Bonnie Netherton Obituary

Compiled by Star Woodward

Gail Frances Richter was born on July 17, 1945 in New York City, though when her Nana saw her and said “such a Bonnie baby,” the name stuck! Bonnie Netherton died on the evening of June 9, 2026. Beside her were Trey Anderson her son Cass with his wife and two kids, Eve and Eli.

Bonnie lived many places, including—but not limited to—Hawaii, Virginia Beach, Indiana, San Francisco, Atlanta, St. Simon Island, and the Florida Keys, as well as Gainesville, Florida, where she made her transition into pure positive energy.

Bonnie Richter became Bonnie Netherton when she married Lloyd, and together they had two kids, Cass and Andrew.

Coming out in the 1970s in Atlanta, Georgia, she lost all custody and had very limited visitation rights with her sons. But she gained a lesbian feminist community. She was involved with Alpha House, and red Dyke Theatre, as well as playing on a softball team!

She eventually moved to Saint Simons Island, Georgia, with Star Woodward, and from there down to Key West and Sugarloaf Key, where she befriended a dying Barbara Deming and the Sugarloaf lesbian community surrounding her.

Bonnie loved adventure, and didn’t mind getting her hands dirty! Her next chapter was buying an old school bus and outfitting it with antiques she inherited from her parents and grandparents who had acquired many things from around the world as Merchant Marines. She traveled around Mexico and Guatemala both alone and with a friend Skyler. Although they occasionally were stopped by federales, nothing bad ever happened to her.

After a few years, she drove her bus back to Gainesville, Florida, and hooked into that Dyke community until she and Trey Anderson, along with Trey’s daughter, Aimee, moved to Fort Lauderdale. There, they transformed an old Florida Hotel into a lesbian paradise called the Mermaid Inn.

She eventually made her way back to Gainesville, where she got her Realtor license and helped find homes for many lesbians who probably would not have been able to buy a house otherwise.

Eventually she headed back to the Florida Keys, via her newly purchased and renovated, beloved Chinese junk. The antiques moved from her bus to her beautiful house, to the boat! After a living on her boat for seven years, she lost it in a hurricane, and moved the Sugarloaf Women’s Village, where she had been an active member since the early 1980s.

There she did what she always did—make it more beautiful inside and out. Bonnie could take almost any space in any condition and turn it into something beautiful. Rooms, houses, hotels, cottages, bus, boat, and definitely yards and gardens! She had an abiding love for gardening.
She made Sugarloaf Womyn’s Village into what it is today—a safe, beautiful, cozy place for gathering, vacationing, and pitching in to make the space many lesbians come to over and over, feel their own. Bonnie made so many women feel at home.

The last three years of her life, she lived in a little trailer on Trey’s land just outside of Gainesville. There, she was embraced by old friends who eventually took care of her in her last months. Beckie, Madeline, Lynda Lou, Orit, Marilyn. And Aimee and Eileen and Quay. Trey was “her person,” there for her every day.

Bonnie was a passionate lesbian feminist most of her life, as well as a femme with power tools. Just as she loved to adventure in the world, she was an avid reader her whole life. She also had a strong spirituality, enjoying books by Jane Roberts/Seth and listening to the teachings of Abraham Hicks.

She certainly did not believe life ended when the body died, so look around you and you may find yourself seeing or hearing from her. She will be missed by many.

Remembering Bonnie Netherton