America’s first openly transgender mayor has died.
Stewart “Stu” Rasmussen, who served multiple terms as mayor of Silverton, Oregon, died last Wednesday at 73, according to the town’s current mayor, Kyle Palmer.
“It is with sadness that I report that Mayor Stu Rasmussen passed away Wednesday around 11am after a number of weeks under home hospice care for metastatic prostate cancer,“Palmer wrote on Facebook Friday.
Born Sept. 9, 1948 in Silverton, Rasmussen was first elected mayor of his hometown in 1998 and served two terms before coming out and winning again in 2008 as the first openly transgender person to hold public office in the U.S.,according to theStatesman Journal.
Unconcerned with pronouns — his wife has said he was comfortable with either “he/him” or “she/her” — Rasmussen backed both socially progressive ideas as well as fiscal responsibility and the conservation of his community’s small-town character.
Rasmussen married Victoria Sage in 2014, four decades after they met at the Fifth Avenue Cinema in Portland, where she sold popcorn and he fixed movie projectors, according to theStatesman Journal.
“He went bravely into the unknown on his own terms,” Sage said, according to Palmer.
She told theStatesman Journalshe has been receiving “beautiful and heartwarming” messages from those reaching out about Rasmussen’s life.
Rasmussen was co-owner of Silverton’s Palace Theater — a cinema that opened in 1935 and once employed his father — until 2020 when he and his partnerwalked away from the business.
“He used the phrase, ‘Keep Silverton Silverton,’ " Palmer told theStatesman Journal.
In a2015 interviewafter an election defeat the previous year, Rasmussen spoke about his accomplishments — including an implementing an early warning system at the Silver Creek Dam, opening a senior center and constructing a skate park.
He also talked about his preference for preservation and his opposition to a proposal to close off Silverton’s Main Street to create an outdoor, pedestrian shopping zone. “Change is not necessarily progress,” he said. “This town is really good at being a small town. It has charm, it has character, and you don’t want to destroy that.”
After getting a breast augmentation and coming out as transgender, Rasmussen doubted his chances of winning another election. “I figured my political career was over because, you know, who is going to elect somebody in that package?” he said.
“A lot of people who are transgender think, ‘I can’t be myself here. I have to go somewhere else, go to Portland or to San Francisco, and let the other side of me come out,’ " Rasmussen added. “I transitioned in place. And the community came along with me.”
In his Facebook post on Friday, Palmer acknowledged that Rasmussen was often at odds with other community leaders in Silverton but praised Rasmussen’s courage and influence which he said stretches far beyond the small town where he was born and which he led.
“Stu advocated for many things on behalf of those who shared his vision for Silverton. Although citizens can debate their support or lack of support for some of those visions, the time for those conversations has long passed,” Palmer wrote. “His volume of service to city government, his role as a longtime downtown business owner, and his impact on the LGBTQ population in Silverton and beyond leaves a huge legacy behind.”
source: people.com
