Activist, Blogger Barbara Wold Dies

Lesbian activist Barbara Wold, who wrote the blog Democracy in New Mexico, has died at age 63.

Wold died Sunday at her home in Albuquerque, her partner, Mary Ellen Broderick, told Chicago's Windy City Times. She had been diagnosed with metastatic colon cancer in September, but Broderick said, "I never expected her to pass away so suddenly."

Former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean encouraged Wold and Broderick to start the Web log. Wold worked as a technical writer but spent much of her spare time on the blog, covering LGBT issues such as marriage equality and "don't ask, don't tell." "She was a force to be reckoned with," Broderick told the Times. "I don't know that she knew what a big voice she had." Broderick, who said Dean called with condolences, intends to continue the blog.

A Chicago native and graduate of the University of Chicago, Wold relocated for a time to Boston, where she met Broderick in 1989, and the two had lived in Albuquerque since the early 1990s.