“Hello ladies!”
Someone shouted it out while biking past Lonnie “Love” Kenebrew and me as we were chatting on a sun-soaked bench at Promontory Point in May. It happened out of nowhere. We looked at each other, looking about as boyish—or mannish in Kenebrew’s case—as we could look.
It stuck with me for the rest of the day, but it seemed to roll off Kenebrew’s shoulders as quickly as it happened. Maybe it’s because he has about 10 years of transitioning on me.
“A lot has happened in that decade,” Kenebrew said. “But I was committed from the beginning to transition. It was a commitment to go all the way.”
Kenebrew is a 59-year-old transgender man and a prominent figure in the Chicago trans community. He’s participated in leadership councils, featured in videos and marched in parades.
Even after a decade of transitioning and community leadership, moments like that are a reminder that recognition doesn’t always come easy, but Kenebrew’s sense of self remains unwavering.
Kenebrew’s upbringing
When we spoke at the park, Kenebrew was in the early stages of recovering from a massive heart attack. His main artery was 100% blocked, and his heart stopped in the emergency room.
The day of his heart attack, Kenebrew had been complaining all day of a pain in his chest. He tried to call his younger sister, Charmaine Irvin-Kenebrew, but she just missed the call.
Irvin-Kenebrew went right to the emergency room when she heard what was happening. She’s a cardiac monitor technician, so she knew something was wrong just by the way doctors were speaking behind the counter.
“I heard them call a cardiac emergency,” Irvin-Kenebrew said. “And I know they have different wordings in hospitals. They try not to, I guess, alert people in the hospital that something’s going on. I learned that over the years, and so I knew the language.”
Support from Kenebrew’s sister, along with his faith in God, have guided Kenebrew through his recovery, he said.
Kenebrew and his sister grew up in a religious household with 11 other siblings. They lived in south suburban Robbins, where their mother was involved with the church. Both Kenebrew and Irvin-Kenebrew are still spiritual today, but in different ways, he said.
There were parts of the church that didn’t add up to Kenebrew when he was younger, but faith is still a big part of his life today, he said.
Kenebrew has an extremely personal relationship with God, he said. Kenebrew often asks God for wisdom—wisdom which has guided much of his transition.
He underwent his final gender-affirming surgery at the end of January 2025. Exactly three months later, the heart attack nearly killed him.
“I went through all of that healing up, and then I could have died, but God brought me back to life,” Kenebrew said. “It’s like I have a peace in my heart. I’m not afraid of death anymore.”
Family support while transitioning ‘was like therapy’
Kenebrew didn’t come out as transgender until he was nearly 50, but his gender was something he understood at a very young age.
“I knew I was special when I was little,” Kenebrew said, “God spoke to me in my spirit when I was three or four years old, and let me know there was something different about me, [but] to keep it to myself.”
When Kenebrew did come out—after both his parents had passed—his sister embraced his authentic self. She was grateful Kenebrew was finding his path.
“This is Lonnie’s journey,” Irvin-Kenebrew said. “And when Lonnie figured out who he was, I was just happy because I love him as my sibling and want him to be happy. To go that long with not feeling comfortable with who you are or not knowing who you are for so many years, that broke my heart.”
Kenebrew and his sister didn’t get along growing up. Kenebrew often pawned his chores off to Irvin-Kenebrew, who is five years younger, he said. Irvin-Kenebrew also carried the weight of looking after their younger siblings, which was a job they were supposed to share. Kenebrew was often with his mother at church or helping with church events.
Irvin-Kenebrew said that once her brother left for college, he wrote her a letter apologizing for how he treated her. Kenebrew felt badly that he wasn’t as nice as he could have been to her growing up.
“And as we look back, now knowing what we know, it was just so much confusion or frustration in his own world; in his own life,” Irvin-Kenebrew said.
The two have been close ever since Kenebrew sent that letter, Irvin-Kenebrew said. Since then, Kenebrew has helped her in many ways: boosting her self-confidence, supporting her personal development and even doing her hair and nails. The two spent a lot of time together growing so close.
“It was like therapy in some aspects,” she said of all the time he spent helping her.
Kenebrew came out as a lesbian to his siblings in the early 2000s. They were accepting of him at the time, but when he came out as a trans man, things weren’t as simple.
One of the first moves he made as an out trans man was to go to the barber and cut his hair short.
“I felt free,” he said. “It was like the first act of rebellion, the first act of me being my authentic self. It felt good. It felt free, and I didn’t realize that it was gonna make everybody else feel strange.”
Kenebrew’s older sister Angela Johnson had a difficult time accepting him as trans. They were living together when Kenebrew came out. He said that Angela didn’t want him to transition in her house, so she asked him to leave. He went to live with his other sister, Janet. He still lives with her.
Angela did eventually come around, and they are still close today–she was the one to tell him to call 911 when he was complaining about chest pain back in January.
How community support helped Kenebrew transition
Kenebrew’s physical transition happened in a series of “aha” moments over the course of a decade, he said.
One of the first major actions Kenebrew took in his transition was to get his legal documents changed, including his driver’s license, social security card and birth certificate. It gave Kenebrew irrefutable evidence that he was who he was, he said.
“I was transitioned on paper,” Kenebrew said. “That was an ‘aha’ moment, because who’s going to tell me who I am now?”
Kenebrew started his medical transition at Howard Brown Health. He began his treatment in their behavioral health department. At the time, he was advised to live as a man for a year. At 48-years-old, he felt like he was starting from scratch.
“I didn’t even have a language [for] what I was going through,” Kenebrew said. “I didn’t know how to express myself. I didn’t know how to talk about what I was going through. I had no language for it, so I had to develop the language.”
Now, Kenebrew is a member of the Howard Brown Patient Advisory Council, a volunteer organization where council members, who are patients themselves at Howard Brown, can offer feedback directly to multiple departments throughout the clinic, he said.
Kenebrew has given back to Howard Brown in other ways, too. He’s volunteered at events and fundraisers for the health center, and volunteered for the organization at Pride Fest, the Bud Billiken parade and trans media fashion shows that have raised money for uninsured and underinsured patients, he said.
Kenebrew was also a major part of the DISH fundraiser event in 2022, according to volunteer coordinator Steven Solomon. The DISH fundraiser was a premiere seated dinner at the Fairmont Hotel in downtown Chicago.
“Lonnie shared his story, and he was one of two patients that were featured in the video,” Solomon said. “It was a way for donors to connect and see what impact Howard Brown has in our community… So that was a big deal for Lonnie.”
Solomon said it’s more than just the number of hours or the amount of money raised.
“Lonnie has just been awesome by doing all these activities and events,” Solomon said. “It’s not just the event itself, but also the sense of community and the representation—sharing their experience and educating other folks at these events.”
Before transitioning, Kenebrew spent about six years in Phoenix, Arizona, working at a boys and girls group home. He called it his “desert experience,” and he said God let him know he was ready to begin his transition when he came back to Chicago.
Kenebrew described transitioning as an ultimately lonely process, but support from Irvin-Kenebrew, Howard Brown, his insurance, volunteer opportunities and trans support groups helped him through it.
“It’s just got me a lot of blessings. I’ve met a lot of wonderful people along this journey,” Kenebrew said. “A lot of losses too, because I’ve had to let go of a lot of people when I started transitioning. I experienced the most hate I’ve ever experienced, but I’ve also experienced the most love for myself. That’s been greater than anything, because I’ve always been there for people, but I never was there for myself. So this decade was about me. And it means freedom.”
‘I came to life as my new self’
During the heart attack, Kenebrew was in an ambulance to the hospital—the same hospital he was born in—when EMTs told him their medical records still included his old name and gender markers. When they got to the emergency room, his medical team printed him an updated band. Soon after, his heart stopped.
The death of the old self is a pretty common metaphor used by trans people. Irvin-Kenebrew said her brother used this metaphor to help members of his family finally understand and come around to his new identity.
“Our sister is gone, but now, but we have Lonnie, our brother, and it felt kind of like a death,” Irvin-Kenebrew said. “Our sister was gone, and now Lonnie, our brother is here.”
Kenebrew and I laughed at the irony of his near-death experience so soon after finishing his transition.
There are many aspects of being a man that Kenebrew hasn’t experienced yet, and now that he’s no longer afraid of dying, he’s ready to try them–with the appropriate clearances from the doctor, he said.
Kenebrew said he knows that God has been guiding him, and he laughed again at finding comedy in correcting his name and pronouns in the midst of a heart attack.
“I feel like that was my resurrection moment,” Kenebrew said. “I came in there in their system as my old name and pronouns, and I came to life as my new self.”