Michael Daniel Penner was an American sportswriter for the Los Angeles Times.
14 Facts About Mike Penner
1.
2.
Mike Penner self-identified as transsexual in 2007 with the new name of Christine Daniels.
3.
Mike Penner began his journalism career at the Anaheim Bulletin as a writer and sports editor.
4.
Mike Penner then joined the Los Angeles Times in 1983 as a staff writer for the paper's Orange County edition.
5.
Later in his career, in addition to covering sports, Mike Penner began writing about transsexual identity and the process of gender transition from an autobiographical perspective.
6.
Mike Penner moved in later that summer with transgender friend Amy LaCoe.
7.
Mike Penner tore up several notebooks he kept on transgender therapy, donated his clothes and jewelry, and ceased attempts to feminize himself.
8.
Mike Penner then ordered friends to call him Mike again.
9.
Mike Penner repeatedly told friends his return to a male lifestyle was a last-ditch effort to reunite with Dillman, though he knew the odds were slim.
10.
Friends had noticed Mike Penner was quiet and kept to himself previously as a man, but showed more joy and energy as Christine.
11.
Everything about his body, everything about his fabric, everything that made him human was still screaming, that had been screaming for 40 years, that got to the point of Mike Penner transitioning to Christine.
12.
Mike Penner was a member of the Times' sports staff at the time of his death.
13.
Mike Penner was at one time married to fellow Los Angeles Times sportswriter Lisa Dillman although at the time of his death they were divorced.
14.
Mike Penner was found dead in his Los Angeles home on November 28,2009, of an apparent suicide, a year to the day after his divorce with Dillman had been finalized.