Rose Walton, A Pioneer In HIV/AIDS Education, Dies At 85

If Robin Pascarella could relive one moment in time, it would be just after 4 p.m. on Saturday, June 18, 2011, inside Guild Hall’s John Drew Theater in East Hampton.

She would once again have the entire family in tow, she said, the youngest of the group now old enough to absorb what they were witnessing — and she would better know what to expect, too.

On that afternoon, Pascarella watched as the woman she simply called “Aunt Rosie” became the namesake behind the new Rose Walton HIV Care Services Center at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital — an honor that recognized her tireless work and commitment to those living with the disease.

A pioneer and visionary, Walton, who was a longtime Remsenburg resident, created and implemented Long Island’s first informational and referral HIV/AIDS hotline, developed a statewide college HIV/AIDS educational program, and founded the AIDS Education and Resource Center at Stony Brook University.

The determined LGBTQ activist was a force. Her warm, gentle and compassionate presence intertwined with an undercurrent of fierce advocacy, intelligence, strength and savvy. She was fearless and wise, kind and irreverent, with a perpetual twinkle in her eye.

And she did it all with a quiet confidence.

“I know she was this badass in the world and she did all this work, but growing up, she was my Aunt Rosie,” Pascarella said. “I remember sitting at her naming ceremony and …”

She paused, tearing up at the memory. “And just being amazed and so proud for all the stuff that she had done,” she continued. “She had made such a difference in so many people’s lives.”

Rose Walton, a woman who embodied authenticity, support and bravery to those around her, died of heart failure on April 9 at her home in Sunset Beach, Florida, with her partner of 45 years, Marjorie Sherwin, and Pascarella by her side. She was 85.

“The East End has always attracted artists and intellectuals and leaders — and Rose was truly a leader,” said friend Tom Kirdahy, an LGBTQ rights attorney and theater producer. “She was someone who didn’t call attention to herself, but attention must be paid, because she was a great human being who helped change the world.”

Born on January 6, 1937, Walton grew up in Oak Hill, West Virginia, and became known as the girl who “went to visit people who other people weren’t supposed to visit,” her wife said.

“She brought cookies to everyone. She always wanted to make everybody else happy — they were always first,” Sherwin said. “That’s how Rose lived her life. She always wanted to make everyone else happy.”

Her grandparents, who were both college educated, set an example for the young girl, who earned her bachelor’s degree in physical education at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania, followed by a master’s degree at, then, Peabody College — which is now Vanderbilt University — in Tennessee, and a doctorate in education, with a major in curricular design, from Nova Southeastern University in Florida.

It was there that Sherwin met Walton for the first time.

The year was 1975, and Sherwin was fresh off a breakup, so she called her friend who lived in the Sunshine State to, first, ask to visit — and then, to say, “You know anybody who wants to go to dinner?”

As it turned out, she did, and when Sherwin arrived at Walton’s duplex to pick her up, she took one look at her and thought to herself, “Oh my God,” she recalled.

“She was gorgeous,” Sherwin said. “She had the most gorgeous face on the planet.”

Two years of long-distance dating ensued. The first year that Walton visited New York, Sherwin — who was directing a physical therapist assistant program at Suffolk County Community College — rented them a house in Westhampton Beach.

“It was the coldest year in 100 years,” she said. “The next year was the snowiest year in 100 years. We drove our car out onto Lake Ronkonkoma. I mean, there were a whole bunch of cars out on the ice, and I said to her, ‘Well, if they’re out there, why should our car sink?’ Off we went!”

In 1977, Sherwin interviewed for a job at St. Petersburg College and Walton put her name in the ring for a role in the physician assistant program developing curriculum — which she ultimately accepted, and moved to New York. “As she says, ‘I didn’t know anything about physician assistants, but I thought I could figure it out,’” Sherwin recalled with a laugh. “She was amazing — truly an amazing person. And the rest is, basically, an unbelievable history.”

Walton went on to become an administrator at Stony Brook University’s School of Allied Health, and developed and helmed the AIDS Education and Resource Center. She taught other educators on SUNY campuses across the state, raised millions of dollars of funding for the Stony Brook center, and even spoke before Congress.

“I don’t know what prompted her to pick up the mantle, but boy, she sure did,” Sherwin said of her wife’s life work devoted to HIV/AIDS. “She saw a need and she went to the dean and said, ‘We have to do this,’ and he said, ‘Go do it.’”

Walton blossomed at Stony Brook University, her wife said, and it was there that she openly leaned into her identity as an out lesbian woman. In 1990, they were the only pair to allow their photos to run in a Time magazine story aptly titled, “Couples: The Lesbians Next Door.”

“All of us were one foot in and one foot out of the closet. We did what we did, but we didn’t talk about it,” Sherwin said. “But she came bursting out of the closet when she came to New York thinking, ‘Oh my God, liberal New York,’ not knowing that Suffolk County was quite conservative.”

Growing up in Hauppauge, Kirdahy was well acquainted, he said. As an out, gay man, he moved off Long Island in 1981 and into New York City, and provided free legal services to people with HIV/AIDS beginning in the late 1980s.

During that time, he crossed paths with Walton, who would give lectures and speak on panels, emphasizing the importance of HIV education. She was a “true pioneer in HIV care on Long Island,” he said, and he held great admiration for her from afar.

“If you were young and queer, you noticed who those brave souls were — and, for me, Rose is in my memory as the first openly gay person I remember reading about on Long Island. That may or may not be accurate, but I know, for me, she was the model for living a life openly and with dignity.

“To me, she had it all. She was smart and strong and knew who she was and loved openly and was unafraid of telling that to the world,” he continued. “There were very few people on Long Island who were doing that. Yes, there were folks in the city who were out, but Rose was doing it in a less safe space, and her bravery made it safer for generations.”

Once Walton settled into her role at Stony Brook University, the couple bought a “wonderful little house” across from a pond on a dead-end road in Remsenburg, said Sherwin. Their days were bucolic, she recalled, and they enjoyed riding their bikes, taking trips into the city to see plays and visit museums, and slow Sunday mornings reading the New York Times together.

That same year, prominent members of the local LGBTQ community founded the East End Gay Organization, or EEGO — which Walton and Sherwin soon joined — as a way to address both national and regional issues. In the beginning, they focused on East End beach regulations and discrimination against women at a local bar, but by the mid-1980s, much of their fundraising and advocacy turned toward the AIDS crisis.

“A bunch more men than women were getting AIDS and so Rose, again, saw the need,” Sherwin said. “There was nothing on the East End — the people where we lived had to travel into New York City and that didn’t sit right with her — so she took up the mantle and she did the first AIDS hotline.

“I remember her saying that the dean said, ‘Rose, you’re gonna get about five phone calls when you open this hotline,’” she continued. “They were flooded the first night with, I think, 150 calls.”

Walton would go on to become co-chair of EEGO for a number of years, which is a position that Kirdahy held, too, when he moved to Bridgehampton in the late 1990s — and “finally met this hero of mine,” he said.

“The great thing for me was the person who inspired me, without knowing it, was even more magical and more extraordinary in person than she was from those panels,” he said. “When I met her, I loved her even more personally than I did professionally — and I thought that was impossible because I loved her so much professionally.”

He came to know her as a woman who could read a room, who always had a glint in her eyes. She made him feel “powerful and alive and worthy,” he said, “and I’ll forever be grateful for that.”

Kirdahy and his husband, the late playwright Terrence McNally, would join Walton and Sherwin, who married in 2010, for double dates — and, to him, they were the model of a great couple, he said.

“It’s Marj and Rose, Rose and Marj,” he said. “We all think of them as a unit and the idea that, physically, we don’t have Rose as part of that couple anymore is kind of hard to wrap my brain around. But it will always be Rose and Marj.”

Pascarella doesn’t remember a time when her aunt was without Sherwin, she said. “There was never not ‘Rosie and Marj,’” she said. “It was just them together.”

In her eyes, Walton was the “cool” aunt, she said. One of the earliest gifts she remembers receiving from her was a nightgown — on the front, it read, “A Woman’s Place Is In The House,” and, on the back, “And Senate.”

“I didn’t really get that as an 8 year old, but I wore that very proudly,” Pascarella said. “I just remember realizing that Rosie had done so many cool things as a woman. She was a really good role model to have — although I don’t think she set out to be my role model — seeing the stuff she did and being very unapologetic about it.”

While studying at West Virginia University, Pascarella found herself inspired by her aunt’s work during the HIV/AIDS crisis, and enlisted as a volunteer to pass out blue and yellow condoms — the school’s colors — around campus, “much to my mother’s horror,” she said. Around Christmas time, they changed to red and green.

When Pascarella’s mother died, her sister stepped in to support the 20-year-old daughter she left behind, and took on a grandmother-like role with her niece’s own children, too — teaching them how to fish, pointing out different types of birds, and helping them pick the best shells on the beach.

“She was just always in my corner and always had those kind words and was there to support you and always made sure that I knew that it was okay to be whoever I wanted to be — and it was okay to be different, because she was,” Pascarella said.

“That was pretty powerful for a young woman who was in her 20s,” she continued, “learning to live without her own mom.”

Walton not only touched individual lives close to her, but countless people she never met. In 2021 alone, the Rose Walton HIV Care Services Center served 342 patients across 1,800 visits, according to Robert Chaloner, chief administrative officer for Stony Brook Southampton Hospital.

The center sits under the umbrella of the Edie Windsor Healthcare Center, formerly the David E. Rogers, MD Center, which has specialized in LGBTQ healthcare services on the East End since 1994 — its existence a result of Walton’s community-based activism, Chaloner said.

“It was her organizational skill and her persistence that really drove this to happen — and it’s why we have a center here,” Chaloner said. “There aren’t too many of these centers, frankly, on Long Island. We’re the first LGBTQ health center and one of the earliest HIV/AIDS centers.”

While the center once predominantly focused on medical care, today it also addresses prevention, social work, and psychosocial support, among other needs for both the infected and affected, he said.

“Rose’s legacy is the provision of really top-notch health care for people of the LGBTQ community and the HIV/AIDS community, generally,” he said, “which is broader than just the LGBTQ community.”

After the naming ceremony for the center in 2011, Pascarella said she developed an even deeper respect for her aunt, and will always carry her quiet support with her.

“I’ll miss her and everything she stood for. She was so different in such an amazing way. They don’t make people like Rosie anymore,” she said, adding, “She was just really amazing. Wherever she goes after death, she’s gonna be a force there, for sure.”