AIDS-related deaths in California

Swen Swenson (January 23, 1930 - June 23, 1993) was a Broadway dancer and singer. Born in Inwood, Iowa, Swenson was trained by dancer Mira Rostova and at the School of American Ballet.
Openly gay, he had featured and co-starring roles on Broadway in such musicals such as Wildcat with Lucille Ball, Little Me (for which he received a Tony Award nomination, and in which he introduced the standard "I've Got Your Number"), A Joyful Noise, Annie, No, No Nanette, I Remember Mama and the 1981 revival of Can-Can. He appeared in movies and on television variety shows, including Your Show of Shows and The Ed Sullivan Show.
Swenson died in 1993 of AIDS-related illness.

Joel Anthony Crothers (January 28, 1941 – November 6, 1985) was an American actor. His credits primarily included stage and television work, including a number of soap opera roles, the best known being Miles Cavanaugh on The Edge of Night, whom he played for eight years. He was also known for his roles as Joe Haskell and Lt. Nathan Forbes on Dark Shadows, Ken Stevens #2 on The Secret Storm, and pianist/newspaper editor Julian Cannell on Somerset.

William Hobart Dickey (December 15, 1928 – May 3, 1994) was an American poet and professor of English and creative writing at San Francisco State University. He wrote 15 books of poetry over a career that lasted over 30 years.

Al Parker (born Andrew Robert Okun; June 25, 1952 – August 17, 1992) was a gay American porn star, producer, and director. He died from complications of AIDS at the age of 40.

Herbert Ritts Jr. (August 13, 1952 – December 26, 2002) was an American fashion photographer and director known for his photographs of celebrities, models, and other cultural figures throughout the 1980s and 1990s. His work concentrated on black and white photography and portraits, often in the style of classical Greek sculpture, which emphasized the human shape.

Alanson Russell "Lance" Loud (June 26, 1951 – December 22, 2001) was an American television personality, magazine columnist, and new wave rock-n-roll performer. Loud is best known for his 1973 appearance in An American Family, a pioneer reality television series that featured his coming out, leading to his status as an icon in the gay community.

Louis Graydon Sullivan (June 16, 1951 – March 2, 1991) was an American author and activist known for his work on behalf of trans men. He was perhaps the first transgender man to publicly identify as gay, and is largely responsible for the modern understanding of sexual orientation and gender identity as distinct, unrelated concepts.Sullivan was a pioneer of the grassroots female-to-male (FTM) movement and was instrumental in helping individuals obtain peer-support, counselling, endocrinological services and reconstructive surgery outside of gender dysphoria clinics. He founded FTM International, one of the first organizations specifically for FTM individuals, and his activism and community work was a significant contributor to the rapid growth of the FTM community during the late 1980s.

Paul Landry Monette (October 16, 1945 – February 10, 1995) was an American author, poet, and activist best known for his books about gay relationships.

Randy Shilts (August 8, 1951 – February 17, 1994) was an American journalist and author. After studying journalism at the University of Oregon, Shilts began working as a reporter for both The Advocate and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as for San Francisco Bay Area television stations. In the 1980s, he was noted for being the first openly gay reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle.His first book, The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, was a biography of LGBT activist Harvey Milk. His second book, And the Band Played On, chronicled the history of the AIDS epidemic. Despite some controversy surrounding the book in the LGBT community, Shilts was praised for his meticulous documentation of an epidemic that was little-understood at the time. It was later made into an HBO film of the same name in 1993. His final book, Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the US Military from Vietnam to the Persian Gulf, examined discrimination against lesbians and gays in the military.
Shilts garnered several accolades for his work. He was honored with the 1988 Outstanding Author award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the 1990 Mather Lectureship at Harvard University, and the 1993 Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists' Association. Diagnosed with HIV in 1985, Shilts died of an AIDS-related illness in 1994 at the age of 42.

Norman Jay "Dack" Rambo (November 13, 1941 – March 21, 1994) was an American actor, widely known for his role as Walter Brennan's grandson Jeff in the series The Guns of Will Sonnett, as Steve Jacobi in the soap opera All My Children, as cousin Jack Ewing on Dallas, and as Grant Harrison on the soap opera Another World.