Jean O'Leary, co-founder of National Coming Out Day, passed away peacefully June 4 in San Clemente after a two-year struggle with lung cancer. Her partner Lisa Phelps and several friends were at her side. O'Leary was 57.

"We sent her off with love and support," O'Leary's longtime friend Midge Costanza told friends in an e-mail.

O'Leary was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer in September 2003. An aggressive treatment plan resulted in several long periods of remission. Last year she was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by Christopher Street West and was also honored by the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center for founding Women's Night in 1984.

"Of all the things I've accomplished in my life, the co-founding of National Coming Out Day and Women's Night are my two favorites, particularly because coming out and women have been the focus of my life," O'Leary told IN before the event. She co-founded National Coming Out Day on October 11, 1988, with the late Rob Eichberg. "Coming out is the most important thing to me in the whole world. It's been at the core of everything I've done."

Once a nun in the mid-1970s, O'Leary became a passionate activist in the Gay Activists Alliance. Frustrated by the group's male domination, she broke away and founded Lesbian Feminist Liberation, the first lesbian-separatist civil rights organization. A political pragmatist, however, O'Leary left the confines of the separatist movement and became co-executive director with Bruce Voeller of the organization now known as the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "There was no such thing as co-anything before this," O'Leary said. "We were the first."

With Costanza, then assistant to President Jimmy Carter, O'Leary organized the first LGBT meeting at the White House on March 26, 1977. That year, as the first and only openly lesbian commissioner at the Houston conference of the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year, she maneuvered passage of a resolution supporting nondiscrimination based on sexual orientation. It was the first official recognition of lesbians by the feminist movement.

In 1981, O'Leary became executive director of the National Gay Rights Advocates where she grew the organization before leaving in the late 1980s to better pursue her love of Democratic politics. For 12 years O'Leary was deeply involved with the Democratic National Committee, including serving on the Executive Committee, and for eight years she served as chair of the Democratic Party's Gay and Lesbian Caucus, which gave her a special honor at this year's California convention.

Despite her battle with cancer, O'Leary remained politically active through her consulting firm, O'Leary & Associates. Among her successes was helping elect her friend and business partner Ginny Foat to the Palm Springs City Council. "She was so proud of me being elected," Foat told the Desert Sun. "She would tell everybody as if she was introducing the pope."

Before her death, O'Leary told IN that she was grateful for the support of friends, and Phelps and her daughter Victoria. "I love them very much."

A memorial service is yet to be announced but is expected to be held this month at the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center's Village.

-- Karen Ocamb