Lori Cannon, tireless 'AIDS angel,' dead at 74: 'She took care of the whole universe'

Understand the terror of the times. To be a gay man in the mid-1980s: young, just figuring yourself out, suddenly sick with HIV, dying from a dread disease, AIDS — a death sentence that tortures you first with nausea, exhaustion, lesions, emaciation, diarrhea, confusion, blindness.

Your family flees, revolted at your orientation and what many view as God's just punishment. Nurses are afraid to touch you. Then into your room strides Lori Cannon, a big woman with flame-red hair and long red fingernails, here to bring you dinner, cook it, then wipe up your vomit afterward. She might be the only human contact you have that day.

"During the early dark days of HIV, when there were no resources for people — it was the Reagan years — the government was turning its back on people," remembered retired majority leader of the Illinois House, Greg Harris. "Lori was one of the people who stepped up and provided every kind of care you could imagine, mostly love, support and kindness. Over the last 40 years, she has done that every day."

Cannon, "Chicago's AIDS Angel," co-founded Open Hand/Chicago in 1988, shepherding it through a variety of incarnations, all devoted to feeding those with HIV. She was recently diagnosed with terminal pancreatic and lung cancer and died at home Sunday of heart failure at 74.

"Lori Cannon was a true ally in Illinois from her organizing days to founding Open Hand/Chicago," Gov. JB Pritzker said in a statement. "She led the way with chutzpah and humor."

Cannon helped create the Names Project, bringing the massive AIDS Memorial Quilt to Chicago in 1988, 1990 and 1994. She co-founded ACT UP/Chicago, the guerrilla protest group demanding the government not ignore AIDS simply because it was killing gay men.

"People know her over generations," said Tracy Baim, co-founder of Windy City Times. "She really helped on a visceral basis. She was there in the trenches, the hospital rooms, taking care of people's animals, feeding people's souls and bellies for decades. The impact Lori had on individuals and on the movement is almost unmatched. Lori did it all."

She was born in West Rogers Park in 1951. Her father, Lee Cannon, was involved with cartoon syndication and later became a champion of Native American rights. Her mother, Bluma, was a homemaker. She had an older brother, Jules, and a younger brother everyone called J.H., who was a "blue baby" — born with a defective heart, leading to lifelong disability.

Tragedy at an early age

"At an early age I experienced tragedy," Cannon told the Chicago Gay History project. "Prior to J.H. passing away in 1970, my big brother Jules was injured in a horrific motorcycle accident — a city bus went through a stop sign and dragged him for several blocks."

Caring for her brothers set the tone for her life.

"It might have prepared me for something," she said. "From what I remember of the 1960s, a lot of it was spent caregiving."

She went to Columbia College and studied filmmaking, then drove a private bus for Winkle Transportation.

"I met Lori when I was working at Limelight in 1985," said Richard Knight Jr., the club's PR director. "She was feisty, funny, always the big red hair. She was known as the 'Bus Driver to the Stars.' She would go to McCormick Place — big Broadway shows, 'Sweeney Todd,' 'Cats.' She would go get the chorus kids, drive them to and from their hotel. Of course they always came to Limelight."

The AIDS crisis was deepening, and Cannon's experience with her family led her to do the same with her community. She joined AIDS hospice Chicago House in 1985, then founded OpenHand with Harris and others.

"We had one thing in common," Cannon told the Sun-Times in 2019. "Everyone we knew was either dead, dying or struggling to help someone who was heading there. We were tired. We were scared. We were angry. And we needed to do something other than sew AIDS quilt panels.”

Cannon became friends with Danny Sotomayor, the dynamic face of ACT UP/Chicago. Cannon was a devoted friend, with a particular fondness for writers — "Marvin's Room" playwright Scott McPherson; columnist Jon-Henri Damski, Sun-Times and WFMT cultural critic Andrew Patner.

"She was a champion of so many who were taken too soon," Knight said. "She never really forgot anybody."

In 2010, she co-founded the Legacy Project with Victor Salvo and biographer Owen Keehnen, placing bronze plaques honoring LGBTQ contributions to culture on Lake View streets.

"Our mutual passion for all things past and the lost legacies of significant LGBTQ people became the inspiration," said Salvo, a longtime activist. "Lori used her influence to breathe life into this dream."

In 2011, OpenHand was renamed Vital Bridges and came under the umbrella of Heartland Alliance Health. Its most recent incarnation was informally called GroceryLand, which she kept alive while its parent organization went through financial collapse.

Lori ‘heard it first and heard it best’

"She just has this knack for getting on the phone and getting people to donate stuff," Knight said.

It wasn't all work. Cannon was the center of an enormous wheel of relationships. Information flowed through her.

"Lori just knew everything," Baim said. "If I ever heard a rumor, she heard it first and heard it best."

Despite all her friends, she could be a solitary figure; she lived at home all her life with her mother and older brother.

"She sacrificed herself," said longtime friend Sharyl Holtzman. "She took care of the whole universe. That became front and center, what mattered, what defined every single day."

That said, she could also be dismissive of the inept, the inefficient, or those who just rubbed her the wrong way.

"You definitely didn't want to be on the wrong side of her wrath," Holtzman said.

Mostly though, it was her inspiring example that got people in line.

"I think Lori Cannon saw fighting oppression and service to people in need as the same mission," said retired Cook County Circuit Judge Jim Snyder. "That gave her a moral clarity that everybody she met responded to. It made her someone it's impossible to say no to."

Snyder finds Cannon's life particularly relevant in today's political climate.

"There are people who would divide us, trans people from gay people, gay from straight, Black from white," he said. "We didn't fall for it in the '80s and '90s, and we're not going to fall for it now. It's not a new game; it's an old game."

Which raises a question.

"We all feel, it's really hard to imagine a world without her in it. It's inconceivable," Holtzman said. "Who's going to do what she did?"

The answer? Everybody.

"We have to keep going," Snyder said. "She would insist on that. She would insist we act up. We stand up. That we have open hands to people in need."

"You all have to do the right thing: The healthy are supposed to take care of the sick," Cannon said. "I could see people I knew being rushed to the hospital with pneumonia. Trying to keep your sanity, you may not be able to save someone. But you can walk their dog. You can wash their linens. You can make a meal."