Reed Erickson was a transsexual man who quietly used his personal wealth and influence to improve the lives of countless others who never even knew his name. He may well be the single most important and influential transsexual in the 20th century.

Reed Erickson launched the Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF) in 1964, a philanthropic organization funded entirely by Erickson himself. Through this funding of the Erickson Educational Foundation, Reed laid the foundations for the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, Paul Walker’s Janus Information Service, Sister Mary Elizabeth’s and Jude Patton’s J2CP, and subsequent major transactivist organizations of the later quarter century.

His influence can not be overestimated.

When Erickson began the Erickson Educational Foundation in 1964, transsexualism was little known to either professionals or the public. Operating from the mid-1960s through the mid-1980s, the Foundation supported many research projects that didn’t fit into the usual categories of grants. The researchers helped by the EEF included noted physicians as Dr. John Money, Dr. Harry Benjamin, and Dr. Stanley R. Dean.

It was Erickson Foundation grant money that helped to start the first gender clinic at Johns Hopkins University and also contributed to the work of John Money, M.D. for transsexual and intersex research.

The Foundation offered counseling on gender identity issues out of its Louisiana office. It created a network of physicians and psychologists that provide care for transgendered people, providing referrals. The Foundation provided the central information resource for an entire generation of transsexuals. The Foundation provided information to the press, dispelling myths and printed a number of pamphlets that explained transsexuality and other transgender issues to family and friends. Another pamphlet explained the transition process to gender questioning people.

The EEF sponsored innumerable public addresses on the topic of transsexualism in educational venues directed at medical professional and personnel, clergy, law enforcement officers, and university and college students. The EEF also sponsored educational films, radio and television appearances, and newspaper articles bringing transsexualism to the attention of the public.

In addition, the EEF also sponsored numerous publishing endeavors in the field of transsexualism including an informative quarterly newsletter, an invaluable set of educational pamphlets, and contributed to two major early reference works on the topic, Money & Green’s (1969) Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment and Money & Ehrhardt’s (1972) Man, Woman, Boy, Girl.

Furthermore, the EEF was instrumental in organizing several of the earliest international conferences on transsexualism and in bringing discussions about transsexualism to conferences of broader interest.

Erickson’s personal life was shrouded in mystery during his lifetime. Rumors of his eccentricity and wild drug use floated in the community. He lived a very colourful and successful life, eventually amassing a personal fortune estimated at over US$40 million.

Erickson began the process of masculinizing as a patient of Dr. Harry Benjamin in 1963. That same year Reed Erickson also married for the first time. The following year Erickson launched the EEF. Over the next 30 years, Erickson married again twice and became the father to two children. He lived for many years with his family and his pet leopard, Henry, in an opulent home in Mazatlan Mexico, which he dubbed the Love Joy Palace.

Later in life, he moved to southern California. Sadly, by the time of his death in 1992 at the age of 74, he had become addicted to illegal drugs and died in Mexico as a fugitive from US drug indictments.

©Professor Aaron Devor, University of Victoria – British Columbia Canada has done extensive and ground breaking research on Reed Erickson and the Foundation. Please visit the website on Reed Erickson at www.web.uvic.ca/~erick123