INSIDE: LIFE LESSONS / COMMUNITY
BUZZ
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WHAT MATTERS NOW IN THE CITY
LI F E L E SS O N S
RUSTY WILLIAMS
JOHN QUILLIN
The Gay Men’s Chorus founder on music, acceptance, and his nearly four decades in Charlotte BY ALLISON FUTTERMAN
IN THE EARLY 1990s, at the height of the AIDS crisis, musician, singer, and LGBTQ activist John Quillin added the 51st name to a list he kept of the friends he’d lost. Then he stopped counting. “I just cried and cried. I couldn’t do it anymore,” he says. “They had so much to offer the world, and they were all dead.” By then, Quillin was already a leader in Charlotte’s LGBTQ community, and he’s continued his activism to this day. In 2006, he merged his activism and lifelong passion for music by founding Gay Men’s Chorus of Charlotte, now a 51-member group that tours and performs at community functions, and is so inclusive it doesn’t require members to be gay. We recently caught up with Quillin, 61, to Continued on next page OCTOBER 2020 // CHARLOTTE
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