Roi Barnard

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The sensitive boy from Poplar Branch was now on top of the world.

By the late 1970s, Barnard saw the first signs of Stinson’s erratic behavior. On Sunday mornings, Barnard would wake up and notice complete strangers sleeping in the gardens and near the swimming pool. Stinson began showing poor judgment with the business. Staff was forced to choose between the two partners. Eventually, Stinson left the business and his relationship with Barnard fizzled out, but at the same time, another curvature was forming in Barnard’s world. Beautiful boys, talented young men all around him, were dropping.

“Wealthy people in D.C. wanted gay notoriety at their parties, and we were all stars then, but when AIDS came, I thought we would be stoned in the streets,” Barnard said. “It was utter terror. I lost my fifth stylist when he was just 23 years old, and I saw him die in front of me, but I was barred from his funeral because his parents thought that his death was something that I may have caused.”

“There are no words to express the honor, respect and love that I felt for Mr. Joe. Of course, there were moments of growth for both of us, but in 25 years this man never raised his voice with me, never lost his temper with me.”

In April 1990, Barnard met Joe Thompson, a quiet and gentile man, at a time when Barnard described himself as “a beaten wreck of a human being” who was weathering not only the dissolution of his relationship with Stinson, but an AIDS crisis that continued to storm through the gay community. Their relationship – which included their marriage -- lasted for the next 25 years, and was one of a mutual love and understanding of each other, flavored by chilled Manhattans, the Sunday ritual of service at Christ Church and an unforgettable journey on the Orient Express. After Joe was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2012, he retreated into the silence of his disease, and eventually took his own life in the Wilmington condo he now shared with Barnard.

“Mr. Joe gave me the greatest gift – the gift of his life,” Barnard wrote. “I was so angry with him for taking away the opportunity to use my determined commitment to care for him for the rest of his life or at least through the rest of my life. But he set me free to fly again.”

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