The first time I entered Stormy’s home, it was twenty-three days after his 51^st birthday, and twenty days after his passing. His husband, Dr. E. G. Meier (pronouns: variable), led me into their townhouse through the garage, and immediately I was surrounded by the artifacts of Stormy’s life: on the left, row after row of plastic storage bins filled with eclectic board games, cassette tapes, and VHS videos; on the right, a set of authentic University of Wisconsin sports lockers, rescued after a remodeling. A kayak hung on mounts above the lockers.

“Stormy loved being a Badger,” Meier told me. “He only applied to one university, and to have a degree from there meant so much to him.”

Stormy had been an athlete himself, making All-American as a center in women’s tackle football in his hometown of Madison. “He had a fat ring and the arthritis that went with it,” Meier said.

Up the stairs and into the townhouse proper, I saw even more sides of Stormy on display: the countless Lego sets; the painting supplies and poetry; the vinyl record collection, which ran from Pavarotti to Prince, Ella Fitzgerald to the Looney Tunes; the basket brimming with stuffed animals, each with their name tags carefully applied for Meier’s benefit; the fitness room that doubled as a library, bookshelves stuffed with religious commentaries, fantasy novels and Dr. Seuss; the closet full of musical instruments; the vast collection of athletic shoes.

There were so many identities on display here that it felt like I was looking at the artifacts of half a dozen people. Artist? Musician? Jock? Geek? Hebrew scholar? My mind looked for the unifying threads, the story that would bind together these data points in a single individual. But I never knew Stormy when he was alive, and so here I stood, trying to paint a portrait of the man from the negative space in the lives of the people who loved him.

The True Caregiver

Devyn Avery Justice Brown moved to Madison in the fall of 2011. He attended a Halloween party with a friend and their girlfriend, who got in a fight on the way and quickly abandoned him to go deal with their own drama. Not knowing anyone else at the party, Devyn looked around and spotted Stormy, one of only two other people of color in the room.

“He was wearing a chef costume with ‘Fe’ on the back,” Devyn recalled. “I come up to him and say, ‘oh hey, Iron Chef!’ Somehow that moment immediately opened up the connection between our two souls. I had no idea that I had just written the script of being forever connected to him.”

Stormy and his then-wife quickly adopted Devyn as family. “I was at their house all the time,” he said. “I literally lived at their house, I had a key, and I would be there when they got home with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

This was years before Stormy began his transition, and as a female-presenting, openly queer Black nurse working in a major hospital, Stormy was often on the receiving end of dehumanizing and disrespectful treatment, which was a constant weight on his soul. “I would watch him come home from work, and there was this shedding of work that had to happen before he could be present for us,” Devyn said. “It was hard on him, emotionally, and physically, to be in the system that denied his humanity and his skill as a clinician. He would talk about patients who hurled racial slurs at him, or were just so unkind to him – and you just do the job anyway.”

Stormy encouraged Devyn to follow his own dream of becoming a nurse. Devyn found a position at Public Health Madison & Dane County (PHMDC), working first in administration and then in the Nurse-Family Partnership program. PHMDC had many hybrid roles that combined direct patient care with community education and outreach. It was such an obvious fit for Stormy’s skills and interests that Devyn began lobbying for Stormy to join him there. He eventually did so, securing a position in Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH).

“I’ve been here for six years, and I’d been begging Stormy for years to come over here,” Devyn said with a smile. “When he got the job, he said, ‘I’m sorry, I should have listened to you sooner.’ He’s my big bro, 11 years older, so it was a nice win for me to hear that.”

The Inspiration

Stormy’s union president and eventual cubicle-mate at SRH was Alex Dudek (they/them), who also recalled Devyn advocating for Stormy to join their team.

“We hit it off the moment we started talking,” Alex said. “We had a virtual coffee where Stormy asked what it would look like for us to work together. They wanted to make sure they weren’t the only one causing good trouble in the workplace. I knew I was going to be welcoming in a coworker who would be a really positive impact.”

While Stormy used the pronouns he/him in his private life, at SRH he chose to go by they/them, because he felt that it was important to his work to be visibly, publicly trans. “Stormy was a role model for me and other trans folks at PHMDC,” Alex said. “Coming in with their confidence, I feel like they were just really good at being unapologetically Stormy, and that was really inspiring.”

Stormy only ended up working at SRH for six months before his pancreatic cancer made its presence suddenly and tragically known. But in that short time, he had a profound impact on both his coworkers and the patients he served. Unlike most jobs in nursing, SRH clinicians have an exceptional amount of independence: they are the ones who greet the patients in the lobby, who stay with them throughout the appointment, who collaborate with the patients on what tests will be run and what treatments will be performed. “We spend a lot of time getting to know our patients and centering their autonomy in the process,” Alex explained.

When not in the clinic, SRH nurses build relationships with community partners. They offer testing services at The Beacon, a daytime drop-in shelter operated by the Catholic Church, and the Porchlight men’s emergency shelter. They have a resource table at the OutReach Magic Pride Festival every August. They speak about contraception and sex education to audiences around the Madison area. “It’s really nice to do whole-person nursing,” Alex said. “That’s a lot of what appealed to Stormy: they could be working with patients at the clinic one day, and the next day they’re doing outreach with community organizations.”

“It meant so much to him,” Devyn said. “[There was] a lightness and literal pep in his step. All those years of being devalued were worth it to get to that place where he could be that Black, trans, queer elder working in public.”

The Believer

Another area where Stormy had a profound impact was in the Jewish community. Stormy converted to Judaism in 2019, under the guidance of Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman of Congregation Shaarei Shamayim, a Reconstructionist and Jewish Renewal synagogue that meets at the First Unitarian Society in Madison.

“I remember how powerful Stormy’s B’nai Mitzvah was,” Rabbi Zimmerman recalled. “He was nervous, but he had prepared so well and had gathered several people who were his teachers, mentors, and friends. It was a powerful moment when Stormy’s mother, Pam, presented him with a tallit, a traditional prayer shawl. It was a symbol of commitment to the Jewish community. The fringes of the tallit link us to our ancestors and Jewish tradition.”

Stormy quickly distinguished himself as a leader within the congregation, building strong relationships with many other members. “He was particularly talented at creating community amongst a diverse group of people,” Rabbi Zimmerman said. “Stormy was one of the most engaging people I’ve ever met.”

When the time came for Shaarei Shamayim to choose a new president for the synagogue, the congregation elected Stormy. “Stormy was the obvious choice,” Rabbi Zimmerman said. “It is hard to emphasize enough what a historic moment this was for the American Jewish community: A Black, trans Jew became the president of a synagogue.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Stormy began forming connections at a Conservative Madison synagogue, Beth Israel Center. Rabbi Betsy Forester led a twice-daily prayer group, a traditional devotional practice that Stormy was interested in adding to his Jewish observance. He quickly became a regular contributor to the group, sharing stories of family and friends who had passed on and listening to the stories of other members of the congregation. While maintaining his affiliation with Shaarei Shamayim, Stormy became a regular participant at Beth Israel as well.

“It’s unusual for someone to be a joint member who is actively engaged in two congregations of different movements,” Rabbi Forester said, “but he had a unique capacity to pull it off.”

Being a member of Beth Israel also gave Stormy the opportunity to develop a pastoral care relationship with a rabbi whom he was not responsible for supervising as synagogue president. As a Black trans man, Stormy was in a unique position to help Beth Israel’s members to understand the experiences of both Black and queer people in their community. “People fell in love with him here,” Rabbi Forester said. “When he shared his perspectives, people really listened.”

Most importantly of all, though, Stormy was a role model for younger members of both congregations, especially those who were Black, or queer, or both.

“He could bring his full self, as a trans person and Black person, into Jewish spaces,” Rabbi Forester said. “For our younger members who were in the earlier stages of living into their identities, he was such a joyful, inspiring example of someone who was whole, and could bring all the pieces together.”

The J0y Seeker

Stormy was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in late January. His vast network of friends and adopted family immediately responded with a GoFundMe campaign, which raised over $57,000. Their first and most important priority: making sure that Stormy got to visit Africa. Accompanied by Meier and Devyn, Stormy spent a week in Kenya in mid-February; highlights of the trip included a baby elephant rescue and rehabilitation center, feeding giraffes at a sanctuary, and a boat tour of a lake filled with hippos and an island animal reserve.

“It’s simultaneously the most beautiful and devastating thing I’ve ever done,” Devyn recalled. “It was hard, and also … it’s just so hard to find the words for the level of joy. Meier has this video of us sitting in the grass together, in Kenya, in Africa, together. It felt like we were there together again. That we found each other, and traveled here, to the literal motherland, this place that we were born, and we came back together.”

The Loved

There is a saying in Jewish culture when someone has passed away, which has always been deeply meaningful to me: May his memory be a blessing. In listening to the stories of his loved ones, it is clear that this will always be the case for Stormy-Kito Justice.

“When he was proximate to you, the brightness in you increased,” said Meier, who works as a therapist. “If I could figure out how to bottle that, I’d put my whole profession out of a job.”

“He was a beautiful human being, and he’s terribly missed,” said Rabbi Forester. “I miss him a lot. I don’t think a day goes by when I don’t want to tell him something.”

At Congregation Shaarei Shamayim, they are creating a fund to honor Stormy’s life and legacy.  “This fund will nurture and uplift Black Jewish voices, experiences, and leadership within our community,” said Rabbi Zimmerman. “It will support programs, rituals, and initiatives that foster belonging, deepen understanding, and celebrate the richness and diversity of Jewish life.”

“One of the things that losing Stormy has helped me grasp is that everyone I love, I will lose,” Devyn said. “There’s something really comforting about the finite nature of that – it pulls me into just being as present as I can with everyone that I love, with everything that I love, because now is all there is. It also, paradoxically, reminds me that nothing is ever lost. That he’s always with me.”

To donate to the Stormy-Kito Justice Fund at Shaarei Shamayim, please visit https://www.shamayim.org/stormykitojusticefund.

To learn more about Beth Israel Center’s social justice mission, including volunteer opportunities, see https://www.bethisraelcenter.org/socialjustice.