* Craig L. Rodwell; Gay Rights Activist

Craig L. Rodwell, 52, gay rights activist who founded the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in New York’s Greenwich Village. A Chicago native, he joined the Mattachine Society, New York’s controversial gay rights organization, in the 1950s. Rodwell founded the Homophile Youth Movement in 1967, and in 1969 played a key role in the Stonewall rebellion, considered the beginning of the national gay rights movement. The action, which patrons staged in response to a police raid, was named for the Greenwich Village bar in which it occurred. Rodwell opened his bookstore in 1967, and in 1970 helped organize the first Gay Pride Parade. On Friday in New York of stomach cancer.