Joe Tom was called by his first and middle names from birth. He was a dedicated LGBTQ and human rights activist. He was an extraordinary man whose aim in life was to do good and he succeeded.

Joe Tom’s parents, Lady Hampton and Tom Lee Easley, imbued him both with idealism and confidence. His early years were spent in Truby, Texas, which was a tiny farming community where he began his education in a one-room schoolhouse. When he was 10, the family moved to the City of Eagle Pass on the Mexican border, where his parents promptly bought him a Harley-Davidson motorcycle (this was Texas, after all) to get to school, which he rode safely through high school. As a teenager, he earned money deejaying on a local radio station, playing current 1950’s hits, as well as, 1940’s oldies. While attending college, his pleasing voice and adult appearance got him a job as a sports announcer at a Houston television station.

A graduate of Texas A&M University, Joe Tom taught English and served as Assistant School Superintendent in Eagle Pass until the Vietnam War escalated and he was drafted. He joined Naval Intelligence, serving in Adak, Alaska, not far from the Russian border. After a year, a former friend told the military that Joe Tom was gay. His commander said he was required to dismiss Joe Tom under regulations that barred homosexuals from the military. Since Joe Tom had won several awards on base, the commander promised he would receive an honorable discharge and veteran benefits because of his exemplary service. Joe Tom knew he was extremely fortunate because thousands of other LGBTQ service members received only dishonorable discharges, denying them veteran benefits and hurting their future careers. Years later, Joe Tom helped lead the movement that in 2010 won repeal of the homophobic “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Pentagon policy, finally allowing gay men and lesbians (and later, transgender individuals) to serve their country openly.

Upon leaving the Navy, Joe Tom used his G.I. Bill benefits to pay for the University of Texas Law School, where he became an anti-Vietnam War activist and managing editor of the law review. During summers, he joined the first group of consumer activist Ralph Nader’s “Nader Raiders,” a group of public interest law students and lawyers investigating government and corporate malfeasance.

Following law school graduation, he clerked for a federal judge, then took a tenured professorship at the University of Georgia Law School. After two years, he received an offer he felt he couldn’t refuse; the Southern Regional Council, a prominent civil rights organization, asked him to direct a project monitoring whether the federal government was discriminating against African-American communities in the dispursal of federal funds. When that project concluded, Joe Tom decided to pursue a long-held dream of studying French while living in Europe, having saved enough money for at least two years overseas. Not long after arriving in Europe, he was asked by the continent’s largest consumer organization to take a job investigating price-fixing by pharmaceutical companies, which he did for two years.

Joe Tom, at one point, undertook a dangerous mission at the request of a fellow student in his French class in Paris. Having grown up in Czechoslovakia, his classmate had managed to escape the Communist-ruled country, but several older members of her family had been unable to leave Prague. They wanted to deliver a trove of family pictures to relatives in Israel, but Czech government mail inspectors would have destroyed the photos and the senders would likely have been punished. Hearing that, Joe Tom was planning a trip to Prague, his classmate asked whether he would try to smuggle out those pictures.

Despite the danger, Joe Tom agreed to a cloak-and-dagger expedition that could have resulted in severe punishment for him. He met the family in Prague, was handed their treasured photos and managed to take them out of the country with him on the train by hiding them at the bottom of a bag of his dirty clothes. His classmate was overjoyed when he brought her the photos.

On returning to the U.S. from Europe in 1977, Joe Tom was hired by American University Law School in Washington D.C. as a professor. He was soon appointed to Assistant Dean and he subsequently transferred to Antioch Law School, also in Washington D.C. Over the years, he was asked to teach adjunct courses at the University of Virginia, Cardozo Law School and at Yale Medical School, where he taught health law after earning a Master’s in Public Health from Yale.

In 1978, Joe Tom had made the life-changing decision to come out as gay. Almost immediately, he became active in the fight against discrimination and for LGBTQ equality. In Washington D.C., the mayor appointed him to the police civilian review board, and he was elected president of the city’s influential LGBTQ Democratic political club.

Later, after moving to New York, he served as a pioneering co-chair of Lambda Legal, helping to transform that organization into an LGBTQ legal powerhouse. That was followed by stints as president of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation and co-chair of the Servicemembers’ Legal Defense Network, which led the fight for equal treatment in the military. He did wills for people with AIDS and appeared on television as an LGBTQ advocate. Joe Tom's volunteer work was made possible by his decision to end full time law school teaching and instead lecture part time with BARBRI, the nation’s largest prep course for the bar exam.

Meanwhile, in 1983, Joe Tom’s life had again changed dramatically. A mutual friend introduced him to Peter Freiberg, a journalist. Both were 42 and had come out, coincidentally, at the same time. On their very first date, each man decided he had met his soulmate, and later that year Joe Tom moved from Washington D.C. into Peter’s Manhattan apartment. In 2003, after being together for 20 years, the couple was finally able to legally marry when Ontario, Canada approved same-sex marriage. Their wedding in Toronto City Hall was one of the first same-sex marriages to be written up by the New York Times. However, it was not until a dozen years later, when the. U.S. Supreme Court ruled that LGBTQ couples had a constitutional right to marry, that their marriage was recognized throughout the U.S. One month before Joe Tom's death, the couple celebrated the 39th anniversary of their meeting.

Joe Tom drew national attention in 2005 when he surmounted numerous bureaucratic obstacles. With the help from American soldiers in Iraq, he brought an Iraqi boy injured by a U.S. bomb to our country for medical treatment. This was a demonstration of his lifelong sympathy for individuals and groups who were harmed by actions and events beyond their control. Throughout his life, he maintained that good-hearted people working together could bring about change that would benefit society as a whole.

Even in his last two years, Joe Tom was wheelchair-bound due to abnormally low blood pressure, yet he retained his optimism, sense of humor, storytelling abilities, love of books and country music. He held capacity to enjoy life in South Beach, where he and Peter spent most of the year, and at their Hudson Valley summer home. He continued his advocacy of historic preservation by serving on the Board of Directors of the Miami Design Preservation League. When he died in 2022, the impact of his life and works was seen both in his mourning family and friends and in the extensive obituaries published by the Washington Post, Miami Herald and New York Times.