Bambi L’Amour was a founder of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, frequent participant in demonstrations, and a resident of STAR House. While cleaning out Hotel Wicker for the archives, we found a record of her existence that I’ve never seen elsewhere. (Please message me if you’ve found it somewhere...) According to blog “A Gender Variance of Who’s Who” (an amazing resource), Bambi was black, always passed as female, and was given her name because of her large eyes. She panhandled to survive, sometimes standing in traffic and banging on windows for change. At age 15, she met Sylvia Rivera in the gay section of Rikers Island prison in 1966. They threw some shade and became friends. She may have lived to be 41. When I cleaned out Marsha’s old bedroom in Hoboken at Randy’s apartment, we discovered an article she saved about Bambi, “To Honor Bambi: The Last Request.” (I don’t know what publication it’s from, but if you know please message me. As far as I’ve been able to find, this article was otherwise lost.) According to this obituary, when Bambi died sometime in the early 1980s her body was claimed by Ed Murphy, a Village community organizer and former bouncer/mob affiliate who worked at the Stonewall. Bambi rescued Ed from arrest during the Stonewall riots by “picking up a piece of dog shit and rubbing it in the cop’s face.” Ed used funds from the Christopher Street Festival Committee to pay for her cremation. Her last request was to be scattered on Christopher Street. Ed, Marsha, Eve from Gay Liberation Allows Drag, and other friends met in the Village on June 28 at 3pm (year unclear) to scatter her ashes down the gay thoroughfare to the piers, as pictured. “’She knew what it was like to be on the street,’ said one of her friends, ‘and was always real generous to somebody who needed help.’” 🎥 Marsha P. Johnson interviewed at the ONE Archives by Jim Kepner, January 9, 1988. 🗞️ Wicker/Johson Papers at the LGBT Community Center National History Archive. 📸 Marsha (and partially Sylvia on right) on Gay Pride Day carrying a sign for Bambi, June 24, 1973. Photo by Fred McDarrah 📸 Same day, photo by Leonard Fink, courtesy LGBT Center Archive. #HotelWicker #MarshaPJohnson #BambiL’Amour #StreetTransvestiteActionRevolutionaries #STARHouse - @hotelwicker