James Crutchfield, longtime D.C. LGBTQ community leader, dies at 77
James “Hawk” Crutchfield, a U.S. Air Force veteran and career program analyst with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission who devoted more than 40 years to volunteer leadership work for at least eight D.C.-based LGBTQ organizations, died on July 29 of natural causes at his Dupont Circle area residence.
He was 77. Shortly after he moved to D.C. in 1976 following 12 years of service in the Air Force, including a tour in Vietnam, Crutchfield became involved in local LGBT organizations and in efforts to secure the rights of LGBTQ people in D.C.
and across the country, according to the D.C. Rainbow History Project, for which Crutchfield was a co-founder in 2000. A 2009 write-up on Crutchfield by the Rainbow History Project at the time it named him an LGBT Community Pioneer describes him as “a community builder, one of those hard-working people and a classic example of the busy person others ask to get things done.” The biographical write-up says the long list of Crutchfield’s community endeavors and leadership efforts began around 1978 when he served as secretary for the D.C.
LGBT supportive Metropolitan Community Church’s Prison Outreach Committee and volunteered for the MCC Homeless Women Feeding Program through 1981.
