Constance “Connie” Robin Norman was born in Oxnard, November 5th, 1949. She transitioned at the age of 26.
Connie, according to her dear friend Peter Cashman, spent her formative years in the area around Houston, Texas. “Her grandmother Mabel Murphy owned a bar. Connie would end up working for Mabel, and there she gained a good deal of the Connie that we came to know. The hard-scrabble life in the South made her streetwise and tough, but with a great sense of humor like Mabel.”
Connie found her way to San Francisco, eventually becoming manager at the world famous “Trocadero Transfer,” disco in San Francisco’s Mission District. Connie met her soul mate and eventual husband Bruce Norman in San Francisco. Bruce had grown up in the Altadena, California and eventually they found their way back to the City Of Angels.
Connie discovered she was HIV positive in 1987.
In Connie’s own words, “I often tell people I am an ex-drag queen, ex-hooker, ex IV-drug user, ex-high-risk youth and currently a post-operative transsexual who is HIV positive.” And she added very poignantly, “I have everything I’ve wanted, including a husband of ten years, a home and five adorable longhaired cats…. I do however regret the presence of this virus.”
Connie & Bruce joined the new national AIDS activist group ACT UP in June of ’88. In her friend Peter’s words, “Connie had never attended college; in fact, she’d been a teen runaway on the streets of Hollywood. But she had an insatiable thirst for knowledge. Completely self-taught, she put in an enormous amount of work.” Connie would go on to hosting a weekly cable tv show in Long Beach. She wrote a regular column for the Southern California LGBT newspaper Update. And she would become the very first queer person in the U.S. to host a talk show on AM talk radio, broadcasting from Hollywood.
Connie was fierce and strong, a force to be reckoned with, she went toe-to-toe debating with talk radio hosts, shock jock shows. She spoke at rallies and demonstrations. Friend & Foe, all respected her as loud, forceful, and eloquent. She became known as the AIDS Diva and became a statewide figure as ACT UP/LA’s representative on the LIFE AIDS Lobby.
On the personal side, Connie had a fierce nurturing instinct, her friends remembered her as kind with the ability to speak to people from all walks of life. Connie educated, informed, and spoke from the heart.
Later she became public policy director at Pasadena’s AIDS Service Center, continuing the work she’d done with ACT UP, talking with policy makers, lawmakers, both locally, in Sacramento and in Washington DC.
By late 1995. Her health was failing and she rapidly declined during the first part of 1996, passing on July 14th, 1996.
In early October 1996, ACT UP gathered for the Second Ashes protest — Connie’s ashes were scattered along with the ashes of many loved ones who had died of AIDS onto the White House lawn.
Connie Norman – a beloved social justice warrior who’s inspiring, ferocious spirit continues to shine over, and light up the Trans, NonBinary and Intersex community of Los Angeles and beyond.