October 01, 2025 | Michail Takach

Mike Fitzpatrick: five decades of shaping Wisconsin's future

Since the 1980s, Mike's relentless activism has connected us on the dancefloor, in the media, and in the streets.

Mike Fitzpatrick

"When the sun is shining, it’s a good day to be an activist. But it's when things get ugly that we need activists most.”

From the dancefloors of Stevens Point, to the newsrooms of the state’s gay press, to the front lines of the AIDS crisis, to the board rooms of Wisconsin non-profits, Mike Fitzpatrick’s journey has been a lesson in courage. A self-described "shake and bake" activist—one who sees a need, starts the work, and then steps aside to let others lead—Mike has been one of Wisconsin’s longest-serving and most widely-read gay journalists since the mid-1980s.

Mike was born Francis Michael Fitzpatrick on November 18, 1946. He was named after his father and grandfather, and unbelievably, all three lived in the same household.

“My grandfather got to be Pappy, my father (who was a very strong-willed man) was Frank, and I got to be Mike,” he said.

“My mother and father lived in a fifth-floor walk-up apartment in the Bronx, but I was born in Hackensack, New Jersey. She always said that I was born in the shadow of Manhattan, because her hospital room at St. Elizabeth Hospital had a window overlooking the city.”

His brother, born 11 months later, was his “Irish twin.” While his parents wanted a platoon of children, they only ended up with two.

“Back then, they were pitied, oh, the poor Fitzpatricks, they only have two kids,” said Mike. “My mother’s sisters had up to seven kids each. By the 1970s, we were the forward-thinking Fitzpatricks, because of the whole population bomb theory.”

Mike remembers growing up surrounded by cousins, being the first family with a TV in his neighborhood and getting the nightly news from Walter Cronkite.

He also remembers a pre-Vatican II world where everything was seen as a mortal sin. He first realized, at the age of eight or nine, that he was "not the same as other kids.”

Mike, in kindergarten

Mike with his father and brother

Mike as an altar boy

DJ Mike in 1981

“I had terrible crushes on boys,” he said. “I had a bully after me, and all I really wanted was to fit in."

"And I knew what the word gay meant. I’d done the scouting mission, sneaking into the library to look up gay topics, and hoping nobody knew what book you were looking at."

While suppressing his feelings and striving to be a "good Catholic boy,” Mike feared he was destined for hell. His father was active in the Holy Name Society and the Knights of Columbus, and his mother was an active member of the congregation.

He believed it was his duty to grow up, become a good citizen, and give them grandchildren.

“If you were a good Catholic, heaven and all those wonderful things were within reach.”

During Mike’s childhood, gay men were called by hateful names: sissies, fairies, nellies.

“It was always derision,” said Mike. “It was always emasculating. It was pointing out how feminine they were. There was no notion of a butch gay man whatsoever. Openly gay people like Charles Nelson Reilly and Rip Taylor weren’t exactly role models. In fact, there were no gay heroes. And all that did was push people my age further back in the closet.”

Mike remembers gender non-conforming people being treated even worse.

“Christine Jorgensen is a great example of someone who was not treated well by the press,” said Mike. “She was treated like a sideshow oddity.”

The family relocated twice – first to Minnesota, and then Indiana -- before he graduated from parochial school. He attended St. Mary’s College in Winona, Minnesota. His writing experience began there, with his first paid piece appearing in the Winona Daily News in 1965. He got involved with radio and student government.

In 1967, the Student Senate hosted a two-conference on current affairs, including the Vietnam war, civil rights, and the youth movement. As one of the only students with a car, Mike was responsible for picking up speakers from the Rochester, Minnesota airport, including Tom Hayden of the Chicago 7.

“I became an activist for all these reasons that had nothing to do with being gay,” said Mike. “It had more to do with all the terrible things that were going on. I wanted to do the right thing for people. I wanted us out of Vietnam. The gay agenda came later.”

"But I was still very much a traditional Irish Catholic, spending a lot of time in confession, and really fighting those inside thoughts,” said Mike. “For years, I tried to ‘straighten’ myself out.”

In 1969, Mike was living in an apartment complex in Stevens Point, and one of his neighbors was openly gay. They became friends, started hanging out with a mixed circle of people, and slowly but surely things became flirtatious.

“There were all these hints that he wanted to get physical,” said Mike. “And during a trip to Ohio, when we were staying in an actual pastor’s bed, he made a move on me. It did not go well at all. That was the closest he ever got to my virginity. We never did end up sleeping together, but there was a lot of heavy breathing.”

Mike moved to Wisconsin in 1968. He spent many years in Stevens Point, where he taught at Pacelli-Maria High School, a co-ed college prep school, until 1973. He taught a film study class— teaching students how to make 8MM films in an analog world —that had a profound impact on one of his students.

Peggy Rajski, a 1971 graduate and later Academy Award winner, credited Mike’s class for getting her started in film. In 1998, she co-founded The Trevor Project, a 24/7 crisis hotline and suicide prevention resource for LGBTQ youth, which now supports over a half million clients annually.

As Mike reflected on this legacy, he said, "When you’re a teacher, you’re always throwing pebbles in the pond, and you never know where the ripples are going to go.”

While in Stevens Point, Mike was deep in the closet.

“I was a serial monogamist,” said Mike. “I had this long, long line of girlfriends back in the day.”

Known for his love of music—he was "always the kid with all the records who played DJ at the dances"—he decided in 1979 to buy into a downtown record store. He and his business partner bought the Flame Nightclub in 1981, where they hosted the hugely popular “New Music Night.” This was a brilliant business model: play the hottest new songs at the club on Monday night and sell them at the store on Tuesday morning. The Monday Night Dance Club drew a very, very gay crowd, even though Mike himself was still "the straight guy with the Polish girlfriend" and "king of the polka scene” on local radio.

The Flame, long known as a “townie” bar throughout its long and complicated lifespan, earned newfound respect from the next generation at New Music Night. At its peak between 1983 and 1986, the Monday Night Dance Club attracted up to 100 people every week. Today, there is still an active Facebook group celebrating the Flame, and its organizers still host Flame reunion events in Stevens Point.

The HIV/AIDS crisis was a definite turning point in Mike's life.

As early as 1981-1982, he and his friends were hearing rumors about AIDS. Soon, Mike watched the myths become facts before his very eyes, when a barback at The Flame became the first person he knew with AIDS.

“Our barback Ronnie returned from a Florida vacation with a cold he couldn't shake,” said Mike. “I urged him to get tested, knowing there was this gay pneumonia out there. Two weeks later, he said he had never felt better. This was the tragedy and irony of early HIV/AIDS: people would get sick, their immune system would kick into overdrive, they’d feel better for a short time, and then it just collapsed.”

On Easter Sunday 1984, Ronnie disclosed that he’d been diagnosed with ARC (AIDS-Related Complex.)

“This was a very different time,” said Mike. “Testing took two weeks or longer to get results. There were no medications. There were no support groups. Most doctors and caregivers didn’t want to treat people with AIDS, or even suspected of maybe having AIDS. You wouldn’t believe what some people did just to stay alive as long as they could."

"Everyone was terrified. People stayed in the closet. People stopped going out. All anyone knew about the gay community, all they associated with gay men, was that everyone was dying of AIDS."

Mike and Tommy, 1988

Mike and friends, 1988

Since north central Wisconsin was badly underserved, Mike got involved in launching a support group.

"I used to say, 'I didn't choose my causes, my causes chose me," he said.

Mike helped co-found the Central Wisconsin AIDS Support Group (CWASG) and was a charter board member of the Central Wisconsin AIDS Network (CWAN), the forerunners of what is now the Wausau office of Vivent Health. This work, which his mother referred to as his "ministry," involved testing, prevention, education, and outreach in an era of fear and ignorance.

He met his first boyfriend, Thom Ertl, at the very first HIV AIDS Conference in 1988, held in Green Lake, Wisconsin. The two were matched as roommates by the Department of Health, and Thom joked that “Francis Fitzpatrick” sounded like the name of a “90-year-old queen.”

“He came up to me and said ‘can you handle it?’ and I said, ‘handle what?’ and he said ‘can you handle me?’

Though their relationship lasted only a year and a half, due to the distance between Mike’s businesses in Stevens Point and Thom’s work in Milwaukee, the two remain friends to this day. Mike, who still considers himself "the marrying kind," fought hard for marriage equality but never actually married himself.

Mike officially came out in 1988 -- while already in his 40s.

“When people come out, they really come in,” said Mike. “You start way out, with the people who are most accepting, and slowly work your way into the people you are the most afraid to tell.”

His parents were the last to know.

“Tommy gave me a sweater for Christmas,” said Mike, “and over dinner at my parents’ house, my mother asked where I got it. I told her that my boyfriend Tom knitted it for me."

"You could have heard a pin drop for four hours after that statement. They were stunned into silence."

"I don’t think my father ever really accepted it, and there were a few years where we didn’t talk because of it, but I still knew he loved me. My mother eventually came around, thankfully, but it did take some time.”

The profound human toll of the AIDS crisis led to Mike performing an unexpected service. He had been at over 40 deathbeds, comforting men whose own families had abandoned them and holding their hands at the moment of their passing. When his own father was in his final hours, his mother urged Mike to get to the hospital. Unlike his brother, a Catholic priest, Mike had hands-on experience with end-of-life care.

“It was likely much more than 40,” said Mike, “but I purposefully stopped counting years ago because otherwise it would drive me crazy.”

This work earned him the respect and gratitude of his family, who saw his AIDS work as his own form of spiritual service.

After his business partner passed away, Mike found himself working with an uncooperative widow, who often expressed homophobic comments. He stepped aside to pursue a nursing degree, while she proceeded to mismanage the businesses into oblivion.

Eventually, the record store and The Flame closed, and Mike moved to Green Bay.

Mike's transition into journalism was a natural extension of his activism. He started by writing press releases and public notices about CWASG and the CENTER Project. Bill Attewell, who he was writing to, asked him to start a column at InStep, and so began the column "Reality Check," which ran for years.

He became an important voice in the state’s LGBTQ community, having written for all three of Wisconsin’s gay press publications: Wisconsin Light, InStep, and QUEST, as well as OUT! in Madison. He wrote for InStep in the 80s, was a columnist for Wisconsin Light in the 90s, and later returned to InStep with his "Reality Check" column.

Throughout his career, Mike has covered key stories that illuminated the political and social landscape, including an exposé on Supreme Court candidate Sharon Rose, GOP sex scandals, and shedding light on Julaine Appling and Diane Westphal. He particularly enjoyed writing about Scott Evertz in his role as AIDS Czar, which was Evertz’s first interview anywhere with the gay press.

From 2003, he served as news editor and webmaster for QUEST Magazine.

QUEST, published by Mark Mariucci, took over the LGBTQ media market after InStep went under and was for years the only print magazine in Wisconsin. It was independently owned, locally printed, and widely distributed from Duluth/Superior to Kenosha.

However, the magazine struggled for legitimacy, and was often ignored for interviews, as people in Milwaukee and Madison dismissed QUEST as a "bar rag."

Mike sees this as a recurring regional bias that often clouds Wisconsin activism, where stakeholders feel their unique values and priorities aren’t shared by the rest of the state.

“There’s always this question of who should lead the gay community?” said Mike.

"You'll hear people say, 'well, it shouldn’t be Madison, because it’s not the largest population. It shouldn’t be Milwaukee, because it’s not the political center. It shouldn’t be Green Bay, because it’s not diverse enough.'"

"When we let individual self-interest lead, we won't get anywhere collectively."

Mike eventually stepped down from QUEST in 2010 to refocus on HIV/AIDS care. Today, he is especially concerned about media literacy.

“I get my news from NPR and PBS Wisconsin,” said Mike.

Mike hard at work

Mike and Dr. Brian Bachhuber

Mike Fitzpatrick

Mike Fitzpatrick

"I started listening to NPR in the 1980s, and I'm a sustaining member of NPR and PBS today. I’ve completely stopped watching network TV, including cable news left or right, because I just can’t handle it. Journalism is not what it used to be."

In addition to his journalism, Mike was a foundational figure in several state organizations. In the 1990s, he helped co-found the statewide civil rights organization Action Wisconsin, which later became Fair Wisconsin during the marriage amendment crisis. He is still on the organization's C4 board as secretary and serves as its historian. Fair Wisconsin began as a "kitchen table organization" that Mike helped establish with Dan Ross and Charlie Squires in Madison.

"I still have Tammy Baldwin's number in my phone, even though I haven't called her in years."

In more recent years, he helped develop Rainbow over Wisconsin as one of the state’s LGBTQ foundations. Rainbow was a driving force in the creation of NEW Pride Alive and the LGBT History Project (now part of the University of Wisconsin Archives.)

Mike remains concerned about the state of LGBTQ funding, noting that after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality, "all kinds of money just disappeared". He is a realist, constantly reminding people that rights are not guaranteed. He warns that "marriage equality is next on the docket" after the overturning of abortion rights, and he expresses frustration that "all the sunshine activists have moved on, as if the battle was forever won".

After a 2021 health crisis, Mike experienced some mobility issues, but he admits they haven’t really slowed him down. He still serves the Fair Wisconsin c4 Board of Directors, and continues to support numerous community causes and organizations.

Now retired, Mike has enduring advice for the next generation.

Find your people. "Find those people in your life. Find out who really supports you. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Challenge yourself to find those people".

Allow yourself to live for today. "Don’t allow the insanity of the news cycle control your mood. What you’re hearing on the news is not always even true. Take a deep breath and exhale. Life will go on.”

For Mike Fitzpatrick, a man who overcame social and cultural pressures to live his truth, fought hard for a community abandoned by their loved ones, and navigated the "Wild West" days of the early internet as a leading journalist, the heart of activism is not about being a hero, but about doing the right thing for other people.

Even in retirement, Mike is still committed to that forward motion, still casting those pebbles into the water, making sure the ripples of progress never stop.

Photo by Mark Mariucci