Co-founder of Bromfield Gay-Straight Alliance
Eric Delisle. (Courtesy photo)
Eric H. Delisle of Belmont, 32, formerly of Harvard, died Dec. 16, 2018.
Born Emily Hopkins Delisle in Portland, Oregon, Eric transitioned to male at age 20. He co-founded the Bromfield School Gay-Straight Alliance (now the Gender and Sexuality Alliance) in Harvard in 1997 and co-founded the Agassiz Baldwin Anti-Racism Committee in Cambridge in 2017. He loved libraries, telling the same jokes over and over, musical theater, writing, painting, gardening, and small, creepy creatures. His Halloween parties were the stuff of legends. He was always surrounded by love, even when he didn’t realize it. Six-word autobiography: Hate change, adapt, love life, repeat. To quote singer-songwriter Dar Williams, “When you live in a world / It gets into who you thought you’d be.”
Eric is survived by his partner, Evan Rockefeller; their fuzzy family, Sachiel, Timothy, and Fig Newton; his parents, Heidi and Norman Delisle; his sister, Rain Delisle; her boyfriend, Cory Gehrich; his dear friends Amanda Cadogan and Randy Furash-Stewart; and his in-laws, Barbara, Larry, and Gabriel Rockefeller.
A memorial celebration is to be held Saturday, Jan. 19, 2019, at 2 p.m. at Crowell Chapel in the Rosedale Cemetery in Manchester-by-the-Sea. Family and friends are cordially invited.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Eric’s memory to The Agassiz Baldwin Community, 20 Sacramento Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 with a notation in the memo line “Anti-Racism Fund,” or to the website agassiz.org. Arrangements are by the Greely Funeral Home, 212 Washington St. Gloucester. Online condolences may be given at www.greelyfuneralhome.com.
