December 01, 2025 | Michail Takach

Unforgettable: Jason Doemel

Jason defied childhood harassment, a violent hate crime, and HIV/AIDS to live a creative, resilient, and authentic life.

Jason Doemel

"He wasn’t asking for approval, he wasn’t asking for acceptance, and he wasn't trying to fit in. And that pissed people off."

Jason was born January 27, 1973, in Oshkosh to Suzanne and Dale Doemel (1943-2021.)

“Dale worked at Derksen’s Tobacco in Oshkosh. He was hoping Jason would be born on his birthday, but he wasn’t born until the 27^th. This was our first indication that Jason was on his own schedule. Dale drew the photo for the birth announcement while we were at the hospital. People laughed because the baby boy had a cigar in his mouth.”

Jason had open heart surgery when he was only five years old, and he was always proud of his scars.

He had two younger brothers, Jeremy and Jonathan.

“Having a brother like Jason was a real experience for them,” said Suzanne.

He was deeply connected to his inner child. He always radiated playfulness, joyful wonder and a deep curiosity about his world. He just loved everything: nature, animals, flowers, and colors. Purple irises were his favorite flower. He kept tropical fish in saltwater tanks and a pet tarantula that liked to escape its cage.

“That sure made it hard to sleep at night,” said Jeremy.

“He carried an intense passion for life,” said Suzanne. “He wanted to experience everything. He was an actor from a very young age. He was passionate about the performing arts. He loved to travel. We traveled a lot as a family, so I think he got that travel bug from us.”

Jason grew up with wraparound family support: his parents, his brothers, his aunts and uncles, and especially his cousins. When he was 10, he and his cousin Shawnie decided they were going to be blood brother / blood sister.

Sadly, Jason was not always supported by the teachers who were responsible for his safety and well-being. In third grade, he was enrolled in St. Mary’s, a local Catholic school. He was openly ridiculed by the more athletic boys in his class.

One day, they took a Twinkie out of his lunchbox and passed it around the room, saying “Jason, Ew!” The teacher, Ms. McCluskey, joined the chorus of harassment. In front of the entire class, she picked up the Twinkie, threw it in a trash can, and said “Jason, Ew!”

When Jason enrolled in a confirmation class, the priest called Suzanne and said Jason’s presence might make the other kids uncomfortable. He recommended they remove Jason from the class.

Jason came out when he was 16. His parents sought a parental support group, but there was nothing anywhere near Oshkosh at the time. They traveled to Milwaukee once a month for a group operated by a Lutheran minister.

“It was very enlightening for us,” said Suzanne. “We spoke not only with other parents, but doctors, faith leaders, psychologists, therapists, and community leaders. We learned how little we knew.”

Jason was fortunate to have a circle of supportive friends in Oshkosh, including Danielle, Sarah, Tess, and Eric Daly.

“We met for the first time through Boy Scouts,” said Eric. “Suzanne was a scout leader at some point."

"We became even closer in high school. We experimented with all the usual teenage things together. I remember spending endless hours at his parents’ house, listening to Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil. We’d go out dancing to S’Express and Baby Ford.”

Shortly after coming out, Jason was gay bashed on Main Street in downtown Oshkosh. While walking with a friend, Jason was ambushed by six boys who jumped out a truck and violently attacked him. Although they beat him up very badly, the police were unwilling to do anything to help the Doemels.

“The police officer said there was nothing they could do, because the boys were minors,” said Suzanne. “The fact is, one of the boys was the son of a local judge.”

“And then, they asked me point blank: "Is there anything we can do to relocate your son?”

The message was clear: the Oshkosh police either couldn’t or wouldn’t protect 16-year-old Jason, and he was at continued risk of harm. As parents, Suzanne and Dale were forced to make some very difficult choices.

“I took Jason to the Milwaukee High School of the Arts for an audition,” said Suzanne. “He auditioned for three departments -- literary arts, vocal arts, and visual arts – and he qualified for all three. The first opening was visual arts, so he took it.”

Jason agreed that living in Milwaukee would be safer and more rewarding than living in Oshkosh. At 16 years old, he moved in with an adult guardian in Milwaukee.

“One of the presenters in the support group offered to take Jason in,” said Suzanne. “They agreed to sponsor him throughout high school.”

After spending time with his sponsor on Milwaukee’s North Side, Jason moved to the Norman Flats (626 W. Wisconsin Ave.,) an 1888 apartment building known as a headquarters of creative, artistic, and eccentric counterculture.

“In summer 1990, I was left behind by a friend at Club Marilyn, and I walked over to Jason’s to stay overnight,” said Eric. “I remember visiting him for New Year’s Eve and staying out until 6 a.m. Later, he came to visit me in Minneapolis.”

Milwaukee wasn’t always kind to Jason. He was mugged by skinheads. He faced continued scrutiny from classmates. And his apartment – along with all his possessions, his artwork, and even his cat – was destroyed in a five-alarm fire on January 12, 1991.

“He got out of the Norman Building wearing only a robe in the middle of winter,” said Suzanne. “Four people died in that fire. He very easily could have been one of them.”

Jason went over to Dunkin’ Donuts on 7^th and Wisconsin for shelter. However, they asked him buy something or leave. He was given snow pants and a coat by some of the unhoused people he knew from the neighborhood.

“He paid it forward, and it always came back to him.”

“He never suffered the poor me syndrome,” said Jeremy. “He never had a victim mentality. He was never pissed at the world. His only frustration, really, was get out of my way and let me live.”

While Jason didn’t graduate from Milwaukee Public Schools, he took correspondence courses through the International High School of the Americas to earn his diploma. Suzanne attempted to convince her school district – where she’d taught for decades – to give him a diploma.

“They wouldn’t do it,” said Suzanne. “This was my workplace, my school district, where I’d spent my career. And they still wouldn’t do it. Jason said to let it go. He said, ‘they don’t have any claim to my fame.’ He got over it faster than I did. But I don’t think I ever really got over that.”

Jason had open heart surgery as a child, and was very proud of his scar.

“I think Jason learned that people pleasing only led to suffering, so he carried himself in an authentic, honest and vulnerable way. Most people are afraid to be that bold.”

“I know that really agitated people: the fact he wasn’t asking for acceptance, he wasn’t asking to fit in, he wasn’t going to be helpless. And he exuded it to the point where he pissed people off. They’d try to oppress him, shut him down, scare him off. And he just wouldn’t back down.”

After high school, Jason moved frequently around the country, from Los Angeles to Oregon to Madison to New Orleans, where the family visited him.

“When he was living in New Orleans, he wrote a song for me – to the tune of ‘On Broadway’ – as a Mother’s Day gift,” said Suzanne. “I still cherish it today.”

Sue Dietz at the Milwaukee AIDS Project

Jason discovered he was HIV positive in fall 1992. He told his parents shortly after Christmas as not to ruin their holiday. Magic Johnson had just announced his HIV status two weeks prior, and living with HIV was very much in the national consciousness.

New drugs were on the horizon, but the existing cocktail – which was the only way to sustain life at the time – proved to be very, very hard on Jason’s health.

“When he came home, I had to find a doctor who would accept AIDS patients,” said Suzanne. “Let me repeat that, so I’m clear, because some doctors refused to see people with AIDS.”

The family arrived at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Appleton, where they were instructed to take a special elevator so that no one else would be exposed to AIDS. While treating Jason in the emergency room, hospital staff wore face masks and gloves just to take his blood pressure.

“I ended up calling the hospital ombudsman and demanding that the staff be trained on basic human sensitivity,” said Suzanne.

Suzanne visited five doctors before finally finding one who would approve hospice care. She didn’t know him, and he didn’t know her, but he agreed to order hospice care for Jason sight unseen.

“If you were gay, and you had HIV, you were the villain in the story,” said Jeremy. “Even the health care system was judgmental and biased at the time.”

“On his deathbed, Jason said he had no animosity towards anyone in his life,” said Suzanne.

“He even asked that we never seek any consequences for the guys who beat him up in Oshkosh. Forgiveness, kindness, and mercy were still strong with him even at that moment. He never had any resentment towards the people that did terrible things to him.”

“He even called Ms. McCluskey, that third grade teacher, and told her she was wrong to treat him that way. He told her that he’d lived a great life, and that he forgave her.”

Eric Daly remembers visiting Jason for the last time.

“It was December, and he wanted to see snow one last time,” said Eric. “He couldn’t walk anymore. He was bedridden. I knew I would probably never see him again. But he got to see snow one last time, and I’m happy that he did.”

Sadly, Jason died on December 11, 1994.

“He was truly a fighter, a young man who possessed incredible strength,” reported InStep Magazine. “Jason was a colorful person filled with many ideas. He was a very talented and creative young man, often misunderstood. He had a special talent for turning ugly weeds into beautiful gardens."

Lydia, one of Jason’s cousins, kept a journal about what he was experiencing, day-to-day, and gifted it to Suzanne after he passed.

“He and I watched 'It's A Wonderful Life’” said Suzanne. “He had two little bells, which were taken from an old phone, that rang when you twirled them. His great-grandmother worked at the telephone company, so this was especially meaningful for him. And then, for his funeral, ECHO brought AIDS ribbons with jingle bells on them.”

“So, in the end, Jason got his wings. Years later, my mother passed away in Arkansas, and my father rang Jason’s bells, so she got her wings, too.”

“It was a very sad thing to lose him,” said Eric. “I never expected that I would be a pallbearer at my childhood best friend’s funeral. I took the Greyhound from Minneapolis to Oshkosh to carry his coffin.”

Jason’s local obituary was honest. He was not the first person from Oshkosh to die from AIDS, but his was the first obituary to admit AIDS as a cause of death.

“I got an interview request from a local radio station,” said Suzanne, “and unbeknownst to me, the interviewer was homophobic. He asked me why I didn’t teach him not to be gay. He asked how he got AIDS. He asked why I put in the paper that he died of AIDS. Didn’t he really die of carcinoma?”

“All of this, on the morning of my son’s funeral.”

“I said, what does it matter to you what he died from? Dead is dead! When I finished the interview, my husband said, ‘you’re so brave.’ I didn’t feel brave. I felt furious.”

Surrounded by such rampant cruelty, Jeremy and Jon began working with ECHO (East Central HIV Organization,) now part of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. They did keynote presentations, panel discussions, and community outreach at colleges, schools, and town halls over the next few years. They were also invited to share their story at the International Council of Death and Dying in Chicago.

Together, they did much to change hearts and minds about HIV/AIDS locally and regionally.

“Few eyes stay dry when Jeremy and Jon Doemel speak about their brother,” said the Oshkosh Northwestern on March 27, 1998.

“For the two Oshkosh brothers, it means Jason will live on.”

“Jason’s legacy is that we shouldn’t judge what we don’t understand,” said Jon. “We shouldn’t villainize people in advance of a crime. Protecting someone’s emotional integrity is important. The fact is, HIV and AIDS are something that affected and are still affecting all human beings – not just gay men.”

Over 30 years after Jason’s passing, Suzanne still remembers her son’s tremendous love for life.

“Jason’s grandfather, who served in a World War overseas, always said that Jason lived much more in his 21 years of life than he ever had,” said Suzanne.

“And that’s how we will always remember him: as someone who truly and fully lived.”