Rynn Azerial Willgohs
Age 52 (born 25 Jan 1972)8 Oct 2024
Vantaa, Uusimaa (Finland)
Suicide
Rynn was the founder of TRANSport, a nonprofit seeking to help at-risk transgender people leave the USA.
FARGO — A former Fargo resident who led an organization to help transgender people in the United States emigrate to other countries, has died.
Rynn Willgohs, 52, died on Oct. 8, according to her obituary, published in the High Plains Reader on Oct. 13. At the time of her death, Willgohs was working through the asylum and immigration process in Finland.
Willgohs founded TRANSport, a nonprofit organization seeking to help at-risk transgender people leave the U.S. by assisting with paperwork, paying for associated costs and providing resettlement support.
In an interview with The Forum in 2022, Willgohs, a transgender woman, talked about her plans to move abroad. She said a factor in her decision to leave the U.S. was her fear that state and federal governments would roll back protections for transgender people.
She said that during a summer trip to Iceland, she realized she felt more at home in Icelandic society than she had felt in the U.S. Being transgender was not an issue there, but in the U.S. she always felt threatened or treated as an outsider, she told The Forum.
“It’s a whole different world over there,” Willgohs told The Forum, explaining that it took some getting used to being seen as just another person.
Willgohs said she had been targeted for being transgender in Fargo, including being stalked and threatened, and believed that her work to advance transgender rights in the city made her more of a target.
In the same interview, Willgohs talked about her plans for TRANSport. She hoped TRANSport could help cover the cost of name changes, gender marker changes, hormone treatments, plane tickets and passport costs as a person settled in a new country. TRANSport is incorporated under the 501c3 umbrella of the Pride Collective and Community Center, another Fargo nonprofit organization.
Kendra Lewellyn, president of the Pride Collective and Community Center Board, said Willgohs was a passionate fighter for trans rights through TRANSport and her personal activism.
“The community has just lost a really dedicated advocate, and she was seeking asylum thousands of miles away, but her story and her are just such a part of the Fargo-Moorhead story and of the LGBTQ community in our area,” she said. “Whether she was thousands of miles away or not, more than ever, people feel it.”
Rynn's Instagram profile is https://www.instagram.com/rynnwillgohs/
https://hpr1.com/index.php/lifestyles/live-and-learn/rynn-willgohs-1972-2024
https://www.inforum.com/news/fargo/rynn-willgohs-former-fargo-lgbtq-activist-dies-at-52
https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/trans-woman-who-helped-risk-806286
https://x.com/inforum/status/1847104828163395972
