Longtime community advocate Ed Bomba — who worked on LGBT, HIV/AIDS, senior and disability causes — died suddenly Feb. 17 from complications of surgery. He was 61.
Bomba grew up in Havertown and most recently lived in Center City. He earned a bachelor’s in political science from University of Delaware and a master’s of business administration from Penn State.
Bomba retired in the mid-’90s, after having worked in the communications field for such companies as North American Phillips. He used his communications and marketing expertise to benefit a number of local organizations.
Most recently, he was a founding member of the LGBT Elder Initiative, first serving on the working group that formed the organization and later as an inaugural board member and chair of its communications committee. Bomba was a primary force behind the organization’s Conversation series and conceived of the “Gettin’ On” column that runs monthly in PGN. He also conceived of and helped organize PGN’s annual Senior Supplement.
“He was brilliant, strategic and very committed, very passionate about the mission of the LGBT Elder Initiative,” said LGBTEI board chair Heshie Zinman. “He saw that there was discrimination and marginalization and was right there from the very beginning working to have our aging services address the unique needs LGBT older adults have as we age.”
Zinman met Bomba in the 1980s. At the time, Bomba was volunteering at the AIDS Library and with marketing efforts for the SafeGuards Project.
William Way LGBT Community Center executive director Chris Bartlett, former director of SafeGuards, said, among other efforts, Bomba helped the organization design the advertisements that it placed in PGN and other publications.
Bomba also sat on the board of Mazzoni Center and worked with AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania.
“He wasn’t a volunteer in an official way but was always somebody we could count on for guidance and to bounce ideas off of and get his opinion, which was important to us,” said AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania executive director Ronda Goldfein.
Bomba was featured in a video the organization made a few years ago to promote its work.
“He was so unbelievably gracious in his time and allowing us to film him and tell his story,” Goldfein said.
“I think he had a real love for the communities of which he was a part, whether that was people living with HIV, gay men, people living with disabilities or seniors,” Bartlett added. “He had a natural ability to see what the needs were of an underserved population and then dedicate his time to meet those needs.”
When it came to pressing for rights for those communities, Goldfein said Bomba had a quiet confidence that was compelling.
“He was kind of singularly focused. It was like, I’m going to be really pleasant, have this twinkle in my eye and I’ll get what I want. But I’ll be really nice about it,” she laughed. “But he just was a nice guy, just a really nice guy.”
In addition to his LGBT and HIV/AIDS work, Bomba was also a staunch advocate for people with disabilities, and sat on the board of such agencies as Liberty Resources.
In the past few years, Bomba gradually began losing his vision and his hearing.
Zinman said that after being diagnosed with full-blown AIDS, Bomba developed cytomegalovirus, which damaged his retinas.
“He was able to regain his health and his vitality, he just didn’t have all of his sight. I can’t speak to what it must be like to be challenged with vision, but there must be a difference being born blind or becoming blind. But he handled it with grace and dignity,” Zinman said.
Bomba embraced technological developments and last year started working with a seeing-eye dog, a white lab named Cooper.
“He was a success story,” Zinman said. “He was able to continue to read, to write and when his vision got worse, he started doing voice technology on his computer. It never caused him to shrink from doing anything. He went to the gym, he wrote ‘Gettin’ On,’ he developed strategies to deal with things. He was a warrior.”
Goldfein said Bomba was so positive and independent that she often forgot he had to face such obstacles.
“I’ve known Ed forever so I knew about the vision and Cooper, but there was something about reading about this in his obituary that it really dawned on me the tremendous amount of struggles and challenges he faced every day just to get out of the house,” she said. “It’s because he did it in such a graceful and effortless matter-of-fact way.”
The medical challenges, Zinman added, didn’t keep Bomba from visiting the friends he had all over the country, or from enjoying his passion for music and the arts.
“He led a very full life,” he said. “He was a loyal and loving friend. He was like my brother.”
Bartlett added that Bomba’s dedication to volunteerism is a quality that should be emulated.
“He left a legacy as a community member who dedicated countless volunteer hours to make a difference in so many communities,” Bartlett said. “And he did make that difference.”
Bomba is survived by his mother, Thelma; sisters Katherine, Marguerite, Monica, Cynthia and Linda; and brother John. A community memorial service is being planned for the spring.
Donations can be made in Bomba’s name to the LGBT Elder Initiative (www.lgbtei.org), AIDS Law Project (www.aislawpa.org) and The Seeing Eye Inc. (www.seeingeye.org).