remarkable civic accomplishments, Jesse Peel was, at his core, a nurturing parental figure. He was a father with many children.
When Jesse and his late mother created a scholarship fund at ECU, they did it because the university was known for connecting recipients with their donors. For…
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