He lived to become not only one of the most well-loved and respected men in gay activist lore, but an ongoing force as well for balance and fairness, an eighth grade graduate who played the part of an earnest and learned host to professors and researchers. Kepner's work, marked by a streak of calming reasonableness, generally fostered long-range views. He avidly collected bits of history until just shortly before the morning of his death at 11 a.m., November 14, due to a perforated intestine, according to friends' reports.

Kepner, whose exact age remains uncertain, was, nevertheless, in his mid-seventies. He'd been a cancer survivor for nearly two decades.

Principal histories of gay activism and journalism in America nearly always tell of Jim Kepner's unprecedented contributions and several have played host to his introductions.

Monday, Randolfe Wicker, the first openly American gay activist to go onto TV and radio in the early 1960s and who had sometimes hosted Kepner when the pioneer visited Manhattan, agreed with other American pioneers that Jim Kepner had carved a place for himself as a much-loved Founding Father of American gay activist-journalism and a man who far-sightedly, in 1942, started documenting the history of same-sex love, his collection evolving into the International Gay and Lesbian Archives.

Telephone lines to GayToday were busied Monday as sadness-filled calls and faxes from the gay movement's pioneers were received, including ones from Franklin Kameny; Randolfe Wicker, and John O'Brien, Executive Director of The International Gay and Lesbian Archives. Kepner friends and co-workers John Schneider, and William E. Glover dispatched faxes.

Glover lamented, "We have now lost in a short time the three main people behind ONE. Inc." Glover had worked side by side for two decades with newsman Kepner's "intellectual sparring partner," Don Slater. (Slater, recently deceased, was the pioneering editor of ONE, for which Jim Kepner regularly wrote).

Glover told GayToday that W. Dorr Legg, another of ONE's founding members, had left posterity only one book. Glover looked forward, he said, to author Joseph Hansen's short forthcoming biography of Don Slater. Though an editor, Slater had died without authoring books.

Randolfe Wicker, his voice choked, lamented that Jim Kepner had not lived to see published a collection of his own historic early activist writings—what would have been his first book-- scheduled for a late autumn printing by The Harrington Park Press and titled Rough News, Daring Views: 1950s Pioneer Gay Press Journalism.

Kepner had proofed galleys of his book and mentions of its imminent publication were seen in several publications, including GayToday. (See GayToday Archives, People, September 29, 1997 and also Viewpoints, April 28, 1997.) Seeing his early work readied again for publication gave satisfaction to Kepner, according to his own admission.

In the August 1997 issue of Song and Dance, Kepner's personal newsletter sent intermittently to his friends, the respected pioneer listed recent accomplishments and future projects. After proofreading his new book, he said, "Now I'm deep into writing my memoirs for the years 1942, when I moved from Galvaston to San Francisco and came out, to December 1960 when I left ONE Incorporated after seven years.

"I've written some for the ONE Institute/IGLA Bulletin, mailed recently, and for a webpage called Badpuppy; helped a bit to box Homosexual Information Center materials after long-time friend and ideological sparring partner Don Slater died; consulted with several researchers; tried to keep up with reading and clipping and odd jobs—and moved my belongings to much smaller quarters."

Kepner also writes: "I haven't kept up with several books I intend to review: Jack Nichols' The Gay Agenda, Prometheus Books, a slashing critique of the religious right, William Percy's Pederasty and Pedophilia in Ancient Greece, University of Illinois Press, refuting several recent theorists on the subject; Jervis Anderson's excellent biography of Bayard Rustin: Troubles I've Seen, Harper-Collins; Out of the Blue: Russia's Hidden Gay Literature, an anthology edited by Kelvin Moss, Gay Sunshine Press; and David Mixner's Stranger Among Friends, Bantam."

Wicker called Kepner "an unappreciated great writer who devoted his life to collecting and maintaining the history of our people."

The pioneering journalist/archivist, continued Wicker, "was the most impressive self-educated school dropout I ever knew."

John O'Brien, IGLA's executive director, reported that Kepner had phoned him at approximately 4:a.m. on the 14th of November, complaining of intestinal problems. O'Brien had rushed an ambulance to the dying man's residence and he was taken thereafter to Midway Hospital in Los Angeles. Initially, it was expected, Kepner would soon recuperate. Instead, he died at 11 a.m.