Education: Two men who died of AIDS establish grants for homosexuals at three Bay Area universities to repay city that allowed them to live openly as lovers.

The San Francisco Bay Area gave Thomas Markowski and James Leach changes to succeed financially and to live openly as gay lovers. So, as both men became ill with AIDS, they decided to give something back after their deaths to the community they loved.

The result is a $200,000 scholarship fund for gay and lesbian students at San Francisco State, UC Berkeley and Stanford University. The Markowski-Leach Fund, announced formally Tuesday by San Francisco State Officials, is thought to be one of a very few scholarships in the nation aimed to benefit homosexuals and might be the only one established by and named after gay lovers.

"They felt very strongly that it was very hard for gays and lesbians to get ahead in business because you either had to be in the closet or would not get promotions," said Bill Brockett, the men's friend and executor of their estate. "They wanted to make higher education available so gays and lesbians could get into positions of authority and make sure that being gay or lesbian wasn't an obstacle to getting ahead."

Markowski was 28 when he died in 1987; Leach was 32 at his death in 1989. The men, successful computer analyst, invested well in San Francisco real estate, including a small apartment house they renovated, and they both had life insurance policies. They had agreed that the scholarship fund would be set up after they both were dead.

"I'm just so proud of the fact that they had the foresight to do something like this," said Brie'ana Jennings Burkett, another friend. "They loved to travel and they loved to party and they could have just fitted the money all away. But they decided to do this instead." She recalled them as very generous people, who often helped friends in emergencies and handed out 5- and 10­dollar bills to the homeless at Christmas.

San Francisco State will manage the $200,000 fund and, based on current interest rates, officials there estimate that 13 grants of $1,000 each will be available annually starting next year. Students from UC Berkeley and Stanford are also supposed to be eligible, but details remain to be worked out.

John DeCecco, a homosexual activist who is a psychology professor at San Francisco State, welcomed news of the gift. "There are a lot of students who get separated from any family support once they go public with their homosexuality," DeCecco said. "They have to find some other help and this will provide them with that help."

University attorneys reviewed the bequest in light of recent controversy in Washington over whether colleges legally can set aside grants for minorities. Because the Markowski-Leach fund comes from a private source, not state or federal funds, it appears to be protected from potential charges that it discriminates against heterosexuals, said Ron Barr, director of development at San Francisco State. "We really expect no abuses nor do we expect legal challenges," he said.

Various gay alumni, social and political clubs around the nation help gay students with scholarships, mainly outside of colleges' formal offices. In what was described as a national precedent, City College of San Francisco, a two­year institution, received $25,000 for scholarships for gay students two years ago from the estate of Dan Allen, who taught about gay literature there and died of AIDS. And alumni and other benefactors two years ago gave the University of Chicago's law school a $40,000 scholarship fund for students, not necessarily gay themselves, who will work for homosexual rights.

It seems unlikely that many other schools have scholarships for gays, according to Robert Bray, a spokesman for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the civil rights group based in Washington.

"It's very rare…It seems unprecedented in terms of the size of the gift, and the prominence of the school," Bray said of the Markowski-Leach fund at San Francisco State.

Leach's family in Pennsylvania is said to be angry about the will but has not challenged it, people close to the situation said. Meanwhile, Markowski's family in Ohio recently donated $100,000 to his alma mater, Lakeland Community College near Cleveland, for the establishment of a Markowski-Leach scholarship. However, those scholarships will be available to applicants, regardless of sexuality, who show promise of "contributing to the betterment of society and mankind as a whole," said Kathy Kirry Wockley, Lakeland's director of development. Publicity about the gift to Lakeland has not focused on the men's relationship due to the conservative nature of the area, she said.

To be eligible for the California grants, students will have to show good grades, but "the real determinant will be that these people are to make a difference for society," said Thomas Baker, the dead men's attorney.

Markowski and Leach had moved to Houston where they met in 1981, friends recall. The pair moved to San Francisco in 1982, seeking career opportunities and a more active gay community. Markowski took some business and real estate courses at San Francisco State, but neither man had a degree from any of the Northern California schools that may share the scholarships.

"They had a devotion to northern California and to San Francisco as a place where it was OK to be gay," Baker said. "That's what was real special for them."

San Francisco state President Robert A. Corrigan formally announced the donation Tuesday at the start of the new lecture series dealing with social and medical aspects of AIDS in the second decade of the epidemic.

Source: Gordon, Larry. Los Angeles Times. February 27, 1991.