Remembering Lou Lou Couch, Friend and Mentor

Today, the 29th anniversary of her death, friends are remembering Lou Ellen Couch, who touched many lives in her hometown of Seattle.

Couch, called “Lou Lou” by her friends, was a tough but tender butch lesbian, a fixture of Seattle street culture who helped mentor and protect LGBT kids, many of them homeless. She was featured in the Oscar-nominated documentary Streetwise and figures in the new memoir Street Child by Justin Reed Early, who knew her when he was a homeless youth.

“I’ll never forget Lou Lou because she was the first person to help me begin to accept my beautiful, intimate, intelligent LGBT design and the strong feelings of ‘first love’ that I had so long ago with her brother,” Early wrote in a recent commentary piece for our sibling publication The Advocate.

Early also noted, “Men often made the mistake of crossing her because they wanted her to submit into her ‘womanly’ place, but she never once backed down and rarely did she lose a battle — in fact, I know of only one battle she would ever lose, and it was her last.

“In 1985, on a very cold and rainy December night in downtown Seattle, while enduring the hatred that was so freely thrown her way, she left us. While she was standing up to the men who were taunting her and her girlfriend, one of them pushed a knife into her chest, piercing her tender heart. She died moments later, leaving nothing of monetary value behind, but leaving thousands of broken hearts and a heroic legacy — a legacy that sadly, too few know about to this day.”

Lou Lou’s grave went unmarked since then, as no one had the money to pay for a headstone. But now Early and Lou Lou’s brother Frankie have obtained one. Today the two men, plus Lou Lou’s surviving girlfriend, Jenny, and some other friends and family members, gathered at her grave to celebrate her life, “a life that was far too short, but one that made a huge impact,” Early wrote.

In his book, Lou Lou “continues to educate, inspire and empower people who struggle into better lives,” he added, concluding, “RIP, dear friend. We love and miss you.”

Find out more about Early’s book here.