February 22, 1927 — January 12, 2024
William B. Reque, a San Francisco resident for 71 years, died on January 12, 2024 at a hospital in Santa Rosa. He was 96.
He was born February 22, 1927, in Wabasha, Minnesota, and grew up in Bayfield, Wisconsin, a fishing village on Lake Superior.
In 1945 he was drafted into the Army Air Corps and was stationed in postwar Germany and France. In 1947, he enlisted in the Army Counterintelligence Corps and served in Guam and Japan until 1950, when he was discharged from the military on grounds of homosexuality.
After working in Denver he moved to San Francisco in 1952, living in North Beach and working as a corporate accountant for major firms, including PanAm, Maersk, Harper Robinson, Dean Witter, and Kline Bros. He also tended bar at the Spaghetti Factory in North Beach and the Toolbox, a leather bar at Fourth and Harrison streets in the city's South of Market neighborhood. He moved to Potrero Hill in the mid-1980s with his domestic partner Carl Peterson, who died in 2009.
A longtime member of the Bay View Boat Club, he served as treasurer for several years. He is survived by a brother, John Reque, of Evanston, Illinois, and a sister, Karen Reque, of Fort Collins, Colorado.
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