Mendenhall, P George 24 Feb 1994 Click on the thumbnail below to enlarge. If your browser shrinks the full obituary image to fit within the browser window, you may need to click on the image one more time to display its full size. 24 Feb 1994 Please add a message of remembrance to the guestbook for this obituary. Click the button below to add your thoughts. John Mehring San Francisco 26 May 2013 Rodger Streitmatter, author of Unspeakable: The Rise of the Gay and Lesbian Press in America, interviewed George Mendenhall on Sept. 13, 1993, five months before George died (he did not die of AIDS). Discussing AIDS, Mendenhall said, We should have done more to warn our readers [B.A.R. readers]. When I look back now on my life and think about what I'd do different, that's the first thing that comes to mind. If I could do it over again, I'd have sounded the alarm much sooner and much louder. [It's not clear in the book if Mendenhall is speaking about AIDS in general or high-risk sex in the bathhouses in particular. -- page 258] John Mehring San Francisco 5 May 2013 I was impressed with George when I saw him in the documentary, Word is Out (1977). I was 24 years old then and I didn't have a lot of positive gay role models in Oklahoma. Then I met George in the flesh when I moved to San Francisco in 1979 and I enjoyed our discussions about politics and history. Yes, George was a great contributor to our community! His partner, Bruce Pettit (he published the Pettit Report in the 1980s), still lives in Noe Valley, and I run into him on the #24 bus now and then. Copyright © 2009. No part of this database may be copied or reproduced without permission.