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40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community: HIV/AIDS
Description
An account of the resource
In the spring of 2020, the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive received a grant to collect oral histories and written stories for 40 Years of Public Health in the Lehigh Valley’s LGBT Community: Collecting and Curating Local LGBT Health Experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19.
The collection consists of oral histories from individuals who experienced the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as oral histories from members of the local community as they lived through 2020's summer of Covid-19. Running through both are the themes of dealing with the fear of an emerging health crisis, loneliness and isolation, and coming together as a community in support and activism.
The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Liz Bradbury
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Nan Kozul
OHMS Object
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=PH40_14.xml
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5.4 June 17, 2020 Nan Kozul, June 17, 2020 (Part 1) PH40_14 00:28:20 LVLGBT40 40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg AIDS (Disease) Nan Kozul Liz Bradbury video/mpeg NanKozulPart1_20200617_video.mp4 1.0:|23(7)|50(8)|81(12)|102(8)|125(7)|144(14)|171(5)|192(12)|211(12)|232(8)|255(4)|272(10)|297(2)|312(10)|335(17)|352(8)|371(9)|392(12)|417(6)|436(9)|457(7)|480(7)|505(5)|530(2)|565(6)|582(12)|607(7)|636(8)|643(5) 0 https://youtu.be/TJ8kkq69Iac YouTube video 0 Interview Introduction 0 147 First time hearing about HIV/AIDS / Bartending at Candida's Bar LB: So, the first thing I’m going to say is that in the midst of this current health crisis we’re experiencing, we’re taking this opportunity to look back and reflect to capture the stories of those who lived through the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the nineteen eighties and nineties in the Lehigh Valley. So, let’s just start out by saying do you remember the first time you became aware of the disease? And you could say anything you want, so, you know, you don’t have to just stick to that. What do you think?
 ; 
 ; NK: Well, I was bartending -- Dina opened her bar, Candida’s in nineteen eighty. Prior to that, I was visiting the Stonewall and pouring there but once Dina opened her bar, I started bartending there. And it was when HIV first started -- it had happened in the bigger cities, so it was more prominent, like, in New York, Philly. 0 265 Fears of AIDS and COVID-19 while working in the medical field NK: I remember I had, just as the epidemic started, I had gone to a new dentist in Allentown. And so, I went to get my teeth cleaned and I’m sitting in the chair and the dentist and the hygienist, they were really animated, they were fun. I was talking to them and they were, like, “So, where do you work?” And I’m, like, “I work for a drug dealer but I also work at a bar.” And they were, like, “Oh, where do you work?” And I said, “Candida’s.” And they left the room and I was sitting there (laughs) and then they came back in. And when they came back in, they were donned with gowns, gloves, and a facemask. 0 435 Promiscuity in the early 1980s / Noticing friends losing weight and knowing they had AIDS LB: What kind of other kinds of circumstances in terms of relating to that kind of fear and concern -- did people feel that around the bar, too? I mean, were people sharing stories like that?
 ; 
 ; NK: It was very -- they didn’t talk about it. You know, the promiscuity in the early eighties was really high and especially at Candida’s because you had the cemetery across the street, so it was easy access for private liaisons. (laughter) And it was interesting because it started to shift, slowly, but it started to shift. And it wasn’t until probably later, in the later eighties, that I actually saw friends becoming sick and admitting that they were positive. Yeah, it was a tough time. 0 880 Parents disowning their children because they were gay LB: And during the beginning of the epidemic, I think some people were really not supported by their families, although I’ve also heard that a lot of families in the Lehigh Valley were pretty supportive. What’s your take on that?
 ; 
 ; NK: Well, you know what, Liz? To be honest with you, that was -- I bartended every -- well, bartended quite a few nights. But Sunday afternoons was one of my days that I bartended. I can’t tell you the amount of young guys that would come in and just cry to me because their parents disowned them. 0 980 Bar mascots being stolen as a prank / Beginning of FACT LB: Yeah. Well, tell me about the start of FACT there and how that happened.
 ; 
 ; NK: Well, (laughs) it started as just a crazy -- Dina had a parrot that was her mascot and the Stonewall stole the parrot. And then she --
 ; 
 ; LB: It wasn’t a real parrot.
 ; 
 ; NK: No, it wasn’t a real parrot, even though she had a real parrot. (laughter) No, it was just her mascot. 0 1105 Planting memorial trees in Lehigh Parkway / Discussion of best friend who is HIV positive LB: You remember -- I know that there were a lot of funerals and I don’t know the history of this exactly but I know they were planting a lot of trees. You remember that?
 ; 
 ; NK: You know, I remember that vaguely, that they were planting trees. I don’t remember actually going to any funerals, only because it’s a painful time.
 ; 
 ; LB: Yes. 0 1258 Working as a medical assistant / Discrimination in nursing school LB: Now, are you a nurse (inaudible) nurse? 
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 ; NK: Actually, I’m a medical assistant. I was two semesters away from being an RN back in eighty-nine, ninety, nineteen-ninety, and I was forced out of nursing school because I was gay. 
 ; 
 ; LB: What happened?
 ; 
 ; NK: St. Luke’s was not known (laughs) for their inclusivity of gay people, especially back then. And I had gone to nursing school. I was elected class president. I was going to graduate in nineteen-ninety. And two semesters before I was to graduate, I start flunking and I went to the instructors and I said, “Why -- I don’t understand why I’m flunking my tests,” because we had study groups. 0 1503 Medications for HIV/AIDS LB: So, back to the stuff that was happening, then. What kind of stuff, externally, was happening with regard to that? Like, were you aware of things that were happening politically, that -- you know, we have those kinds of political issues now that have to do with COVID-19. There were political issues that were happening then. Do you remember how that had an impact on you?
 ; 
 ; NK: You know, I don’t remember the political aspect. I remember the drugs that were coming out. And it was really -- I found it awesome that scientists and labs were creating different kind of, like, medications that went from having these guys having to take gobs of pills to one pill or, you know, or less pills and how it curbed the side effects of what they were experiencing. (electronic tone) Now, it’s saying that I am running low on juice. 0 MovingImage Nan Kozul talks about the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. She focuses on working in several local LGBT bars, including Candida's ; her work in healthcare ; AIDS discrimination ; the formation of Fighting AIDS Continuously Together (FACT) ; and friends who became sick. This interview took place over two days because of technical difficulties. NAN KOZUL - PART 1 LIZ BRADBURY: -- computer, yes. Now, I have to read you these things. So, with this project, the Bradbury Sullivan LGBT Community Center at Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College, will collaborate on 40 years of public health experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community collecting and curating local LGBT health experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19. So, this is the HIV/AIDS part. My name's Liz Bradbury. I'm here with Nan Kozul to talk to her about her experiences in the Lehigh Valley community during this time of the COVID-19 pandemic as part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive. And this project had funding from Lehigh Valley -- I'm not supposed to say that, so I'm going to cross that off. Okay. Has had funding to do this data collection. We're meeting on Zoom and this is, the date of this is June seventeenth, twenty-twenty. And we're talking specifically about HIV/AIDS epidemic in the early part of the epidemic. Thank you so much for your willingness to speak with me today and to make this Zoom video. Can you please state your full name and spell it for me? NAN KOZUL: Nan, N-A-N, Kozul, K-O-Z-U-L. LB: Okay, and will you please share your birth date? NK: May fifteenth, nineteen fifty-eight. LB: Okay, and now this is the consent part, do you consent to this interview today? NK: I do. (laughs) LB: Do you consent to having this interview being transcribed, digitized, and made publicly available online in searchable formats? NK: I do. LB: Do you consent to the LGBT Archive using your interview for educational purposes in other formats including films, articles, websites, presentations, and other formats? NK: I do. LB: And do you understand that you will have thirty days after the electronic delivery of the transcript to review your interview and identify any parts you'd like to delete or withdraw or change from the project? NK: I do. LB: All right, okay. So, this has got pretty short little questions here in terms of asking you things. So, the first thing I'm going to say is that in the midst of this current health crisis we're experiencing, we're taking this opportunity to look back and reflect to capture the stories of those who lived through the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the nineteen eighties and nineties in the Lehigh Valley. So, let's just start out by saying do you remember the first time you became aware of the disease? And you could say anything you want, so, you know, you don't have to just stick to that. What do you think? NK: Well, I was bartending -- Dina opened her bar, Candida's in nineteen eighty. Prior to that, I was visiting the Stonewall and pouring there but once Dina opened her bar, I started bartending there. And it was when HIV first started -- it had happened in the bigger cities, so it was more prominent, like, in New York, Philly. It didn't feel like it hit so close to home that early. But eventually, it started to. And so, it was a hard time because being gay at that time and then having HIV on top of it being there, it was difficult. LB: Yeah. What were some of the things that kind of made you aware that this was happening? Like, were you hearing outside information about it and then also stuff that was happening around the community? NK: I heard more, like, watching the news. I saw a lot of news features. And then, of course, we were talking about it in the bar. And there was primarily a male clientele that came into Candida's in the beginning. I mean, it was a busy bar all the time but it was a lot of guys and -- but it was interesting because what happened was the -- I remember I had, just as the epidemic started, I had gone to a new dentist in Allentown. And so, I went to get my teeth cleaned and I'm sitting in the chair and the dentist and the hygienist, they were really animated, they were fun. I was talking to them and they were, like, "So, where do you work?" And I'm, like, "I work for a drug dealer but I also work at a bar." And they were, like, "Oh, where do you work?" And I said, "Candida's." And they left the room and I was sitting there (laughs) and then they came back in. And when they came back in, they were donned with gowns, gloves, and a facemask. LB: Wow. NK: And the whole mood changed from, you know, being light and fun to very serious. They cleaned my teeth, I paid them, and left. And I sat in the car and I was just so blown away with how I was treated. And it hurt me and it just caught me so off guard. I wasn't expecting that. LB: When was that, in the epidemic? NK: Right in the beginning. because working in the medical field right now, I see the fear of COVID-19 and so, it's an interesting dynamic to see, to experience both. Because back -- we didn't really know a whole lot about HIV other than that it was a blood -- you know, like it was transmitted through blood. And then, with this COVID-19, it was transmitted through air. And, you know, people just generally are scared. And so, it's been an interesting few months, just going through this and dealing with patients that are COVID positive and how we have to protect ourselves. LB: Yeah. NK: And I think about that patient sitting in the chair, thinking, wow, I was that person but I didn't have HIV. I was just a gay person and I was labeled right away and feared right away just because of the -- LB: And do you think that was because at that time, people really had no idea where it was coming from? Or they were just overly concerned? NK: I think they weren't sure how it was transmitted, so they wanted to take all precautions. But I just thought the way they did it was so, so blatant, you know? LB: Yeah. NK: I said that I worked at Candida's and they just went -- and then they just left the room. And then, I was like, wow, and it just was a weird time. LB: What kind of other kinds of circumstances in terms of relating to that kind of fear and concern -- did people feel that around the bar, too? I mean, were people sharing stories like that? NK: It was very -- they didn't talk about it. You know, the promiscuity in the early eighties was really high and especially at Candida's because you had the cemetery across the street, so it was easy access for private liaisons. (laughter) And it was interesting because it started to shift, slowly, but it started to shift. And it wasn't until probably later, in the later eighties, that I actually saw friends becoming sick and admitting that they were positive. Yeah, it was a tough time. LB: Yeah. Could you tell that they were sick? Is that what they were saying? Or they were just sort of confiding in you that that was -- NK: No, you could see they started to lose weight. Probably one of the most heart-wrenching things that happened to me one time was I was actually bartending at Jeff's City Line Pub (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible) yeah, it was probably -- I would say it was definitely probably eighty-eight, maybe, when I was bartending there. And a friend of mine, Joe, was the bouncer there and he was just the sweetest man. And he always helped, at the end of the night, to help clean up. And we used to throw bottles in big plastic bags, heavy contractor bags, and then throw them in the dumpster. And he came in one night after a busy weekend night and his hand was bleeding. And it was a pretty deep cut. And so, I applied pressure to it with my hand, you know, not even thinking, just because it was bleeding so bad. And then, I got a rag and I wrapped it around his hand. And a few weeks later, he came in to work and he just -- he looked really sad and he's, like, "Nan, I need to talk to you." And I said, "What's wrong?" And he said, "Nan, I had a Western blot and I'm positive." And he goes, "You should get tested." And it was numbing because I just remember compressing the cut and not having any protection. But the way he declined was horrible and he wound up getting Karposi. LB: Yeah. NK: And he was in St. Luke's and he had eventually gone blind and that was just so, so sad, just to see that happen because he was such a gentle soul. He was a really nice guy. LB: Did you get tested? NK: No. No, and I was going to but I knew that I hadn't broken skin but -- and part of that, probably, too was fear. I thought, well, if I get it, I get it. But, yeah, it was a -- interesting time when it first came out. It was -- and we just lost a lot of people. And some people that got -- that wound up being positive, you didn't expect, you know? You just [thought it?] -- because you just didn't expect it. And it was all ages. It wasn't just the young guys. And once the cocktail came out, it really helped. It turned the corner for a lot of guys that were positive. What's amazing, Liz, is working in the doctor's office today, I am amazed how many people are actually HIV. LB: Yeah. NK: I am shocked. And equal gender, you know? It's, yeah. LB: When it was happening back during the time of the epidemic, when you were saying that it was all different kinds of folks that were coming in and it was clear that they were positive -- and were they sick? I mean, at that time, particularly at the early time, it was really a death sentence. Would everybody sort of feel that? NK: Pardon? LB: Did people feel that way? I mean, you know -- NK: Just from what I remember, they kind of tried to just forge ahead and not think about it. Some dealt with it by drinking heavier (laughs) and just sinking into alcohol more. Others pulled away from the bar and going out. LB: Yeah. NK: And some just lived their life. Rob St. Mary, he was just -- I don't know if you remember him. He lived his life and he danced until the day he wasn't here anymore. LB: Well, I interviewed Mitch Hemphill earlier today and he mentioned Rob St. Mary, too. I didn't know him. So, what was he like? NK: Rob was -- (laughs) he was crazy. He was fun and I just remember him just loving to be in drag but just silly drag. But dancing at the Stonewall, he was always dancing. He's just really outgoing and friendly. And as the disease progressed with him, it was hard to see because they -- often, the guys that would or the people that got sick, they would just get really drawn, their faces, you could just -- they had this pallor about them that was -- you knew. And so, you just didn't say anything. You just respected that space. LB: Yeah. I think after the Pulse tragedy, the Pulse massacre, a lot of people were talking about how, for a lot of us, bars were our homes and it certainly was for everybody our age because there wasn't anything else. NK: Right. LB: And during the beginning of the epidemic, I think some people were really not supported by their families, although I've also heard that a lot of families in the Lehigh Valley were pretty supportive. What's your take on that? NK: Well, you know what, Liz? To be honest with you, that was -- I bartended every -- well, bartended quite a few nights. But Sunday afternoons was one of my days that I bartended. I can't tell you the amount of young guys that would come in and just cry to me because their parents disowned them. It was heartbreaking, you know? At a time where you had HIV and you were gay, it was such a one-two punch for people that got sick. It was just so sad. And, you know, it was a family. I wasn't out to my parents when I was that age and I remember talking to a therapist and she said, "Nan, your family, you're going to create a family at Candida's." And that's what I did. And they were family. It was so tight-knit. And when, like, in the mid eighties, there were -- we just wanted to do something and we -- and that's how FACT got started. And that was amazing. And it's amazing where that has come today. It's so awesome that it helps so many people. LB: Yeah. Well, tell me about the start of FACT there and how that happened. NK: Well, (laughs) it started as just a crazy -- Dina had a parrot that was her mascot and the Stonewall stole the parrot. And then she -- LB: It wasn't a real parrot. NK: No, it wasn't a real parrot, even though she had a real parrot. (laughter) No, it was just her mascot. And so, they stole the parrot and then we tried to steal the moose head from the Stonewall. (laughter) And it was really massive. But we wound up having these bar wars that were hysterical. And that camaraderie between Candida's and the Stonewall just created such a bond and that's where that -- it just created this force behind wanting to help people that were infected. And it just, you know, all the right people were in the right places. And they had the right connections to get everything financially solvent. And then, the games started at Rainbow Mountain. LB: Right. NK: And it was just amazing, you know? And every year, there just seemed to be more and more. And then, you had the Snow Ball. And it was FACT Bingo. It was crazy stuff but it all worked and all for a great cause. LB: And did you find people were coming in saying that they needed that kind of help? NK: There were some people that did, yeah. Some guys did. LB: Yeah. NK: But it's so wonderful for today to see how it made such a difference in the lives of the Lehigh Valley. LB: You remember -- I know that there were a lot of funerals and I don't know the history of this exactly but I know they were planting a lot of trees. You remember that? NK: You know, I remember that vaguely, that they were planting trees. I don't remember actually going to any funerals, only because it's a painful time. LB: Yes. NK: And my best friend, Pete, at the time, when he was HIV, I was devastated because he was my best bud. And at one point in time, he got really sick. He was at Sacred Heart Hospital and I went to go visit him and I walked right past the room he was in because I didn't know it was him. He always had salt and pepper hair and was always clean shaven or he had a small beard. But his beard had grown out and it was scraggly and he was sitting in a hospital chair. And I didn't even know it was him. It looked like an old man. And I went into the room and I asked him to get back into bed and he got back into bed and I had a healing crystal. That was my crystal and I put it on his heart. And I know when I left there, it was raining that day and I got to my car and I just sobbed. But he's still here and he's [super?]. (laughs) Yeah. LB: So, was it that he -- there were drugs or he got better enough to be able to hold out for the drugs? NK: He did. He did get better and he got on the right cocktail. I used to marvel at, you know, because he literally would take a handful of medication, in the morning and in the afternoon, I think, in the evening. I mean, handful. But he just, it's just amazing, even today, you know? He's doing great. And he came back for his horse. He loves his horse. And I'm glad that he survived that and, yeah, so -- but it's amazing. LB: Now, are you a nurse (inaudible) nurse? NK: Actually, I'm a medical assistant. I was two semesters away from being an RN back in eighty-nine, ninety, nineteen-ninety, and I was forced out of nursing school because I was gay. LB: What happened? NK: St. Luke's was not known (laughs) for their inclusivity of gay people, especially back then. And I had gone to nursing school. I was elected class president. I was going to graduate in nineteen-ninety. And two semesters before I was to graduate, I start flunking and I went to the instructors and I said, "Why -- I don't understand why I'm flunking my tests," because we had study groups. And I said, "Can I see the master key?" And they were, like, "No, we don't do that." And I'm, like, "Okay." And so, I was basically forced out of school. And there was an instructor there that actually had a crush on a friend of mine who was male and -- because I went back to school when I was twenty-nine. I was older. And so, I had become friends with this nursing instructor. Unbeknownst to me, she thought she could change my friend. So, we had gone out to dinner and at the time, I had just broken up with a partner that I was with. And I told her. LB: Oh. NK: And thinking that it was okay. (laughs) And it wasn't. And a few weeks later, she threatened me. She called me into her office and threatened to flunk me and that -- she just said a lot of things and I just left the office so defeated. But I wound up, unfortunately, having to leave the school because I didn't meet the grades. I got a job at Lehigh Valley, in ICU. They were great. They actually let me be involved with things in intensive care and were, like, "Nan, get your RN." And so, I was going to go to community college, NCACC, but I didn't want to start from the beginning. So, I wrote St. Luke's a letter to ask for transcripts of my grades to be released and NCACC said that St. Luke's had said they never heard of me. LB: Oh, my God. NK: And, like, at the time my parents were really upset. They thought I just quit school. And I just couldn't come out to them. At the time, I was afraid. I just felt so beaten [on?]. And it was really weird. Back in 2002, I had gone to massage school and I became a massage therapist. And one of the girls there at the school actually worked for St. Luke's and had gone through St. Luke's School of Nursing. And she said to me, she said -- I told her about what happened to me and she goes, "Oh, yeah." She said, "You know, Nan," because she was bisexual, said, "They threatened me." And I'm, like, "You're kidding!" And she's, "No." She goes, "Matter of fact, I said go ahead and try. I'll get my lawyer on you." And she said, "And they backed off." LB: [Oh?]! NK: And I'm, like, "[No?], I wish I had that kind of chutzpah," you know? (laughter) But so that's why -- not a nurse today. But I -- LB: Well, [you're a?] professional. NK: Yeah. LB: I think you, at the beginning, you said you were a drug dealer and I think that might be misinterpreted. NK: Oh, a drug -- oh, yeah. I worked for a drug wholesaler. LB: Okay. (laughs) NK: Yeah, I worked -- (laughter) it was a wholesale drug company that was based out of Harrisburg and we supplied all the pharmacies. So, oh my gosh, yeah, I wasn't a drug dealer. (laughter) Thanks for catching that, Liz! (laughs) LB: So, back to the stuff that was happening, then. What kind of stuff, externally, was happening with regard to that? Like, were you aware of things that were happening politically, that -- you know, we have those kinds of political issues now that have to do with COVID-19. There were political issues that were happening then. Do you remember how that had an impact on you? NK: You know, I don't remember the political aspect. I remember the drugs that were coming out. And it was really -- I found it awesome that scientists and labs were creating different kind of, like, medications that went from having these guys having to take gobs of pills to one pill or, you know, or less pills and how it curbed the side effects of what they were experiencing. (electronic tone) Now, it's saying that I am running low on juice. LB: Uh-oh. NK: Uh-oh. (laughter) I have it plugged in. I don't know why -- hmm. Plugged in. Uh-oh. LB: Is it plugged in? NK: Yeah, it is plugged in. I don't know why it said it's low on juice. Okay. LB: Tell people about, I mean, you know, twenty years from now -- it's bad enough now because people don't know what it was like at the beginning. A lot of young people certainly know and when we talk about young people, we don't talk -- but they're not that young. (laughter) But they don't know what it was like in terms of side effects and stuff like that. Talk about some of that thing that would happen in regard to the side effects from the drugs and also the symptoms of the disease that show -- you already mentioned some of those. NK: Yeah. One of the things that I remember, Pete had a hard time eating because it destroyed your appetite, the pills. And because he would get high. And I'm, like, "Why are you getting high?" He goes, "because this is the only thing that lets me eat." LB: Right. NK: And so, that was a big thing. That was a big side effect. And I think, too, I think that's probably why people that were positive wound up dropping so much weight, because that was a huge side effect. And skin issues. LB: Yeah. NK: You know? But mainly, it was just the weight loss, what was profound. LB: Yeah. NK: Yeah. LB: And so, when FACT was doing stuff and began to do stuff, when did sort of shift from this (electronic tone) idea of, like -- uh-oh. Are you there? Oh, dear. Oh. END OF AUDIO FILE Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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00:28:20
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Title
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Nan Kozul, June 17, 2020 (Part 1)
Description
An account of the resource
Nan Kozul talks about the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. She focuses on working in several local LGBT bars, including Candida's; her work in healthcare; AIDS discrimination; the formation of Fighting AIDS Continuously Together (FACT); and friends who became sick. This interview took place over two days because of technical difficulties.
Identifier
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PH40_14
Subject
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AIDS (Disease)
Date
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2020-06-17
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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https://lgbt.digitalarchives.muhlenberg.edu/files/original/0bacb81921577a99de87206bd9995bad.png
dbec4c18a8b54f9dae345bae36bc7892
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community: HIV/AIDS
Description
An account of the resource
In the spring of 2020, the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive received a grant to collect oral histories and written stories for 40 Years of Public Health in the Lehigh Valley’s LGBT Community: Collecting and Curating Local LGBT Health Experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19.
The collection consists of oral histories from individuals who experienced the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as oral histories from members of the local community as they lived through 2020's summer of Covid-19. Running through both are the themes of dealing with the fear of an emerging health crisis, loneliness and isolation, and coming together as a community in support and activism.
The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
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Liz Bradbury
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Nan Kozul
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=PH40_15.xml
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5.4 June 21, 2020 Nan Kozul, June 21, 2020 (Part 2) PH40_15 00:52:36 LVLGBT40 40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg AIDS (Disease) Nan Kozul Liz Bradbury video/mpeg KozulNanPart2_20200621_video.mp4 1.0:|23(8)|60(16)|83(5)|100(2)|117(13)|132(5)|149(6)|166(16)|183(13)|202(8)|227(6)|250(5)|269(15)|290(8)|303(16)|322(4)|341(4)|358(4)|377(2)|394(5)|413(10)|432(7)|447(10)|470(3)|487(5)|508(2)|531(3)|546(9)|565(13)|584(6)|601(6)|622(12)|639(12)|662(3)|689(5)|710(2)|731(14)|756(8)|777(2)|794(4)|815(3)|832(6)|851(10)|878(6)|901(7)|926(7)|945(5)|964(13)|989(8)|1010(2)|1027(9)|1050(4)|1071(5) 0 https://youtu.be/WsMLJ9ciPI0 YouTube video 0 Interview Introduction 0 116 Using Reiki to help AIDS patients LB: Okay. So we started talking before, so once again this is the second part, this is part two, of Nan Kozul’s interview of talking about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the nineteen eighties and nineties. So part one is already available and I think in part one we were talking a lot about -- well, we were talking about in general a lot of things, about some of the things you were doing and where you were working and people that you knew. And since we talked, because of those surprise technical difficulties, have you thought anymore about that? Like, I thought I should have said these things, or did it make you think about those things more? I think it was -- what do you think?
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 ; NK: Well, I realized that AIDS wasn’t a quick killer. Like I saw my friends who wound up with AIDS, they kind of -- it went slowly. I just remember some of my friends just kind of like losing weight, and just getting sickly, but it wasn’t fast. 0 584 Pranks by the Stonewall and Candida's / Stealing the "Candida's" record and tying up Nan LB: I was talking to Larry Kleppinger and at the end of the interview he started to tell me about all the wacky things that two bars did to each other.
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 ; NK: Oh, my God.
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 ; LB: Do you remember any of those? [laughter] I was talking to Trish about this and he was talking about all these crazy things. And then what ultimately happened was Candida’s said okay, now we’ve got to do something. We’ve got to make this pay, in effect. So talk about that a little bit, what do you think?
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 ; NK: (laughs) That was just --
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 ; LB: The memories of -- 0 759 Creation of FACT / The Summer Olympics and Bar Games NK: And all for a good cause, just to eventually come down to that point where everyone got together and created FACT. And then to have the games at Rainbow Mountain. Everyone took it so seriously for a number of reasons: for competition and to win, but also to know that the end result was we were getting money and creating something to help people. So it was really cool.
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 ; LB: Did you work at the games or did you have a table? What was that like?
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 ; NK: The games were -- (laughs) they came up with different things like drag racing, “drag” racing where they had to put on a hat -- it was hysterical. So there was a start and end. 0 1015 Men hooking up at the bar LB: I think you have to explain what you mean by that.
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 ; NK: Oh, well (laughs). It was new to me. Hell, I never saw women do that (laughs) but guys would just hook up. I remember being behind the bar and seeing a guy nod and (laughs) and they would talk and they would leave and they would go out and whatever they did. And then they would come back in. And sometimes -- I know of one guy that came into the bar, he would do it a lot. 0 1200 Women being HIV positive / Taking care of people who were ill LB: I wanted to talk about what that kind of stuff that was happening and there were people that were in. So I’m trying to -- suddenly aware that there was an issue. And I think I asked you before about people that were -- everybody stepped up. I think people really stepped up. LGBT people suddenly thought, okay, this is about us. We have to take care of each other. And people started to really take care of each other, especially when families were ostracizing their children, their sons who were HIV positive. Not very many in those days got HIV in our community I don’t think. I don’t know. Did you know any women who were HIV positive that you were aware of?
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 ; NK: No, even though I have to tell you, I work in a doctor’s office and I marvel at the amount of women that are HIV now. Just having me go into their -- read their history with the patients. I marvel at how many women are positive today. Because you didn’t see that in the eighties. 0 1367 FACT raising money for direct aid LB: And that was one of the reasons that FACT started up was to help people finance (inaudible). Because that wasn’t -- in fact, I don’t know that people really understand that FACT wasn’t around to raise money for research or something. It was direct aid.
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 ; NK: Direct aid. Absolutely, Liz. It was directly to help them. I remember when FACT first started out I just vaguely remember people getting groceries for people that were positive, taking them to doctor’s appointments, stuff like that. 0 1453 Stigmas and lack of knowledge about AIDS LB: And there was a time -- were you aware of a time where people really thought if you just went into a gay bar, you just walked around people, or you might have been in the restroom. People thought you could get it from toilet seats, do you remember that?
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 ; NK: Yeah, some of it was such nonsense with how you could catch AIDS. It was idiotic. It was a blood-borne thing. And I was -- it was transmission through blood. So I remember Johnny, this one guy that lived in Philly, we all kissed him. 0 1717 Friends who are HIV positive and how they grow older / Watching people get frail and come to the bar less LB: There must be twenty people dying at the beginning of the epidemic in six months and then improving forty years (inaudible).
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 ; NK: I’m just curious, my friends that are HIV today, how they’ll fare moving forward. Some of them are in their sixties, early-mid sixties, late sixties, and they’re still plugging along (laughs) so it’s really awesome to know that that medication was able to keep the numbers down that they’re not symptomatic. 0 1873 Jeff's bar / Diamondz opening in 1992 LB: What were the other bars? There was Jeff’s. Tell me about Jeff’s. I went to Jeff’s maybe all of one time and then it was kind of not there. I think I came to the Lehigh Valley in nineteen eighty-seven so I think I went one time. And then I met Trish and we weren’t really hitting bars but it was right then when we met. But what was that bar? I don’t think it was there much longer after nineteen eighty-seven or eight. Is that true?
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 ; NK: No. That’s funny because I actually (laughs) googled it because I was curious, like, wow, when did Jeff close his bar? Because I couldn’t remember when he closed it. I know it was up for eighty-eight, eighty-nine, and then it closed. And then Diamondz opened up in ninety-two I think. 0 2080 Candida's bar being like a family NK: (laughs) It’s crazy. Dina’s bar was so -- Candida’s was a small bar but I just remember how much of a family -- like we were talking. It was such a family. We did such things in that bar that were just so crazy. Like just fun things that it would be wall to wall people. Like you could not move. And it was just amazing. And we accepted everybody. And that’s what was so great about Candida’s. And even during that time when HIV was prominent there was never anyone that was shunned. And that’s the beauty of what gay people are about because we are so loving and so accepting, do you know what I mean? 0 2154 Uninformed assumptions on how HIV/AIDS was transmitted / President Clinton working to remove the stigma of having HIV LB: Did you ever have a circumstance -- and this happened to me -- a circumstance where you were talking to somebody about HIV who was not in the know and they said negative things about it and you said, “that’s not true.” That kind of thing. Did that ever happen to you, where people --?
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 ; NK: Not in the bar.
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 ; LB: I mean anytime in your experience.
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 ; NK: Oh, in anytime? Oh, yeah. (laughs) People were just -- I mean, before they came out with the -- about it being transferred through anal sex, they were -- I would hear people say, “no, you can get it from spit, you can get it from kissing, you can get it from touching.” 0 2411 New York Times article on Reiki being administered to AIDS patients NK: Well, I remembered after we were done talking, I said to Barb, wow, I forgot to tell Liz about the New York Times article about the reiki because in the eighties it was all about being spiritual (laughs) and just tapping into your quiet place and reiki was a great modality. People didn’t understand it but I thought it was really progressive for The New York Times to have such a big article and how impacted a lot of the gay men and giving them a moment of peace or calm by just administering reiki to them. 0 2465 Bartending and reflections on the 1980s NK: But I feel so blessed to be able to be a part -- remember, I said to Dina I would never want to redo the eighties because there were some sad times but there were so many good times. And I think it was because we were all interconnected. We all felt safe. What’s really funny is because I bartended in the gay bars for so many years, I mean I bartended at the Stonewall, I bartended at Candida’s and Jeff’s Cityline Pub, 13th Street Pub in Easton, I mean I tended Rainbow Mountain, I went down to New Hope and I bartended there sometimes. And so being in that community, it allowed me to just be myself and just have fun. And I remember (laughs) finally actually moving. I wound up managing a straight bar that was the sister to the Chicken Lounge. It was Marble’s down in Phillipsburg. 0 2698 Differences in bars for men and women / Lesbians supporting gay men in the community during the AIDS epidemic LB: Do you think that that’s because -- I think there was a big difference between the seventies and the eighties in terms of the division between men’s bars -- men’s and women’s bars -- because I went to a woman’s bar. And I talk about this all the time and now I can’t think of the name. It’s in Baltimore and it was --
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 ; NK: In New York?
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 ; LB: Club Mitchell. It was in Baltimore. And this was a bar that would not allow men in unless they knew the men. 0 2881 Valley Gay Press and Steve Black / Political activism / Gay and Lesbian Task Force / Le-Hi-Ho and the AIDS Services Center LB: One of the things that people need to understand, I think, is that in the nineteen-eighties, while we did have just the beginnings of some other groups that weren’t bar-oriented, like we had GLOSS, that sports group, and Force was kind of starting up, and MCC had been going for awhile. And then we had the League -- Gay and Lesbian Task -- or Lehigh Valley Gay and Lesbian Task Force. And then just after that we started PA-GALA. And there had been Le-Hi-Ho, which had been both men and women. But really in the eighties, the only thing that was really going in the eighties was the bars. And if the bars hadn’t existed, nothing else would have come out of that because that’s where people started out where they started to make --
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 ; NK: Wow. That’s so true. When did your Valley Press come out, when did that come out?
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 ; LB: Valley Gay Press, we started the Valley Gay Press in nineteen-- so Trish and I met Steve Black in nineteen ninety-four and we began to work on political stuff with him that year. I think we started the Valley Gay Press in nineteen ninety-eight. 0 MovingImage Nan Kozul talks about the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. She focuses on working in several local LGBT bars, including Candida's ; her work in healthcare ; AIDS discrimination ; the formation of Fighting AIDS Continuously Together (FACT) ; and friends who became sick. This interview took place over two days because of technical difficulties. NAN KOZUL - PART 2 LIZ BRADBURY: So I have to say, with this Bradbury-Sullivan LGBTQ Community Center and the Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College will collaborate on this "40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community: Collecting and Curating Local LGBT Health Experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19." My name is Liz Bradbury and I'm here with Nan Kozul to talk to her about her experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community during this time of the COVID-19 pandemic as a part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive. [Pause it?] here, hold on a minute. Okay. And thank you so much for your willingness to speak to us again. This is part two of Nan Kozul's interview, there were some technical difficulties the first time. So you can see part one that I've already uploaded. So to start, Nan, can you please give us your full name and spell it for me? NAN KOZUL: Nan Kozul. It's N-a-n K-o-z-u-l. LB: And will you please share your birthdate? NK: Five fifteen fifty-eight. LB: Okay. Do you consent to this interview today? NK: Yes. LB: Do you consent to having this interview being transcribed, digitized, and made publicly available online in searchable formats? NK: Yes. LB: Do you consent to the LGBT Archive using your interview for educational purposes in other formats, including films, articles, websites, presentations, and other formats? NK: Yes. LB: Do you understand that you have thirty days after the electronic delivery of the transcript to review your interview and identify any parts you would like to delete and/or withdraw from the project? NK: Yes. LB: Okay. So we started talking before, so once again this is the second part, this is part two, of Nan Kozul's interview of talking about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the nineteen eighties and nineties. So part one is already available and I think in part one we were talking a lot about -- well, we were talking about in general a lot of things, about some of the things you were doing and where you were working and people that you knew. And since we talked, because of those surprise technical difficulties, have you thought anymore about that? Like, I thought I should have said these things, or did it make you think about those things more? I think it was -- what do you think? NK: Well, I realized that AIDS wasn't a quick killer. Like I saw my friends who wound up with AIDS, they kind of -- it went slowly. I just remember some of my friends just kind of like losing weight, and just getting sickly, but it wasn't fast. It was just long. And what was interesting, actually one thing that I did think about was I remember reading an article in the eighties, in The New York Times about reiki. And how a lot of reiki practitioners were working on AIDS patients in New York City and finding that it really helped. Which actually catapulted me into wanting to become a reiki master and pursue reiki. And I did work on a few people, which was really cool, and it did work. It just calmed them. It wasn't a -- no one was miraculously healed, it was just more of a comforting, calming, that some of my friends felt. LB: What kind of -- you were talking a lot about all the different things that happened with the bars and I think a universal theme of talking about HIV/AIDS with regard to the Lehigh Valley in the eighties is really the involvement with the bars. But you were talking about some people that you really knew that were sick and people who were working through these things too. And did you want to talk any more about some of those folks that you knew, or things that you remembered about them, or what it was like then that people in the future could know? NK: Well, the friends that I have know that are still positive, that are still here living, they just live life at the fullest. Danny, I think you know Danny, he just was a wild and crazy guy in the eighties (laughs) and he still is today. But him and his partner have been together, oof, probably thirty-some years. And both are HIV but their constitution and their will to live, it's awesome. And my friend Pete, he's just amazing. I'm so glad we got to a point where we were able to find a cure somewhat, to be able to keep this HIV from killing so many people. It is, it's such a relief because I think I would have lost a lot more friends had that not happened. I think that's it as far as from what I remember of my friends that are still here today. LB: What do you think -- for a lot of people at that time, and there were loads of deaths and it was really terrible in those days, and then some people didn't die and then some people -- what do you think was the difference there? What was it? What do you think? NK: That's a really good question, Liz. I used to wonder why some people deteriorated at a much quicker time than others. It's interesting. About -- let's see, maybe ten years ago I was at Candida's and a friend of mine that -- he started to lose weight. He was always healthy and I never knew that he was positive. And he actually came up to the bar and he had a bag and he had a port. And one of the -- the IV line had popped out and I saw it and he put it back in and he said, "oh, man" and he took me to the corner of the bar. We were sitting at a table and he was like, "you know, Nan, I actually have AIDS." And I'm like, "wow, I never knew that about you." Because he looked so healthy. And he said, "well, right now I have pneumonia and a nasty infection, but I have this bag and this port and it's really helping me a lot." And I'm like, "well, that's good. And hopefully it'll knock it out." But one of the things that unfortunately as AIDS -- you know, as people that carry HIV, as it progresses, I think eventually it just wears on your organs and he wound up passing away maybe six or seven months later. But I was shocked. I had no clue. He kept that very private and he hadn't -- I mean, I'm sure other people knew but he had never said anything to me. So when he talked to me about it I was shocked because he always looked healthy, he was always fun and we always had a lot of fun together. Picnics and stuff like that. But I think that -- I can't imagine that for anyone that was diagnosed in the eighties that has to take that medication for prolonged use, inevitably I'm sure that it takes a toll on your liver and your kidneys and overall. LB: Some people might not know what a port is. (inaudible) NK: A port is typically a catheter that's put in a larger vein for quicker access for medications. So that's what a port is. It's a different type of catheter that IV medicine can be administered. LB: I was talking to Larry Kleppinger and at the end of the interview he started to tell me about all the wacky things that two bars did to each other. NK: Oh, my God. LB: Do you remember any of those? [laughter] I was talking to Trish about this and he was talking about all these crazy things. And then what ultimately happened was Candida's said okay, now we've got to do something. We've got to make this pay, in effect. So talk about that a little bit, what do you think? NK: (laughs) That was just -- LB: The memories of -- NK: I want to tell you, Liz, it was so (laughs) -- just the things we did to each other were -- I can actually hear Larry laughing right now because he has such a boisterous laugh. And the things that him and the other bartenders would do to Dina's staff, like us, it was so dastardly. (laughs) It was so funny. The one Sunday afternoon I bartended, and I always bartended on Sunday afternoon. And I opened the bar up. And at two o'clock no customers would be in there. So I opened the bar up and Dina used to have "Candida's" by Tony Orlando and Dawn in the jukebox. It was a little forty-five RPM that he had in the jukebox. And we had a key into the jukebox. Well, he and a couple other guys came in. And I'm like, "hey," and they just had this look on their face, and I'm like, "what are you guys doing?" And with that they took a chair, and they put it in the middle of the dance floor. And I'm like, "what are you guys doing?" And they're like, "come here, Nan." (laughs) And I'm like, "do I have a choice?" And they're like, "no." And I sat on the chair and they tied me to the chair. (laughs) And they went to the jukebox and stole "Candida," the record, and they left me there, tied up. And I'm sitting there. Dina can't here me, so (laughs) I'm sitting there, I'm like, "oh, my gosh, a customer's going to walk in and think that we were robbed." And who walked in but Linda Mason. So Linda walks in and she goes, "what are you doing?" (laughs) And I'm like, "untie me" (laughs). And it was just the funniest thing. And then one night we went commando and Dean decided we were going to Silly String the Stonewall. We went one night and oh, my gosh. We busted in the front doors with Silly String and just annihilated everyone that was sitting around the bar. It was -- I want to tell you, Liz, those were some of the greatest times of just having just so much fun. And all for a good cause, just to eventually come down to that point where everyone got together and created FACT. And then to have the games at Rainbow Mountain. Everyone took it so seriously for a number of reasons: for competition and to win, but also to know that the end result was we were getting money and creating something to help people. So it was really cool. LB: Did you work at the games or did you have a table? What was that like? NK: The games were -- (laughs) they came up with different things like drag racing, "drag" racing where they had to put on a hat -- it was hysterical. So there was a start and end. And there were all different kind of things, whether it was in the pool or whether it was out in the grass, but I know the one year that I was going to compete on Dina's team and I actually dislocated my ankle and broke my foot. So I was in a cast so I couldn't do anything. But it was so funny because Larry Kleppinger sent me a picture of me on my crutches at the games. He had a picture of me. And I'm like, "oh, my gosh." (laughs) It was so bizarre. But it was neat. And then there was always a trophy at the end. And it was just fun. It was so meaningful at the time because we were setting a precedent for the future. I think that young people today get it. Back in the eighties there was a lot of promiscuity, like crazy stuff. And the HIV epidemic really curbed it. I just remember seeing a lot less traffic and stuff like that coming in and out of the bar. LB: How long do you think it took for people to understand that there was a tie between promiscuity and getting the disease and then passing it around? This is a relatively small community so one would think that if people didn't understand how to get it, if somebody had been in New York, they got infected, they came back, that it could really go through the community? Was there that kind of feeling about that? NK: Another awesome question, Liz. Just from what I saw, I thought it took quite a few years until it really made its presence known that guys were becoming positive. In the beginning I remember thinking in my head it was going to stop. (laughs) And it didn't. It went on for awhile. It took years until it really rooted itself and guys realized, wow, we have to stop. That's -- LB: Was there a time when somebody stood up and said, "look, this is how we're getting it, we have to stop doing this"? NK: I didn't see that. I just saw where people just -- they would just come in and drink and that traffic, going in and out of the bar, that just really slowed down. And people came in and stayed and drank and then left. LB: I think you have to explain what you mean by that. NK: Oh, well (laughs). It was new to me. Hell, I never saw women do that (laughs) but guys would just hook up. I remember being behind the bar and seeing a guy nod and (laughs) and they would talk and they would leave and they would go out and whatever they did. And then they would come back in. And sometimes -- I know of one guy that came into the bar, he would do it a lot. I mean, I used to -- I know there were times I wanted to say, "would you stop already? Do you get what you're doing?" But it's not my business. And it's his life, if he chooses to live his life like that he did. Sweet guy but [whistles] he just was very frisky, you know. (laughs) Just to describe that, I don't know. (laughs) LB: At times when people would say, "I can't believe this guy never got it" because he was so promiscuous, and then other people -- like Dave Moyer was saying, people who had one partner and would become positive. And I had people say to me, "I can't believe I didn't get this." I can't either. NK: I know. Sometimes I just -- yeah. I don't understand it either. I just remember quite a few times in the eighties going to house parties and guys would be throwing the house parties. And it was men and women there but I walked into a room one time and there on TV was porn. Like male porn. And I'm like, "wow." (laughs) I was just so new to this whole type of lifestyle. But that's how it was back then. I was just watching a really interesting documentary on Netflix about gay porn and how prominent it was in the eighties. And it really was. It was crazy. Watching that brought back memories of going to some house parties and them having that on TV and I'm thinking, "by gosh, why would you have that playing in an afternoon?" (laughs) But that's just how the lifestyle was back then. LB: Yeah, I don't think you would have found that at a lesbian house party. I think that's true. NK: (laughs) Exactly. (laughs) LB: I wanted to talk about what that kind of stuff that was happening and there were people that were in. So I'm trying to -- suddenly aware that there was an issue. And I think I asked you before about people that were -- everybody stepped up. I think people really stepped up. LGBT people suddenly thought, okay, this is about us. We have to take care of each other. And people started to really take care of each other, especially when families were ostracizing their children, their sons who were HIV positive. Not very many in those days got HIV in our community I don't think. I don't know. Did you know any women who were HIV positive that you were aware of? NK: No, even though I have to tell you, I work in a doctor's office and I marvel at the amount of women that are HIV now. Just having me go into their -- read their history with the patients. I marvel at how many women are positive today. Because you didn't see that in the eighties. LB: But I guess what I was getting at -- and that's an interesting thing -- but what I was getting at was, did you know people that were taking care of other people, had a reputation that that person has taken this person into their house. Folks like that that you were friends --? NK: Yeah, I'm trying to think if I knew of anyone that did that. I had taken in Don Horton but he had lymphoma. But I'm trying to think of anyone that was positive. You know, I remember the Stonewall was so -- the older guys, like Dave Moyer, all those guys that frequented, they were really big caretakers. They were involved in that aspect of caretaking. And I know Markie Cummings. Markie helped a lot with -- she worked at the state but she really worked with Larry in helping people get support and funding just to help to live. LB: And that was one of the reasons that FACT started up was to help people finance (inaudible). Because that wasn't -- in fact, I don't know that people really understand that FACT wasn't around to raise money for research or something. It was direct aid. NK: Direct aid. Absolutely, Liz. It was directly to help them. I remember when FACT first started out I just vaguely remember people getting groceries for people that were positive, taking them to doctor's appointments, stuff like that. The simplest acts that was taken care of which was awesome because it's what was needed. When there was -- I think it was such a hush-hush thing when someone was positive because people were so afraid. Just like COVID-19. People are so afraid of being around with someone that's positive. Like me going to the dentist and getting my teeth cleaned and them donning gowns and masks. They didn't know and there was such a fear that people that wound up being positive were really shunned if they came forward. And that was just heartbreaking. LB: And there was a time -- were you aware of a time where people really thought if you just went into a gay bar, you just walked around people, or you might have been in the restroom. People thought you could get it from toilet seats, do you remember that? NK: Yeah, some of it was such nonsense with how you could catch AIDS. It was idiotic. It was a blood-borne thing. And I was -- it was transmission through blood. So I remember Johnny, this one guy that lived in Philly, we all kissed him. And it wasn't like, oh boy, now we're going to get AIDS. It was a shame and I think that was a huge stigma in the Valley. People didn't walk into a gay bar because I'm sure that hung in their minds, like ooh, you'd better watch it because you can get AIDS. And like you said, like a toilet seat. Like wow. It was the fear. It just went -- it was out of control. It had to be tough for people that were positive. LB: There was a time that people really didn't know where it came from but too much information -- one of the whole things about HIV/AIDS and the government and everything is that no one spoke about it publicly in the government for about, well, some of the guys were saying -- I think it was Larry who was saying he was really angry at the government for not saying anything about it until about nineteen eighty-eight, nineteen eighty-seven. Here it had been eight -- seven, eight years, and one thing about we didn't have social media, so we didn't have any way to share information, even though people will say disparaging things about the way things are today, we do really get information today. It's not like COVID-19 that nobody really knows where it came from, which is what happened in the flu epidemic of nineteen-eighteen. People didn't really know what to do about it. And I think at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, at the very beginning, people like Trish knew. Health care professionals really had no idea where it was coming from or how people got it. And they wouldn't talk about it, too. Were you seeing that kind of thing? There must have been a changed time where people were saying, "okay, look, this is how you get it. You get it from having anal sex. That's why you have to wear condoms." It must have been uncommon. NK: Yeah, I think that happened in the later eighties, where that actually came into fruition when they were just stating that. Rachel Maddow interviewed the scientist who came up with the cure for HIV and he was really, really cool to listen to because he was so tenacious. He worked around the clock trying to figure out a cure because he knew that it would wipe out millions if let go. And we're so blessed that we had that scientist just be so driven to find that cure. LB: I don't know if it's a cure. NK: Well, it's not a cure, but it -- LB: It keeps people from dying, let's put it that way. NK: Right. It keeps the count down. Yeah. LB: There must be twenty people dying at the beginning of the epidemic in six months and then improving forty years (inaudible). NK: I'm just curious, my friends that are HIV today, how they'll fare moving forward. Some of them are in their sixties, early-mid sixties, late sixties, and they're still plugging along (laughs) so it's really awesome to know that that medication was able to keep the numbers down that they're not symptomatic. LB: When people were dying -- I think I was asking you this before -- were those people that you knew? Like one person I was interviewing was talking about how having to go to all those funerals, it just got to be too much. It was so hard to keep doing that. Do you have a memory of that? NK: You know, I don't. I just remember people getting -- some of the guys getting sicker, becoming more frail, and then I didn't see them anymore. And that's how they -- because I was very active in the bar scene, working pretty much fulltime at the bar. So I would see guys coming in that were positive and as they became more ill they came in less and less and less and then they were replaced by new people. The traffic was always busy because in the eighties you didn't have straight bars that accepted gay people. Not like today where you can go into pretty much any straight bar and have fun. But back in the eighties you stuck to your bar (laughs). You stuck to the gay bars where you could feel safe. But I don't remember that. I definitely remember people coming into the bar and saying this person died, or that person died, and I'm like, wow. LB: What were the other bars? There was Jeff's. Tell me about Jeff's. I went to Jeff's maybe all of one time and then it was kind of not there. I think I came to the Lehigh Valley in nineteen eighty-seven so I think I went one time. And then I met Trish and we weren't really hitting bars but it was right then when we met. But what was that bar? I don't think it was there much longer after nineteen eighty-seven or eight. Is that true? NK: No. That's funny because I actually (laughs) googled it because I was curious, like, wow, when did Jeff close his bar? Because I couldn't remember when he closed it. I know it was up for eighty-eight, eighty-nine, and then it closed. And then Diamonds opened up in ninety-two I think. So the only bars -- and Jeff's [Cityline?] Pub was frequented by guys and girls. It was a mixed bar. But Candida's and Stonewall were primarily gay men with a splattering of women here and there. LB: I think the first or second time I went to Candida's Suzanne Westenhoefer was doing a show. Do you remember that? You were probably there I'm sure. Everyone was there. Every woman in the -- that was -- I don't think I was even involved in the community yet then, I didn't really start being involved until nineteen ninety-four. It was before ninety-four I'm pretty sure. (inaudible) NK: What's that? LB: That was one of the best nights I've ever had when I was involved in that kind of stuff. (inaudible) NK: What? LB: Was she there more than once? NK: I don't know. I know that she was at Dina's bar and I know that she was at Diamonds. And Lea DeLaria. But I can't remember if she was. Now, I left Candida's in eighty-eight and I came back in nineteen-ninety. Yeah, because I think that's when I worked at Jeff's Cityline Pub. But Suzanne Westenhoefer, she's still around. I've watched some of -- LB: [We're Facebook friends?]. NK: Pardon? LB: She's my Facebook friend. NK: Is she? (laughs) LB: Yeah. NK (laughs) That's awesome. LB: She was famous then. She was famous. For some reason she was doing a gig where there were three other lesbian comedians and there were so many people in the bar. So many lesbians. There must have been two-hundred women in the bar. I think we were just standing up for an hour and a half or something. That was something. NK: (laughs) It's crazy. Dina's bar was so -- Candida's was a small bar but I just remember how much of a family -- like we were talking. It was such a family. We did such things in that bar that were just so crazy. Like just fun things that it would be wall to wall people. Like you could not move. And it was just amazing. And we accepted everybody. And that's what was so great about Candida's. And even during that time when HIV was prominent there was never anyone that was shunned. And that's the beauty of what gay people are about because we are so loving and so accepting, do you know what I mean? LB: Yeah, I do. NK: And it created a nurturing place that people knew that they could come and they would be loved. LB: Did you ever have a circumstance -- and this happened to me -- a circumstance where you were talking to somebody about HIV who was not in the know and they said negative things about it and you said, "that's not true." That kind of thing. Did that ever happen to you, where people --? NK: Not in the bar. LB: I mean anytime in your experience. NK: Oh, in anytime? Oh, yeah. (laughs) People were just -- I mean, before they came out with the -- about it being transferred through anal sex, they were -- I would hear people say, "no, you can get it from spit, you can get it from kissing, you can get it from touching." And I'm like, "no, you can't. If that was the case, we'd all be HIV." You know what I mean? Sometimes it's just common sense. But again, fear just ruled a lot of people. Especially straight people. LB: Do you remember -- I think right when Clinton was first elected, so that was into the nineties, but there was a letter sent that went out to every person in the United States that explained where you got HIV and why. And it was to remove stigma, to make people understand that you couldn't just get it. You couldn't fire somebody for being HIV positive. That was included in the Civil Rights Act. And I remember my father was a very smart man, very, very smart man. Absolutely did not know anything about -- and when he gets the letter, I said, "well, did you read the letter?" And he said, "well, yeah, how would I even know this?" And I'm like, "how would you know this? I've known it for five years already." And it wasn't just because I was -- NK: Wow. LB: -- and he was -- I mean, this was a guy who did The New York Times crossword puzzle every day and he still had no idea. He thought you could get it at the salad bar or something like that. And I think that we as people who are part of the LGBT community don't always understand how out of the know so many people were. That people should have known better and you just -- how could you not know this? And one time, it's hard to not be. Did you think there was a circumstance where people were judgmental when people got it and they'd say -- did you ever find people in the community being judgmental of each other if people --? NK: Actually, I didn't, and that, to me, I thought that was really beautiful that no one judged anybody. At least I didn't find that. Bartending at Candida's I didn't. Or even the Stonewall. It was just a happy place to go to. And you had those interjections of sadness when someone was positive or someone passed away. But for the most part, the gay bars in Lehigh Valley were just an escape for people to just meet where they knew that it was like-minded and they would be liked and cared for and talked to, where you didn't feel lonely in your life if you were. You could go to the gay bar and feel safe. LB: We're coming down to a little bit of time left because we did the first part, so since this is part two and you said some great, really interesting things in part one. Was there anything else that you thought of or you said to Barb, "hey, I forgot to talk about this, this is something that I've thought of since we talked." NK: Well, I remembered after we were done talking, I said to Barb, wow, I forgot to tell Liz about the New York Times article about the reiki because in the eighties it was all about being spiritual (laughs) and just tapping into your quiet place and reiki was a great modality. People didn't understand it but I thought it was really progressive for The New York Times to have such a big article and how impacted a lot of the gay men and giving them a moment of peace or calm by just administering reiki to them. That was really awesome. But that's I thought of after we broke the last time. But I feel so blessed to be able to be a part -- remember, I said to Dina I would never want to redo the eighties because there were some sad times but there were so many good times. And I think it was because we were all interconnected. We all felt safe. What's really funny is because I bartended in the gay bars for so many years, I mean I bartended at the Stonewall, I bartended at Candida's and Jeff's Cityline Pub, 13th Street Pub in Easton, I mean I tended Rainbow Mountain, I went down to New Hope and I bartended there sometimes. And so being in that community, it allowed me to just be myself and just have fun. And I remember (laughs) finally actually moving. I wound up managing a straight bar that was the sister to the Chicken Lounge. It was Marble's down in Phillipsburg. And it was the first time that I was out of my gay element. And I didn't realize that when you're in that, working in a gay bar and feeling so safe around men, you're going to feel safe that men aren't going to hit on you if you call them "hon" or "dear." And that was a huge shift for me because all of a sudden I found guys treating me differently. And I'm like, what is this. And I forgot. When you're around gay men you feel safe (laughs) because there's no pretense there. It's interesting. LB: I remember one time Trish and I were leaving Candida's and something happened. We had a friend, Judy Art, who lives right around the corner. She still lives there, right around the corner from Candida's. Trish had to go in and talk to her and then there was some kids that were giving us a hard time. And guys came out of the bar and they were there for us in about two seconds. And it is true. But there is one other thing that we have to remember about the eighties besides all of that stuff that made it so much fun. And it was because we were young. (laughs) NK: Yeah, that's true. (laughs) LB: We weren't in our sixties then. We were -- NK: Nope, no we weren't. (laughs) LB: The bars that are like that -- there's no bars that are like that anymore. NK: Not anymore. You know, Liz, this is a true story. I was bartending one Sunday afternoon, and it was probably eighty-seven, eighty-eight. I was bartending and these three guys came in. Older, like middle-aged guys. And they sat at the bar so I was talking to them, and they were like, "why are you friendly to us?" And I'm like, "what do you mean?" And they were like, "well, why are you nice to us?" And I'm like, "well, why wouldn't I be nice to you? Where are you from?" And they said, "well, we're from Connecticut, and in Connecticut, there's women's bars and men's bars, and women don't talk to us gay men." And I'm like, "well, that's not how it is in the Lehigh Valley." (laughs) "Why would you discriminate, we're already discriminated against through sex, like men and women. Why would there be a division?" I said, "no, that's not how we are in the Lehigh Valley. We all work together." And they were like, "wow." They were blown away by that. LB: Do you think that that's because -- I think there was a big difference between the seventies and the eighties in terms of the division between men's bars -- men's and women's bars -- because I went to a woman's bar. And I talk about this all the time and now I can't think of the name. It's in Baltimore and it was -- NK: In New York? LB: Club Mitchell. It was in Baltimore. And this was a bar that would not allow men in unless they knew the men. And there was a reason for that because in the seventies there was guys, straight guys would come in and really cause problems for the women. I mean, really scary problems for the women. NK: Wow. LB: So if they knew gay men they would let them come in. But because of the AIDS epidemic and because of those circumstances, women who are lesbians really rose to help and support the gay men community. NK: I agree. I agree totally, Liz. I'm with you on that. And it helped, too, that when Dina opened her bar she was so interconnected with so many of the older gay men, like the old guys (laughs) that it created such a great foundation. It was just natural. And when HIV rose and came to prominence we all just banded together and took care of each other. LB: Because a lot of people who were involved with this FACT events, may not have been the board of FACT, but the FACT events, were women too. They were doing (inaudible), don't you think? Dina was so involved in that. NK: Sure she was. And then you have Gail Hoover, she was a realtor forever. So there was all those ties into everybody all just getting together to do the best they could to raise as much money as they could. LB: Well, great. So anything else that you want to toss in there? NK: You know, Liz, thanks for giving me this opportunity. I don't know how much I shared, (laughs) whether was -- (inaudible) but it was a lot of fun. And just even bringing up Larry Kleppinger's name just brings back such -- my heart is just filled with joy because that man is just a hoot and a half. He was just so much fun. And he's just such a great guy. But I appreciate it, Liz. LB: One of the things that people need to understand, I think, is that in the nineteen-eighties, while we did have just the beginnings of some other groups that weren't bar-oriented, like we had GLOSS, that sports group, and Force was kind of starting up, and MCC had been going for awhile. And then we had the League -- Gay and Lesbian Task -- or Lehigh Valley Gay and Lesbian Task Force. And then just after that we started PA-GALA. And there had been Le-Hi-Ho, which had been both men and women. But really in the eighties, the only thing that was really going in the eighties was the bars. And if the bars hadn't existed, nothing else would have come out of that because that's where people started out where they started to make -- NK: Wow. That's so true. When did your Valley Press come out, when did that come out? LB: Valley Gay Press, we started the Valley Gay Press in nineteen-- so Trish and I met Steve Black in nineteen ninety-four and we began to work on political stuff with him that year. I think we started the Valley Gay Press in nineteen ninety-eight. So it wasn't until ninety-eight. We were doing voter's guide information for about three years but he had been -- we sort of knew him, we knew him from the Pride Festival. We met him at the first Pride Festival. But at the same time there was that effort to start the Gay and Lesbian Task Force that was running in the Lehigh Valley for a little while. But what happened with that was that people tended to be -- there was no focus of it. And there was no -- I think that people just ended up to be -- because this is the point. FACT had an extraordinary focus. Everybody knew what had to be done and they did it. But for general stuff, even Le-Hi-Ho became AIDS Services Center because people had to deal with AIDS. They had to deal. But also that really codified our folks together. It made us all begin to work together. And the very first thing that Trish and I did that was part of the LGBT life here, because we've been here since eighty-seven together, was that we went to an event that was put on by FACT, that if you went that flamingo ice cream place that some of the money would go to -- and the Red Ribbon Restaurant thing. They were doing that and all of those things were happening at the very beginning of FACT. They were doing lots of different events and we got involved with that. But out of the bars also grew that thing of going to the March on Washington in nineteen ninety-three because the bars organized the buses. We went on our own and people came back and said now we have to have the Pride Festival. And I think everything changed because people could see that the organizational circumstances of FACT could happen. That people could do this and that there were a lot of people who were willing to be involved. And that really came out of the bars' response to AIDS. I think that's really -- NK: Yeah, you're right. They truly were the foundation of everything getting started. At least getting the community involved where everyone met. Wow, that's so true. I just remember when you would bring in your newsletters from the Gay -- how quickly they would go. People just waited for them to come in (laughs) and then they'd scarf 'em and they were gone. (laughs) Yeah. LB: Well, I'm going to thank you again, and I'm just going to turn this off since we're okay. NK: Okay. LB: I'm going to turn this off and I'm going to turn off the recording, but thank you again, Nan. This has just been -- NK: Thanks so much, Liz. (laughs) LB: I'm going to turn off the -- no, I have to turn off -- oh, it says stop END OF AUDIO FILE Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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00:52:35
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Nan Kozul, June 21, 2020 (Part 2)
Description
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Nan Kozul talks about the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. She focuses on working in several local LGBT bars, including Candida's; her work in healthcare; AIDS discrimination; the formation of Fighting AIDS Continuously Together (FACT); and friends who became sick. This interview took place over two days because of technical difficulties.
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PH40_15
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AIDS (Disease)
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2020-06-21
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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fe491dd4c1a1cefbae25c10e8a11542e
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40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community: HIV/AIDS
Description
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In the spring of 2020, the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive received a grant to collect oral histories and written stories for 40 Years of Public Health in the Lehigh Valley’s LGBT Community: Collecting and Curating Local LGBT Health Experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19.
The collection consists of oral histories from individuals who experienced the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as oral histories from members of the local community as they lived through 2020's summer of Covid-19. Running through both are the themes of dealing with the fear of an emerging health crisis, loneliness and isolation, and coming together as a community in support and activism.
The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Oral History
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Liz Bradbury
Interviewee
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Charles Versaggi
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COVID-19
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5.4 July 2, 2020 Charles Versaggi, July 2, 2020 PH40_01 01:29:39 LVLGBT40 40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg COVID-19 LGBT Community Global Pandemic AIDS Charles Versaggi Liz Bradbury video/mpeg VersaggiCharles_20200702_video.mp4 1.0:|23(4)|44(14)|85(4)|116(10)|147(12)|184(13)|243(2)|280(11)|315(9)|356(9)|397(16)|434(5)|477(4)|512(7)|537(6)|558(15)|589(7)|626(12)|655(7)|694(10)|735(6)|764(14)|797(2)|834(11)|873(8)|904(9)|943(4)|970(7)|1005(9)|1036(11)|1061(8)|1092(9)|1121(12)|1146(15)|1181(2)|1228(18)|1263(16)|1292(12)|1325(4)|1352(3)|1377(5)|1414(6)|1451(6)|1492(6)|1515(4)|1554(6)|1589(5)|1634(7)|1679(6)|1724(9)|1763(2)|1812(5)|1847(10)|1872(2)|1905(9)|1940(3)|1959(5)|1988(17)|2019(9)|2056(7)|2081(5)|2120(2)|2157(14)|2200(11)|2233(5)|2266(9)|2303(16)|2338(11)|2379(13)|2418(9)|2463(10)|2498(6)|2545(15)|2588(2)|2631(11)|2670(8)|2717(10)|2758(6)|2799(2)|2846(8)|2885(15)|2920(9)|2947(12)|2986(7)|3019(15)|3060(2)|3099(4)|3136(3)|3165(15)|3196(5) 0 https://youtu.be/SacdOzw-xsY YouTube video 0 Interview Introduction 0 193 Initial awareness of HIV/AIDS / Volunteering for the hotline LB: So, in the midst of the current public health crisis we’re experiencing, we want to take this opportunity to look back and reflect and to capture the stories of those who lived through the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the nineteen-eighties and the nineteen-nineties. And let’s start out with just one question I’ve been asking everybody, and that is, when were you first aware of HIV/AIDS? Do you remember that moment?
 ; 
 ; CV: The trigger moment for me was I moved into this house -- I had been living in the Valley since nineteen seventy-six, but I moved into my house here in Old Allentown in the summer of eighty-five. And shortly thereafter, I joined a community center -- now defunct, unfortunately -- called the Lambda Center, which was right up the street on Eighth and Hamilton. 0 326 The Lambda Center fading out and the AIDS Services Center forming / People involved with the AIDS hotline / Volunteer training CV: Again, this would have been in the mid-eighties -- mid-eighty-five to eighty-six, eighty-seven -- time frame. And I may be a little off on this, but I believe that hotline is what morphed into the AIDS Services Center --
 ; 
 ; LB: Oh.
 ; 
 ; CV: -- and all of those services. Now, there may be some debate about that -- but in this tired old memory of mine, there seemed -- 0 502 Experiencing people dying from AIDS LB: I talked to Bill Aull at Rainbow House --
 ; 
 ; CV: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; LB: -- and he spoke very specifically about people dying -- he was a nurse there. But for some people they were saying, “Well there were people dying, but they weren’t really people I knew very well. And yet, we were aware of it,” or, “I’d see them and then they just” -- like Nan Kozul was saying, “There would be people, and then they’d just disappear, you know. We’d never see them again.” 0 642 The formation of FACT (Fighting AIDS Continuously Together) / The Summer Games CV: And the killer every year -- and this was also, as a side note, the beginning of two organizations -- one is FACT --
 ; 
 ; LB: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; CV: -- Fighting AIDS Continuously Together.
 ; 
 ; LB: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; CV: And, through that, became the folks at the bars got involved with the summer games. 
 ; 
 ; LB: Right.
 ; 
 ; CV: And that also was an AIDS-related fundraising community activity.
 ; 
 ; LB: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; CV: But as a part of the summer games, they would read the litany of the dead. Oh.
 ; 
 ; LB: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; CV: I’m choked up just thinking about it, you know. It was just terrible. I mean it was good, but it was rough. It was rough. 0 701 Comparison of using condoms to wearing masks CV: The other interesting thing about it in those days was that, comparing it to now, you know, people didn’t debate whether putting the condom on for sex was, you know, their personal liberty or anything.
 ; 
 ; LB: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; CV: You know, and now today masks are like, you know -- there’s a big political statement. Well, back then, either you or your partner, or both of you, wore condoms, or somebody was very likely to die. 0 825 Talking about his partner being diagnosed with HIV/AIDS / Dr. Rhodes CV: So anyhow, I mean, it became an era that was, you know, death and obits, and people we knew were dying off. And you would go to the bar and you would see people one week, and -- just like Nan said -- you know, next week they wouldn’t be there. And you know, what happened? And, you know, and then you read the paper two weeks later -- they’re dead. And that sort of brings me to my personal story -- is that shortly after -- let me see -- I bought the house in eighty-five, and got involved with the Lambda Center in eighty-five -- eighty-six is when I met my partner, Jim. And he was a specialty nurse -- a high-end nurse -- in the hospital. And we had a wonderful life together. And then he was working a lot of overtime, a lot of twelve-hour shifts, a lot of back-on-back shifts over weekends. And then he was losing his appetite -- and he was thin to begin with -- but he was losing some weight. And I said, “Hey, Jim, you know, it’s time. You have a conversation with your boss. You know, you’re working too hard. Blah blah. We don’t need the money, okay. I mean it’s not like we’re starving here. Okay? So we’ve got to ease up a little bit.” And then he got a rash, and he couldn’t get rid of this rash. And he went to the dermatologist. And along the road, he gets an HIV test. 0 1159 Visiting friends who were in the hospital LB: Yeah. So you were talking about care -- you took care of other people too?
 ; 
 ; CV: I can’t say I took care of other people --
 ; 
 ; LB: Were you there at the time?
 ; 
 ; CV: Yeah. But we would, you know, visit hospitals, you know. It was, you know, what you would do. You know, you’d get to go and visit a hospital. Usually you couldn’t gang up in there, because, you know, the patients -- typically by ten, they were bedridden in the hospital -- they would get tired very easily.
 ; 
 ; LB: Yeah. 0 1357 The Lambda Center and the AIDS Hotline CV: Well, yeah. And, again, I bring it back to the Lambda Center -- that AIDS hotline. And I was around people like the Brian Markses, the Carl Mancinos, the Larry Kleppingers, you know, all the [Chuck Woodberrys?] -- all the people who were -- 
 ; Candida -- people who were active and engaged and doing something about it.
 ; 
 ; LB: Yes. Yeah.
 ; 
 ; CV: You know, and people weren’t going to just sit in a corner crying about it, and, you know, lamenting. There was plenty of that to do.
 ; 
 ; LB: Sure.
 ; 
 ; CV: But, while there was that to do, there was other work to be done. And nobody else was doing it. I mean, even the medical profession -- you know, I have Dr. Rhodes, who was probably the dean of the infectious disease community at the time. 0 1462 Obtaining up-to-date information in the 1980s CV: I mean, we’re data rich.
 ; 
 ; LB: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; CV: And disease management requires data to do it.
 ; 
 ; LB: That’s a really good point, because back then -- and certainly in the eighties -- at the dawn of computers, the internet 
 ; really hadn’t happened. So if you wanted to read something, you’d have to read it in a published thing -- in a brochure. You’d have to go to a conference, you’d have to call somebody up and say, “What’s new?” And --
 ; 
 ; CV: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; LB: -- so that’s a vast difference, with regard to that epidemic --
 ; 
 ; CV: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; LB: -- and the epidemic we’re dealing now. I mean, everybody, if they want to, can get up-to-date information. Some of it’s wrong, but that always happens. 0 1688 Attending funerals LB: So I’ve had people tell me that one of the things that people did -- there were so many funerals --
 ; 
 ; CV: Yeah.
 ; 
 ; LB: -- and there were just funerals all the time. And could you talk a little bit about that whole aspect of it, and going to 
 ; funerals, and who would do the funerals? And also, people have told me that people planted trees to celebrate peoples’ lives. Do you remember that?
 ; 
 ; CV: Yeah. Yeah. Well, actually (laughs) -- there’s several things that kind of come into play here. But yes, there were a lot of funerals. 0 2150 Memorial trees in Lehigh Parkway LB: It’s a whole different situation. Do you remember that thing about the trees? Because I remember that, and --
 ; 
 ; CV: Oh, yes. And I didn’t know of others, but a good friend of mine -- Larry Miley, who used to live across the street -- he and his wife were very active with the Lenni Lenape Museum --
 ; 
 ; LB: Oh, yeah.
 ; 
 ; CV: -- on the parkway. And Larry was a good friend of Jim and I, so -- they live right across the street. So he said, you know, “We would like to organize having a Native American ceremony” --
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 ; LB: Yeah.
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 ; CV: -- here. You know, a separate ceremony.” So we brought the family back down. 0 2303 Helping to start GLEE at Air Products / Having a supportive work environment LB: -- you were working at Air Products then. Was there an Air Product response?
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 ; CV: A very personal one. My boss at the time, you know, was very supportive. I said, you know, “The best time for visitors for Jim in the hospital was after three o’clock. So every day at three, I’m leaving at three o’clock. So, you know, we’re just going to have to figure this out.” No questions were asked, you know, “Go right ahead.” Obviously there was time off for grieving, and the funeral, and so forth. So the company was very, very supportive. This would have been right around the same time as GLEE starting at Air Products. 0 2576 Families discovering child was gay at their funerals LB: Great. Now there was a little bit of interference there, but you mean they’re still strained over the death? Or finding out that their son was gay?
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 ; CV: I think finding out. Because it’s the lack of closure.
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 ; LB: Oh, okay.
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 ; CV: When you’re given the opportunity to, you know, well, go through the conversation -- “Well, was it something we did? Did somebody make you gay?” You know. To solve those questions, and to get those out of your head -- you just don’t know. 0 2731 Practicing safe sex/prevention and protecting partners LB: And it was early in the epidemic, so there wasn’t any -- I mean, he wasn’t at a time when people were telling you what to do to keep from getting it.
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 ; CV: Yeah. Yeah.
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 ; LB: You know, because it was --
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 ; CV: Well, that’s --
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 ; LB: -- that time.
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 ; CV: Yeah. That’s it, you know. Kind of like what we’re learning about COVID now, you know -- now we’re learning, “Oh, you could be asymptomatic and spreading it around all over the place.” Well, there, back in those days, you didn’t even know the disease existed. 
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 ; LB: Right.
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 ; CV: Therefore, having unprotected sex -- what was different today than yesterday. 0 2970 Healthcare experiences for AIDS patients LB: Well, so at the time that Jim was sick, and at the time that other people that you knew were sick from AIDS, what about healthcare? I mean did you see positive and negative things were happening in the hospital? Because we had somebody in our extended family who -- at the beginning of the epidemic -- who couldn’t -- like they wouldn’t even bring the tray into the room when he was in the hospital. So --
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 ; CV: Yeah.
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 ; LB: -- this was a little bit later, when Jim was sick. But --
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 ; CV: Yeah. 
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 ; LB: But --
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 ; CV: Yeah. 
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 ; LB: -- [maybe it was a bit?] earlier.
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 ; CV: Yeah. He would have been in the hospital during the winter of nineteen-ninety. We took him in in February -- just a few days after my birthday, actually. 0 3209 Being on the board of FACT and fundraising LB: I can’t ever take mine off. When FACT really was formed and it started to do some very, very significant work in fundraising, were you involved with it?
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 ; CV: Yeah. Yeah. I was on their board -- I’ve lost track of how many years -- and probably went off the board and came back on the board, and was involved with doing my bit at the summer games too. And I think I was also on the committee that dispersed the -- I don’t know if they still do -- but we used to call them “contingency funds” -- 0 3572 Medications for AIDS compared to COVID / Reactions to COVID and wearing masks CV: And so I’m not really familiar -- I mean I’ve heard the stories about some meds being worse than others --
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 ; LB: Yeah.
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 ; CV: -- but we also know that everybody’s body handles meds differently.
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 ; LB: Yeah.
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 ; CV: So, you know, it could be that this med worked miracles if you had certain conditions in place. And if you didn’t, or if your T cells were too far low, or not low enough, they may not trigger, you know -- just like with some of the people getting that overreaction of their immune system to COVID. I mean, it could be the same thing. I mean if you were at a certain point along the HIV spectrum, some of the meds might have been more contradictory than others, depending on your gene make-up and your disease progression. So, you know, a lot was learned over the decades about meds. And the good news is we have, you know, PrEP. Whether people would consider that a vaccine, per say, probably not, you know, which also makes you nervous about COVID. Well, if we’d been pouring money into the research around HIV for decades - 0 3906 Advocating for testing for HIV/AIDS and reluctance to get tested LB: Right. Right. Did you come in contact with people who were -- I mean, testing became more of an issue and more available -- and certainly more available now, with the rapid test. It’s so easy now, in comparison to the way it was. But, you know, how were people advocating testing at that time?
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 ; CV: Well, I mean, it was the basics. Well, you know, your partner, or if you’ve had unprotected sex with somebody who you don’t know, you know, you need to go get tested.
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 ; LB: Yeah.
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 ; CV: And there was the usual reluctance, for two reasons -- number one, “Oh, they’re going to tell me I’m going to die. So why should I be in a hurry to go hear this news?” Number one, because there is no cure. 0 4058 Being out as a gay man LB: I mean there’s you and me and Trish, who every single person in the world knows, you know -- you ran for office as an openly gay man. (laughter) But not everybody’s like us. And --
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 ; CV: True. True. And, in some cases, thank God (laughs), you know. But, to be honest, you know, when I first came to the Valley, I wasn’t out, oddly -- I mean, believe it or not. And you have some personal experience with this, too, in that I used two names -- the Charlie, and the Chuck. 
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 ; LB: Yeah. 0 4609 Lehigh Valley resources for AIDS / Medical community engaged with local LGBTQ community organizations LB: (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible). But the Lehigh Valley --
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 ; CV: Yeah.
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 ; LB: -- and part of it was because that community center existed already, I think.
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 ; CV: Yeah.
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 ; LB: So there was --
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 ; CV: There was a community organization, and then quickly following it was FACT, and then the bar organizations as a fundraising machine --
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 ; LB: Yeah.
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 ; CV: -- for the summer games and other things. And then you had the beginnings of the AIDS Services Center -- 0 4842 Reflections for future viewers / Understanding diseases through science CV: Hmm. Well part of it is that, you know, there’s a whole bunch of messages now that are flooding through my mind.
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 ; LB: (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible). 
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 ; CV: (laughs) And some of it is tainted by our current situation. But at number one -- I mean, I’ll quote some of Tom Friedman, from yesterday’s New York Times -- you know, “Science. There’s this thing about science. So when you’re dealing with disease, diseases are a function of science. So if you want to understand the disease, you’ve got to understand the science behind it. And that doesn’t come from whatever the thirty year version of Facebook looks like, it doesn’t come from the thirty year version of Twitter, it doesn’t come from the thirty year any of those things. It’s going to come from the science organizations and the researchers who are leading this charge” -- 0 5033 Difference between AIDS and COVID LB: Okay. I’ll give you one more opportunity to comment on this, because when we talk about the difference between AIDS and COVID, one of the problems with the stigma of AIDS in the nineteen-eighties is that, governmentally, even the science world was not as desperate to deal with the disease and the cure for it, because it was affecting a minority group that they didn’t like very much. And that can happen in other circumstances as well. This is only affecting poor people in Africa. 
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 ; CV: Yeah.
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 ; LB: Or it’s only affecting poor people in the United States -- in the slums of the United States. 0 MovingImage Charlie Versaggi talks about the early days if the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the loss of his partner to AIDS, his work with the Lambda Community Center (formerly Le-Hi-Ho), the AIDS Services Center, and Fighting AIDS Continuously Together (FACT). CHARLES VERSAGGI LIZ BRADBURY: There. So now we're recording. I have to read you these things. So, with this project, Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College will collaborate on 40 years of public health experiences in the Lehigh Valley's LGBT community, collecting and curating local LGBT health experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19. My name is Liz Bradbury, and I am here with Charles Versaggi to talk about his experiences in the Lehigh Valley -- oops, wait a minute. Hold on. Why did that happen? Oh well. There's a little background noise that's happening. I don't want that to work. But anyway. CHARLES VERSAGGI: I don't hear it on my side. LB: Yeah, well, okay. (laughter) It's weird, because I turned it off. Where was I? Let's see. To talk about his experiences during this time of the COVID-19 pandemic, as part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT community archive. Today's date is July first, twenty-twenty, and we are meeting on Zoom. Now, you are in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Is that correct? CV: Correct. And it's July second. LB: Oh, it's July second. Uh oh. I said first in the last one. Oh well. So yes, it's July second -- let me correct that. And I have pinned you, I've turned off my phone, I said the date, I've said the place. We're good with that. Now thank you so much for your willingness to speak with us today. To start, can you please state your full name, and spell it for me? CV: Charles J. Versaggi, Junior -- Charles -- that's C-H-A-R-L-E-S. Last name is Versaggi -- V, as in Victor, E-R-S-A-G-G-I. LB: Great. Will you please share your birth date? CV: Can I just share my birth year? LB: Just your year? CV: Yeah. LB: Okay. CV: Nineteen fifty-one. LB: Okay. CV: That's just for security purposes. LB: That's fine. Do you consent to this interview today? This is the consent part. CV: Yes. LB: Okay. Do you consent to having this interview being transcribed, digitized, and made publicly available online in searchable formats? CV: Yes. LB: Do you consent to the LGBT archive using your interview for educational purposes, in other formats including films, articles, websites, presentations, and other formats? CV: Yes. LB: Do you understand that you will have thirty days after the electronic delivery of the transcript to review your interview and identify parts you would like to delete and/or withdraw? You can withdraw the entire interview if you want to -- although that would make me sad. In fact, we could redo the whole thing if you wanted to, but -- CV: That would make me sad. (laughter) LB: That would. I don't think we'll have to do that. So, in the midst of the current public health crisis we're experiencing, we want to take this opportunity to look back and reflect and to capture the stories of those who lived through the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the nineteen-eighties and the nineteen-nineties. And let's start out with just one question I've been asking everybody, and that is, when were you first aware of HIV/AIDS? Do you remember that moment? CV: The trigger moment for me was I moved into this house -- I had been living in the Valley since nineteen seventy-six, but I moved into my house here in Old Allentown in the summer of eighty-five. And shortly thereafter, I joined a community center -- now defunct, unfortunately -- called the Lambda Center, which was right up the street on Eighth and Hamilton. LB: Yes. CV: And among the things I volunteered for there was the very early beginnings of the AIDS hotline. So I can pin the date that I got knowledgeable about AIDS to about nineteen eighty-five. LB: Yeah. CV: And the trigger was, you know, becoming involved in the Lambda Center, and becoming involved with the hotline as a result of it. LB: Yeah. What did the hotline do? CV: Well, I mean I'm not even sure how we advertised, now that I think about it, because we didn't have, you know, the venues we have now, in terms of social media. So we probably had posters out in the bars, which would have been the main way to communicate. LB: Yeah. CV: And I would go there one or two nights a week and answer phone calls. People would call in -- some with AIDS-related questions, and others with everything from a prank call to, you know, "What do you know about birth control?" You know, "I have a heroin addiction. What can I do about that?" You know -- there was a phone number you could call. So I mean it got everything, and some of it was actually AIDS-related. LB: Yeah. Did you get a lot of calls per night? CV: I think it varied. Some nights I just sat there and read my magazines, and other nights, you know, it was one call after another. It varied. Again, this would have been in the mid-eighties -- mid-eighty-five to eighty-six, eighty-seven -- time frame. And I may be a little off on this, but I believe that hotline is what morphed into the AIDS Services Center -- LB: Oh. CV: -- and all of those services. Now, there may be some debate about that -- but in this tired old memory of mine, there seemed -- LB: (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible) CV: -- the Lambda Center has faded out over time, and the AIDS Services Center got engaged. So there certainly was that transition -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- and whether it was deliberate or just evolution, I don't know. But it -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- it was a precursor. LB: You know, I'm doing ten interviews -- we have a grant to do ten of these interviews, and you're the last one. CV: Yeah. LB: And so I've had a lot of people talking about the center, and I just talked to Rose Craig -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- and a lot of people are talking about the center and how -- but you're the first person who mentioned the hotline, which I think is very -- CV: Oh, yeah? LB: -- important. Now, some of these people were a little bit later than eighty-five. CV: Yeah. LB: But who else was working on the hotline with you? CV: I believe Brian Marks -- LB: Okay. CV: -- was involved then. I don't know if Carl Mancino was or not. LB: Yeah. CV: I know he was involved in the center, but I can't remember if he was actually a volunteer. LB: Sure. CV: And we probably had a handful of others. But -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- names have escaped me over the years. And I do remember -- although I can't tell you who did it -- but I do remember going to one or two training sessions -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- that were by no means what we would currently think of today -- I mean today you would go through about a week's worth of material -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- to get ready for this. I mean we spent probably a couple hours -- because back in those days, I don't know if there was much more than a couple hour's worth of information for people to know. I mean it wasn't a medical discussion. This was really a discussion around, okay, "I don't know if my boyfriend has AIDS or not. How should I protect myself?" Or "I have AIDS. How should I protect my boyfriend?" And "What is defined by safe sex?" And those were the kinds of conversations. LB: Yeah. CV: So, you know, you didn't need a week's worth of material to answer those questions. But it started to be instilled -- at least in me -- which becomes important a little later on in this discussion -- you know, what safe sex was all about -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- and how important, and how deadly, this disease was. LB: Right. That must have been really tough, because there weren't a lot of answers to some of those questions. CV: Absolutely not. In fact, the right questions hadn't even been formulated yet. So, I mean, it was early days. Very early days. LB: I mean, I've noticed that for some people, it is very hard for them to talk about people who are dying. CV: Yeah. LB: They have a very, very hard time mentioning it. I talked to Maria Rodale, and so she talked about her brother and other people. CV: Yeah. LB: I talked to Bill Aull at Rainbow House -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- and he spoke very specifically about people dying -- he was a nurse there. But for some people they were saying, "Well there were people dying, but they weren't really people I knew very well. And yet, we were aware of it," or, "I'd see them and then they just" -- like Nan Kozul was saying, "There would be people, and then they'd just disappear, you know. We'd never see them again." CV: Yeah. LB: So talk about a little bit about that -- like in terms of -- CV: Well my experience -- it runs the whole gamut. There will be a personal part -- which I'll get to in a little bit --but in the beginning, I mean, it was almost sinful in that, you know, you would see somebody on the street and, "Oh, John lost some weight" -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- "uh oh. John must be sick." LB: Yeah. CV: And whether he lost weight for a diet or not, it didn't make any difference. If you looked like you were losing weight -- and, quite frankly, ninety-five percent of people, if they were losing weight, they were sick. LB: Yeah. CV: I mean that's just the way it was. And it was just like, you know, you were looking at death to be. And it was just you just knew, because back then, you know, there were no cocktail drugs. I mean, you know, you weren't going to slow it down. It was going to take it's course. And, you know, it was a one-way ticket -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- and it was a very short runway. And then you would see them the next week, and then they could barely walk. I remember one dear friend of mine who passed away -- probably no older than age twenty-seven maybe at the oldest -- you know, walking his mother across Ninth Street to go to bingo one night. And this was a party boy. This was a boy who was out every night -- party, party, party, party. LB: Yeah. CV: And now his skinny little legs were walking with his mother, taking her to a bingo game. You know, what a one-eighty that was. LB: Yeah. CV: And, sure enough, you know, I was by his bedside, and helping him eat, and -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- you know, those sorts of things. And it's interesting you brought up Nan, because, I mean, she's dealt with some of the death quite personally. And it actually was a dark era, quite honestly. I mean, death was a regular part of the conversation. LB: Yeah. CV: I mean, you know, you would look in the obits, and, "Oh, John died. Mark died. Fred's dead" -- you know. I mean it was a litany of saints. LB: Yeah. CV: And the killer every year -- and this was also, as a side note, the beginning of two organizations -- one is FACT -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- Fighting AIDS Continuously Together. LB: Yeah. CV: And, through that, became the folks at the bars got involved with the summer games. LB: Right. CV: And that also was an AIDS-related fundraising community activity. LB: Yeah. CV: But as a part of the summer games, they would read the litany of the dead. Oh. LB: Yeah. CV: I'm choked up just thinking about it, you know. It was just terrible. I mean it was good, but it was rough. It was rough. LB: Yeah. CV: You know, in the early years of that, everybody in that audience -- everybody who attended that -- knew the people who died. LB: Right. CV: And then, over time, newer, younger people came into the play, and fewer people knew all the names -- although they would have recognized some. But that's just the way life goes on. The other interesting thing about it in those days was that, comparing it to now, you know, people didn't debate whether putting the condom on for sex was, you know, their personal liberty or anything. LB: Yeah. CV: You know, and now today masks are like, you know -- there's a big political statement. Well, back then, either you or your partner, or both of you, wore condoms, or somebody was very likely to die. LB: Yeah. CV: I mean it wasn't like a debate about politics or anything. This was life and death. It was real simple. The equation was very, very straightforward. And I tell people, you know, half with a smirk on my face, "Consider that mask your face condom now." LB: Yeah. CV: "Just think of it that way. Now you want to go into having a sexual relationship with somebody without a condom? So are you going to go into public spaces where you're going to be around a lot of people without wearing your face condom? You know, get with it." LB: Yeah. CV: You know, I understand the politics and all that -- I understand. Got it. But this is health. This is a little different. LB: Right, right. CV: And again, as we all know, the mask isn't protecting you -- it's protecting other people. LB: Right. CV: So let's get with it. Anyway. My commercial on masks. LB: And I love asking everybody about the COVID response -- CV: Yes. LB: -- but go on and talk about this, because I think you know what you want to say. So go ahead. CV: Okay. So over time, you know, the disease took its own course. And I shouldn't just say this, but I'm speaking as a gay man -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- from the gay man's perspective. Parallel to the gay male experience -- I mean, there is the whole IV drug user population. So, I mean, they were going through the same crises that we were going through as gay men, but, you know, it was a parallel crisis. But I wasn't an IV drug user, so I can't bring you that perspective. I'm sure that was a whole different perspective. LB: Yeah. CV: So anyhow, I mean, it became an era that was, you know, death and obits, and people we knew were dying off. And you would go to the bar and you would see people one week, and -- just like Nan said -- you know, next week they wouldn't be there. And you know, what happened? And, you know, and then you read the paper two weeks later -- they're dead. And that sort of brings me to my personal story -- is that shortly after -- let me see -- I bought the house in eighty-five, and got involved with the Landis Center in eighty-five -- eighty-six is when I met my partner, Jim. And he was a specialty nurse -- a high-end nurse -- in the hospital. And we had a wonderful life together. And then he was working a lot of overtime, a lot of twelve-hour shifts, a lot of back-on-back shifts over weekends. And then he was losing his appetite -- and he was thin to begin with -- but he was losing some weight. And I said, "Hey, Jim, you know, it's time. You have a conversation with your boss. You know, you're working too hard. Blah blah. We don't need the money, okay. I mean it's not like we're starving here. Okay? So we've got to ease up a little bit." And then he got a rash, and he couldn't get rid of this rash. And he went to the dermatologist. And along the road, he gets an HIV test. LB: Yeah. CV: Through Dr. Rhodes, actually. He's still with us, and doing a fabulous job in the COVID arena -- Dr. Rhodes. And I can clearly remember -- it was just before Thanksgiving in nineteen-ninety, I came back, and the test was positive. Based on his T cell count, which was very, very low, they surmised that he got infected before he and I met, somewhere in his prior journeys. And Jim was very young. I mean at the time he was probably twenty-seven, maybe twenty-eight. So that was around Thanksgiving and Christmas time -- in fact, there's pictures right above my head behind us here. And by July -- July ninth, actually -- coming up in a few days -- he passed away. It was obviously a very tragic point in my life. And people keep saying, "Well how come you're still alive?" LB: Yeah. CV: Because we lived together for -- if he was infected before he got to meet me -- we were together almost six years -- LB: Right. CV: -- you know, in the same bed, in the same room. So it wasn't like, you know, we were living across the street. And it goes back to this HIV training I had for that hotline. I mean I knew the consequences, and I knew what safe sex was about. And I just said, "Hey, you know, I'm talking to people once or twice a week on this hotline, Jim, you know. We're going to follow this process." Little did I know -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- that five and a half years later, I would be burying the guy. So, you know, it was tough for everybody. And many more probably than you realize have personal stories that go along with them. LB: Yeah. CV: Again, just like in COVID, you know. There's all these stories -- now one of the differences is that now your loved ones are in a nursing home or something -- you can't go see them. LB: Right. CV: Then, I was at his bedside when he died, I was at other people's bedsides, you know, up until the day before. LB: Right. CV: So, you know, there was a physical ability to get close, which kind of lent to the closure. You could have a proper funeral, and a viewing, and so forth. But there were similarities. I mean, the beginning, everybody said, "Eh, no big deal. A couple of dead monkeys," or whatever. You know, "No big deal." Next thing you know, people you knew were dropping like flies. LB: Yeah. CV: And same thing with COVID -- "Oh, it's going to go away." "Oh, it will fade away in the summer." Not so much. Not so much. So it's one of those things -- you have to learn to pay attention to these things. And science counts. And the medical profession, you know, knows more than a newspaper report, you know. (laughs) And they certainly know more than a blogger that, you know, is sitting there just inventing their strategy and perspective on science, you know. I'm a believer in credentials, you know. If you don't have the credentials and the experience, you know. And that goes back to our Dr. Rhodes, you know. I mean the guy has been in this business -- deep into this business -- since my meeting him in the AIDS timeframe, back in eighty-five, eighty-six. So when Dr. Rhodes says something, I believe him. LB: Yeah. And he's at Lehigh Valley Hospital? Or -- CV: Right, yeah. And he was one of I think the two experts that the congress woman from Bethlehem -- LB: Lisa Boscola? No, congresswoman -- CV: Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry, yeah. Boscola. LB: She's a state senator. CV: Yeah. She had referenced Luther Rhodes and some other gentleman in conversations that she was trying to get the Wolf Administration to adjust the openings and closings of businesses and so forth. LB: Yeah. CV: So they played a pretty important role in kind of defining what the disease looked like, and -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- what's safe and what's not safe. LB: Yeah. So you were talking about care -- you took care of other people too? CV: I can't say I took care of other people -- LB: Were you there at the time? CV: Yeah. But we would, you know, visit hospitals, you know. It was, you know, what you would do. You know, you'd get to go and visit a hospital. Usually you couldn't gang up in there, because, you know, the patients -- typically by ten, they were bedridden in the hospital -- they would get tired very easily. LB: Yeah. CV: And they were all skin and bones. And, you know, they were being poked left and right, and fed this and fed that, and this test and that test. But you could get, you know, maybe a half an hour or so -- bring something to read, listen to some music, or just sit there and read to them, you know, or bring them some snacks. Because their bodies were wasting away, they could eat a lot of junk food (laughs), because -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- you know, that's not what was going to kill them, you know. If anything, it might put some weight on them. LB: Yeah. CV: But yeah. So, you know, we would share junk food, and, you know, tell some stories and read a book maybe together. LB: Yeah. I think one of the people I spoke to said that he felt that the loss of appetite was particularly near the end of the -- you know, I talk about the disease time going from nineteen eighty-five to nineteen ninety-three, and after ninety-three there was actual medication that people -- it didn't save everybody, but it could save people. There was hope. CV: Yeah. LB: And he was saying that if people were able to make it to nineteen ninety-three (laughs) -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- in some of the instances where it's just that they wasted away. So there was that, you know -- to take marijuana, or -- I knew somebody like who was a friend of mine who scored marijuana for her friend, because he was just not eating -- he was a young kid, and he was -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- just wasting away. And it was the only -- CV: Well part of the disease -- similar to COVID, in that, you know, it affects people in different ways. But one of the more common effects was digestive inflammation -- that, essentially, you just had diarrhea all the time. LB: Oh. CV: So even though you were eating, it didn't do much good, because it was coming out of you as fast as it was going in. And that also lead to severe dehydration. I mean, and then that taxes the organs. So when they get to that point, that's when they need to be on some kind of IV and hospitalized -- because, you know, the loss of appetite is one thing, but the inability to keep food in and process it and get the nourishment out of it is a whole other extension to that. So yeah. Using, you know, marijuana for beefing up the appetite -- that would work. But if your body had gotten to the point where it was no longer keeping food, then -- LB: Right. CV: -- you could have all the appetite you want, but you're not going to be able to outrun it. LB: Right. Yeah. You have a different perspective, it sounds like, than a lot of other people. For one thing, you were really here in nineteen eighty-five. Several of the people I've spoken to were talking about a little bit later -- or several years later -- because they seemed to be a little less aware. But you were really aware, right at the beginning of stuff. And so -- CV: I -- LB: Go ahead. CV: Well, yeah. And, again, I bring it back to the Lambda Center -- that AIDS hotline. And I was around people like the Brian Markses, the Carl Mancinos, the Larry Kleppingers, you know, all the [Chuck Woodberrys?] -- all the people who were -- Candida -- people who were active and engaged and doing something about it. LB: Yes. Yeah. CV: You know, and people weren't going to just sit in a corner crying about it, and, you know, lamenting. There was plenty of that to do. LB: Sure. CV: But, while there was that to do, there was other work to be done. And nobody else was doing it. I mean, even the medical profession -- you know, I have Dr. Rhodes, who was probably the dean of the infectious disease community at the time. And he'd probably tell you, you know, "Back then, I was learning," which, you know, everybody was. So, you know, the medical community -- I mean I'd have to lecture doctors. LB: Yeah. CV: I mean I'm not a med guy, okay? (laughs) I have some common sense, I can understand it, but I'm not a medical professional. But I would go into my personal physician -- my GP -- and, you know, he would say, "Well, doesn't safe sex cure it?" I said, "No," you know. And we look at it now, and you say, "Oh, well that was a stupid question." But, again, back then, we didn't even know the questions. We didn't even know -- LB: Right. CV: -- the questions to ask, much less have the answers. But, you know, the medical profession was really at a loss. And, again, they don't have the technologies that we have today -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- to keep us up to date, you know. LB: Right. CV: And all the newsletter and email, newsletters I get, and all the websites you can visit, and all the instantaneously updated statistics and trends and analyses -- I mean, we're data rich. LB: Yeah. CV: And disease management requires data to do it. LB: That's a really good point, because back then -- and certainly in the eighties -- at the dawn of computers, the internet really hadn't happened. So if you wanted to read something, you'd have to read it in a published thing -- in a brochure. You'd have to go to a conference, you'd have to call somebody up and say, "What's new?" And -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- so that's a vast difference, with regard to that epidemic -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- and the epidemic we're dealing now. I mean, everybody, if they want to, can get up-to-date information. Some of it's wrong, but that always happens. CV: Yeah. Yeah. LB: Well that's an extraordinarily important point. CV: And let me just add something to that. And the blessing is that we have all that. LB: Yeah. CV: But there's a bit of a curse that goes with it, and that is those same venues can be also an outlet for all the wrong stuff -- either intentionally or otherwise. So you've got a lot of people who are preaching things about -- today, for example -- wearing masks. LB: Yeah. CV: They're not making medical statements. I mean they're making some perspective -- or, God forbid, off of some fake website some place that they never bothered to proof check and everything else, you know. So it taxes us, as consumers of information. Because not only do you have to be able to understand what's right -- you have to be smart enough to be able to filter out the nonsense. LB: Right. CV: So it doesn't make it easier that we have all this stuff. Now, at this juncture in time, it makes it a bit challenging, because you have to be smart enough to be able to sift through all this and use the right materials for the right purposes. LB: Yeah. CV: I interrupted you I think. LB: No, I don't want to interrupt you at all. I just want you to keep talking. So (laughter) (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible) -- CV: Well, quick scan my notes, and see if -- yeah, we talked about that, and we talked about that. COVID, and medical profession -- oh. The fact that -- and I shouldn't smirk at this -- but the fact that, you know, going for your blood test back then was the equivalent of waiting for your death sentence. LB: Yeah. CV: Because, again, it was pre-cure. LB: Yeah. CV: I mean there was barely any remedies. I mean, you know, they tried to make you comfortable and keep your fluid and nutrition until you die, really. LB: Yeah. Yeah. CV: I mean and I remember, as soon as Jimmy said, you know, "I'm positive," you know, and he said, "You have to go get a test." And I'm thinking, "Oh my God," you know. And I mean I was still working, you know, and I'm like sitting by the phone at the office, like just not knowing, you know. And you just hold your breath. And then, again, similar to today, you could have a negative test, and then six months later have a positive test. LB: Yeah. CV: You know, so you had to go through that test death sentence expectation -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- every six months for years, until you finally figured out -- assuming you hadn't misbehaved -- that, you know, you were okay. And at least now when you get the death sentence -- I mean I know guys who have been living with HIV/AIDS for twenty, twenty-five years now. Twenty years. Yeah. So, I mean, it seems like their quality of life is pretty decent -- I mean they're still working, and, you know, to look at them, you wouldn't know -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- as opposed to twenty-five years ago -- if you looked them, you would definitely know. LB: So I've had people tell me that one of the things that people did -- there were so many funerals -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- and there were just funerals all the time. And could you talk a little bit about that whole aspect of it, and going to funerals, and who would do the funerals? And also, people have told me that people planted trees to celebrate peoples' lives. Do you remember that? CV: Yeah. Yeah. Well, actually (laughs) -- there's several things that kind of come into play here. But yes, there were a lot of funerals. They were actually no different, really, than the funerals today, with one major exception. If you died of AIDS then, you were most likely a gay man. LB: Yeah. CV: And whether you were out to your family or not, you were now. LB: Yeah. CV: Whether they wanted to believe it or not, you were in a box, because you died of, at the time, a gay man's disease -- even though we know it's not. But at the time, that's what it was. So the pall over the whole funeral of a family who didn't know about their gay son's life is now -- we can't even talk about it -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- because they're in a box. LB: Yeah. CV: And now all these strange guys have showed up -- LB: Oh, yeah. CV: -- to pay their respects, all crying their eyes out. And, you know, the dynamic at that funeral is just one that I'd never experienced before in my life. And, again, it wasn't just one or two. I mean, and there were guys who were out to their families, and they had a healthy relationship and so forth. But I know other guys who one or two of the parents wouldn't come to the funeral, you know -- and/or siblings. It was truly mixed. So it just made the funerals -- they're complicated enough, emotionally -- but it wasn't even a layer. It was an exponential degree of complexity added to a funeral, from an emotional standpoint. It was just emotionally charged from head to toe. I mean I would go to those funerals and come back and fall asleep for the rest of the day. I was exhausted. I was exhausted. And, in my case, it was a very beautiful event -- I mean we managed to talk through a lot of stuff with the family ahead of time -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- a very religious family -- very religious. So, you know, "How could this be happening?" Et cetera, et cetera. But very loving. And, again, our friends did show up at the funeral, and everybody was welcomed, and there was no hassles, and -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- it went well. But I've seen others where it was an emotional disaster area. LB: Yeah. CV: Yeah. LB: I just talked to Scott Allen, and I talked to Bill Aull about this, and both of them were saying that, you know, some of the ministers and some of the priests were really supportive, and some of them really just wouldn't show up and do anything at all. And I know you have a relationship to that. CV: Yeah. It's sort of wild that the Catholic priest up in Jim's area did the funeral. I mean I don't think there's anything in the Catholic dogma that says a Catholic priest can't give a funeral to a dead gay person. LB: Right. CV: You know, they may have their personal perspective on it, but that's too bad. I mean that's not what canon law says. (laughs) Canon law says, you know, family's gathering, you know, blah, blah, blah. You're doing the funeral. And part of this is conjecture, I'll admit. But the Catholic church -- there's the diocesan component of the Catholic church, which is the one that most people are familiar with -- the big churches and so forth. And then there's the various orders -- like the Franciscan orders, or the Carmelite orders. And they will often have their own churches -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- and can do their own thing there, all under the diocesan umbrella. So they can't break any rules under that umbrella -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- but their liturgies can tend to be a little more dynamic. LB: Yeah. CV: So I never thought of it back then, but, you know, had I chosen to do a funeral or a passage of life ceremony at one of the orders -- like the Franciscan over in Easton -- I would have probably had a lot more say in how it would have been done, and what would have gone -- I couldn't break any rules, but it would have been -- LB: Sure. CV: -- different. So yeah. And obviously the metropolitan community church, assuming it was alive and active back in those days, would have done a much different service than the more traditional churches would have. (coughs) And I'm not too familiar with the funeral services in some of the other churches. Most of the ones I went to were more secular. In the funeral parlor, and the minister comes and says a prayer, and is done with it. (coughs) LB: Yeah. But anyway, when you're talking about that, and you're saying that -- I know that that was very devastating to go -- I mean, funerals are devastating at the very (inaudible), and people are going to a funeral every month or every week. CV: Yeah. LB: It's for people you know, or people you're really close to. It's the kind of thing that, you know, you have one instance like that in your young life -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- and it bothers you for years. You have twenty instances like that -- it's like war. CV: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well that's a good analogy. I mean it's like I got to live through not having to go to Vietnam -- because I was still in college -- but buried a whole lot of friends as a result of that. LB: Yeah. CV: You know, I hadn't thought of it this way, but it was almost like a trial run for, you know, ten years, twenty years later, fifteen years later to go through this, you know, and get to bury a whole bunch of other friends. LB: It's thirty-five years ago. CV: You're right. (laughter) Eighty-five was thirty five years ago? Thirty-five years? Wow. LB: I'm sorry, honey. (laughter) CV: Well at least I knew what day it was. (laughter) But, I mean, the good news is I knew what day it was. The bad news -- thirty-five years. LB: Yeah. CV: No wonder I don't have any hair. (laughter) No wonder. LB: No, I'm sorry. (laughter) CV: Well, whenever it was. (laughs) LB: You're not the only one who has said that. CV: Okay. (laughs) LB: Other people -- Scott said that today. He said, "Oh, you know, twenty years ago." I said, "Well, Scott, that's" (laughs) -- CV: Is this the Scott I know -- the organist? LB: T. Scott Allen. He's an Episcopal minister. CV: Oh, okay. No. All right. LB: (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible). And the other guys were saying that too. You know, we were kids then. We were in our twenties and thirties when this was all happening. CV: Yeah. Yeah. LB: So yeah. CV: Yeah. LB: It's a whole different situation. Do you remember that thing about the trees? Because I remember that, and -- CV: Oh, yes. And I didn't know of others, but a good friend of mine -- Larry Miley, who used to live across the street -- he and his wife were very active with the Lenni Lenape Museum -- LB: Oh, yeah. CV: -- on the parkway. And Larry was a good friend of Jim and I, so -- they live right across the street. So he said, you know, "We would like to organize having a Native American ceremony" -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- here. You know, a separate ceremony." So we brought the family back down. And the ceremony was very touching. Everybody wrote little paper notes, and you tied them up with a little ribbon. And then some of them were placed on the branches -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- and some of them were buried with the roots. LB: Yeah. CV: And the ritual is that, you know, the roots will decompose the messages and send the messages up to the sky. And then the ones that are hanging in the tree, the winds will carry the messages into the heavens, and so forth. Yeah. And the chief did dances and so forth, and the tribe folks, you know, sang some songs. And we all participated in the songs, and, you know, the raising of the arms, and all that sort of thing. But it was sort of interesting -- I'm sitting back there, looking at this beautiful Polish, catholic family doing all these rituals, and I'm thinking to myself, "Oh, Lord, if their priest ever saw them now." (laughter) So that's the one I know of, personally. And we also did it for when Larry's wife -- Miley's wife -- passed away from cancer. But I didn't know that there were others. But I guess there are, because, I mean, we have trees in our parkway, and trees in the parks here in Allentown that are there for different peoples' memory. And I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, there were fundraisers to put trees in for people. LB: There were a few places along the Little Lehigh, down off of Martin Luther King Boulevard. CV: Okay. LB: And apparently several of those -- and one of the things about that was that people who were -- and I don't like to use the word "closeted" in this, but they were concerned about the stigma, and they really didn't want to make a public statement about it. So they just planted the tree. They didn't put a sign, they didn't put a memorial -- CV: Oh. LB: -- plaque, they didn't have a headstone any place. It was that thing. CV: Yeah. LB: I thought that was an interesting thing. But not too many people are familiar with it, so I guess that was -- other people in my mind have -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- you were working at Air Products then. Was there an Air Product response? CV: A very personal one. My boss at the time, you know, was very supportive. I said, you know, "The best time for visitors for Jim in the hospital was after three o'clock. So every day at three, I'm leaving at three o'clock. So, you know, we're just going to have to figure this out." No questions were asked, you know, "Go right ahead." Obviously there was time off for grieving, and the funeral, and so forth. So the company was very, very supportive. This would have been right around the same time as GLEE starting at Air Products. LB: Oh. CV: Jimmy died in ninety-one, and I think GLEE was starting in ninety-one, right? I mean, it was right in that same time window. LB: But tell us was GLEE is, because I know, but people seeing this might not. So go ahead. CV: Oh, GLEE was the Air Products' Gay and Lesbian Empowered Employees. G-L-E-E. I think it has a new name now. I've a bit lost track. LB: Spectrum, or something. CV: Okay. Right. Probably to include all the alphabet soup that we've -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- acquired over time. But that's a good thing. So yeah. So GLEE was our gay and lesbian employee organization. And I was one of the founding members. So it, again, was supportive too. But the company directly -- I mean I was out in the company anyway, and my boss, you know -- I mean people had been to my house for parties -- my staff and my bosses had been to the house here for parties, and Jim was here, and, you know, people who walked around would have discovered on their own, and made whatever conclusions -- that there's only one bedroom and one bed. So you can draw your own conclusions, and, you know. LB: Yeah. CV: I think that was certainly pre-rainbow flag in front of the house days. I'm sure of that. Although not by much. Not by much, (laughs) actually. Yeah. Those flags have been out there quite a bit. But yeah. So how did we get onto that? (laughs) Oh, it was work supportive. So yes. And my coworkers, my secretary at the time, you know, were all, you know -- half of them in tears -- because they all met the guy. So they knew who he was, you know. And they knew they saw us together and in action. So, I mean, it wasn't "Some other guy" -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- which is, if you remember -- every time I get a stage to talk on, you know, I always -- especially back in the earlier days -- you know, give the preaching about being out. LB: Right. CV: Because the more out people are, and the more people -- non-gay and lesbian and transgender people -- get to see who they are -- and, "Oh, they're my neighbor, my friends, my daughters, father, my whatever, my dentist, my lawyer," you know. And once they begin to make that personal connection, it's not just "Some horrible gay guy who pissed off God and now he's dead. See, you deserve it" -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- you know. I mean that conversation stops, because they know the guy, and they know that wasn't the case. LB: Yeah. CV: And people always ask me, "How come you're still yelling about being out?" I said, "Because not enough of them are yet." LB: Yeah. CV: But we're a lot better off now than we were for sure. I mean back in eighty-five, we were only about, what, ten years off of the first Stonewall riot. LB: Yeah. CV: Was it seventy-six? LB: It was sixty-nine. CV: Sixty-nine. Okay. So a little bit longer than that. Yeah, I'm not doing too good on years. LB: That's okay. It's not your job. (laughter) CV: Yeah, you're the editor in chief. (laughs) So yeah. I mean it was still early days, and being out was not, you know, a common thing at all, much less to have to be forced out at your funeral. That's just deadly (inaudible). I don't know if some families have recovered yet. LB: Yeah. CV: Now, I know some are still strained over that. Oh, how are we doing? LB: Great. Now there was a little bit of interference there, but you mean they're still strained over the death? Or finding out that their son was gay? CV: I think finding out. Because it's the lack of closure. LB: Oh, okay. CV: When you're given the opportunity to, you know, well, go through the conversation -- "Well, was it something we did? Did somebody make you gay?" You know. To solve those questions, and to get those out of your head -- you just don't know. LB: Yeah. CV: "Were you ever happy? Was there anything we did to hurt you, you know, in your childhood?" You know. All of this stuff that a loving family, hopefully, would want to have -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- just never had the chance to have -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- because it was too late. LB: Yeah. CV: And ditto with the siblings. LB: So yeah. And one of the things that Maria Rodale said, which I thought was a brilliant statement -- she said one of the reasons that her parents were so upset -- her brother was totally out to the family. But the parents felt guilty because they couldn't protect their son. I mean they had a younger son, you're younger than them, you've got a kid, you've got a healthy, young person, and you can't keep them from dying. And I think that that's quite an interesting thing. I mean, it was an interesting way of describing it. CV: I knew David pretty well. In fact, he lived right down the street. And David wouldn't have been an easy guy to control (laughter) in my sense, you know. You know, I loved him dearly. Loved him dearly. And we had a casual banter, back and forth kind of friendship. But, you know, you'd tell him, "Don't go through red lights." (laughter) "All right. What red light?" You know. He'd go through it. And I can tell you some stories, but they wouldn't be appropriate (laughs) for this setting. But he was just a tough one to corral. So, while I certainly respect his family's being disappointed that they couldn't, you know, help him and save him, David was into his twenties, you know -- well into his twenties And, in fact, I think he was running the theater at the time. LB: He was thirty when he died. CV: Yeah. And I think he was running the theater. The -- LB: [He'll be on that?], but yeah. According to her. But he was very young, and it was very fast, too. CV: Yeah. LB: And it was early in the epidemic, so there wasn't any -- I mean, he wasn't at a time when people were telling you what to do to keep from getting it. CV: Yeah. Yeah. LB: You know, because it was -- CV: Well, that's -- LB: -- that time. CV: Yeah. That's it, you know. Kind of like what we're learning about COVID now, you know -- now we're learning, "Oh, you could be asymptomatic and spreading it around all over the place." Well, there, back in those days, you didn't even know the disease existed. LB: Right. CV: Therefore, having unprotected sex -- what was different today than yesterday. LB: Yeah. CV: "Oh, by the way, you know, maybe one of you two or both of you are positive. And now you both are going to be positive at the end of this." So, you know, you can't really say, you know, "Well, it was you, because, you know, you got sick." And, "Oh, you spread the disease, because you didn't know." LB: Yeah. CV: They really didn't know. You weren't doing anything differently than you were doing a year before -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- except the world had changed in a time. And now anybody who -- after it became obvious what the disease was, and how to prevent it -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- you know, condoms and safe sex -- if you were men practicing on safe sex, then, you know, then that was totally irrational behavior, and, you know, people being mad at you for doing that was absolutely appropriate. LB: Did you think there was a lot of anger at people who were not taking protections to protect their partners? CV: Yeah. I mean there were times I would have to correct people, you know, having this conversation in the bedroom about, "What do you mean you don't want to have condoms? I mean, what do you mean?" LB: Yeah. CV: And now, you know, (laughs) you're not -- you know, I've gone through this, okay. (laughs) This is the wrong house to have this conversation in -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- you know. So yeah. There were people who still, "Oh, well, it's not that important." What? LB: Yeah. CV: I said, "No." Just because I tested negative, you know, two weeks ago, doesn't mean I'm negative today. LB: Yeah. CV: Because, I mean, I think that disease -- HIV has the ability to hang out under the covers for quite a while before it would surface. So it didn't always surface in an immediate time frame. LB: Yeah. Yeah. CV: You know, I mean we may have better tests now. I don't know. But -- LB: Well we have PrEP now. CV: Yeah. LB: That's the thing that we have. And the T load, you know, they understand about if you have a zero load and stuff. CV: Yeah. LB: But, still, you'd have to rely on the person's information -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- and where they got it, and how they understand it, and stuff like that. CV: And the last thing I saw about the PrEP stuff -- I mean that was pretty pricey. LB: Yeah. CV: I mean, don't quote me, but I think it's like a five figure -- you know, ten or twelve-thousand dollars a year for -- LB: Yeah. CV: Does that sound about right? Are you familiar with it? LB: Yeah. It's ridiculous. I mean, in some countries, it's 25 dollars. In our country, it's five-thousand dollars. So, you know, that's it. But the truth -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- is that PrEP -- particularly for people -- and I've said this on other (laughs) videos -- but for people who cannot control what happens to their body. CV: Yeah. LB: And that's true for many people in the world. CV: Yeah. LB: They can't stop getting HIV, because they can't always tell the person that's having sex with them, "No, you can't do that." CV: Yeah. LB: But they can take PrEP, which will keep them from getting it -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- which is a great thing. CV: Yeah. LB: And then, you know, people now, who -- if you take PrEP, you have to be tested. CV: Yeah. LB: You have to be regularly tested. You have to know whether or not you're positive. CV: Yeah. LB: And, actually, people who take PrEP -- they're not cavalier about what they're doing. CV: Yeah. LB: They're being really, really careful. CV: Sure. LB: So it's kind of a good thing. CV: Yeah. Yeah. LB: Well, so at the time that Jim was sick, and at the time that other people that you knew were sick from AIDS, what about healthcare? I mean did you see positive and negative things were happening in the hospital? Because we had somebody in our extended family who -- at the beginning of the epidemic -- who couldn't -- like they wouldn't even bring the tray into the room when he was in the hospital. So -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- this was a little bit later, when Jim was sick. But -- CV: Yeah. LB: But -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- [maybe it was a bit?] earlier. CV: Yeah. He would have been in the hospital during the winter of nineteen-ninety. We took him in in February -- just a few days after my birthday, actually. And he was pretty much in there through April of ninety. And I don't remember there being -- now, I was in there every day from three to whenever they kicked me out -- three to seven. And I don't remember there being any issue. LB: That's good, yeah. CV: The bigger issue was that, you know, the extended family with, you know, all the little nieces and nephews and crying babies, you know, were around too. LB: Yeah. CV: So, you know, there's like crowd control going on. LB: Yeah. CV: And, again, Jim was a member of the medical community, so I'm guessing that, you know, he might have had people taking care of him that knew him from his professional experience in -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- and, you know, just said, "Hey, you know, this is a brother of ours, so we're taking care of our brother." LB: Yeah. CV: But yeah. From what I could gather though -- and Jim had three RN's in the family -- LB: Wow. CV: -- with master's degrees, psychologist, and, (laughs) you know. So there were some heavy-duty materials on the family side -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- at his side too. LB: So they understood the medical circumstances much more than people who were abstract about it -- CV: Yeah. Yeah. LB: -- who didn't have that, or -- CV: Yeah. LB: had it, but -- CV: But of the, you know, three or four, five people that I would visit in the hospital, they never struck me -- again, and these would have been in the late-eighties -- no, it would have been in the nineties, because I think Jim died pretty early in the cycle. LB: Yeah. CV: But, yeah. They were in the nineties. And, you know, people would come in and do their thing and bring food and go back. And some of them were cheery, and, you know, "I'm going to stick you again," you know. LB: Yeah. CV: It's time for another stick," you know. LB: Yeah. Did you know that David Rodale had HIV/AIDS when he got sick and died? Apparently it went very fast for him. CV: I noticed him losing some weight, but he was always into wearing, you know, practically spray-on clothing anyways. So he always looked thin. But, you know, one brief period, I said, "Jeez, you know, he was thin to begin with, you know. What's going on here?" And then I do the usual, "Well, oh, maybe." And then yeah. And then he kind of went out of the public eye for a while. And the next thing I knew, I was reading that he had passed away. LB: Yeah. Did he live on Eighth Street? CV: Yes. LB: Oh, wow. CV: Now, he may have lived other places too, but -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- he lived, you know, near Eighth and Chew. LB: Yeah. Oh. Right there. Right up the street. CV: Yeah. LB: So I didn't know that. I wasn't here -- I think when he died, I hadn't moved here quite yet. It was a couple years later. So let's see. I talked about that. (laughs) CV: Yeah, I'm doing the same thing. (laughter) I've got to put my glasses back on to check. I think I got -- LB: I can't ever take mine off. When FACT really was formed and it started to do some very, very significant work in fundraising, were you involved with it? CV: Yeah. Yeah. I was on their board -- I've lost track of how many years -- and probably went off the board and came back on the board, and was involved with doing my bit at the summer games too. And I think I was also on the committee that dispersed the -- I don't know if they still do -- but we used to call them "contingency funds" -- LB: Okay. CV: -- because we would raise money for a whole lot of purposes, but we would keep a separate stash of money for if somebody needed a pair of glasses, and whatever insurance, or whatever thing they had wouldn't cover the pair of glasses -- could we pay for their glasses. LB: Yeah. CV: Somebody needed another prescription, or if somebody was back in their rent and they couldn't get anybody to pay their rent -- could we pay their rent for them. LB: Yeah. CV: So where costs fell through the system, and nobody had money to fix the front tire on the car -- all those little things that, if you were working, you'd have some income, but if you're not working, you don't have any income, and you're relying on, you know, gifts, and/or some grants to help you along. If there's a gap in there, then it could be the smallest thing, but it could mean maybe you can't go out to get food. So we had this contingency pot that we would use for that. LB: And was that most of the money from FACT? Or did other money go to AIDS Services Center? Because, you know, there was a time when FACT was doing fundraisers that were bringing in a hundred-thousand dollars, at a time when a hundred-thousand dollars was really a lot of money. (laughs) CV: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. LB: Could hold you for the rest of your life. CV: Yeah, well, especially since it was all volunteer. So there was no payroll. LB: Right. Right, right. CV: And I think for a while we had free or reduced rent from Candida and one of her places. So, you know, the operating costs weren't sky-high. LB: Yeah. CV: But the demand for funds, you know -- and I remember the direct service money that we were handing out. We may have also gave -- Services Center pretty early on got absorbed by the hospital system. And either it got absorbed, or it was started there, and merged with our little hotline -- how all that worked, I don't really remember. But if they needed money, you know, or if they had a client who couldn't get their dental fees paid for, they would come to us and ask us to do that for them and other agencies who had AIDS patients. And, you know, over time, you know, it went from -- just like a progression of any disease -- it went from most of those requests being gay male-oriented to HIV, drug user-oriented. And it just switched, you know -- so the gay men figured this out, got the condoms in place, and safe sex, and they started behaving themselves, and the meds started to help them, so it could stabilize the needs in the gay male population. But then the other populations weren't controlling it. So where that was going crazy, then we would have to come in and help, even though FACT was basically a gay organization. And now it's much more diverse at this point. But back in the early days, a few women and a bunch of gay guys around a table -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- making stuff happen. LB: Yeah. I know that a variety of people were involved in education. Did you used to be involved with that to talk to people about the stuff? Or have the opportunity to speak out about what's going on? How to -- CV: I think I did, but it wasn't a major part of what I did. LB: Okay. CV: And I'm not sure -- because by then we had engaged the medical community to help us. So there may have been, you know, somebody from FACT to introduce a medical professional and have them dispense the information. That part's a bit foggy for me. I was always involved with the money part, you know -- raise it and spend it. That's what they (laughs) used me for. LB: Yeah. (laughter) Well, that's what it was about, really. CV: Yeah. (laughs) Raise it and spend it. LB: (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible) too. CV: Yeah. LB: Yeah. I mean extraordinary job, with regard to that. I mean there was a time, I think, when medications became -- because, at the beginning -- particularly in 1985, and between eighty-five and ninety -- there was no hope. And it was so dangerous, and there wasn't anything that people could do. So they went to the doctor, and they didn't say, "Well, here. We have these protocols." But then there was medications. CV: Yeah. LB: And some of the medications were very, very successful. Some of them had horrible side effects. Some actually -- and I've talked to a couple people who said that they thought that the medications actually killed the people that they were working with. And then in other circumstances -- but one of the things that Bill Aull said was even though some of the medications had terrible side effects, at least it was hope. CV: Yeah. LB: They were actually doing something. So what was your awareness of the medications that kind of -- CV: And, again, my time to be most intimate with those was Jim's case. And they were just basic, really, you know -- the basic things you would put in place to reduce fevers, and that sort of thing. So the medical -- in the early days, there was hardly any consequence. LB: Yeah. CV: And so I'm not really familiar -- I mean I've heard the stories about some meds being worse than others -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- but we also know that everybody's body handles meds differently. LB: Yeah. CV: So, you know, it could be that this med worked miracles if you had certain conditions in place. And if you didn't, or if your T cells were too far low, or not low enough, they may not trigger, you know -- just like with some of the people getting that overreaction of their immune system to COVID. I mean, it could be the same thing. I mean if you were at a certain point along the HIV spectrum, some of the meds might have been more contradictory than others, depending on your gene make-up and your disease progression. So, you know, a lot was learned over the decades about meds. And the good news is we have, you know, PrEP. Whether people would consider that a vaccine, per say, probably not, you know, which also makes you nervous about COVID. Well, if we'd been pouring money into the research around HIV for decades -- LB: Yes. CV: Now, granted, we're using all kinds of fast track, sped up processes and collaborate-- I mean, all great. But, you know, people are just assuming there's going to be some vaccine. Like you're going to take a tab off a packet and pour it in water, and away, you know -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- COVID's going away. Not going to happen that way. LB: Yeah. CV: Well, I won't get on my soap box. And, I mean, you go down and you go -- I went to a beach and I walked onto the beach, and I looked down one side, and people were packed on top of each other -- no masks, running around. I said, "I've just got to turn around." I said, "This is my favorite beach. I'm leaving." LB: Yeah. Yeah. No, that's true. We had to go to a doctor's appointment that Trisha had -- and it was pretty important, and so we had to go -- it turned out to be everything was fine, but we had to go to the doctor. And we really haven't been out. CV: Oh, right. Right. LB: She's a very high-risk, and, you know, I'm over sixty. I'm at risk too. But she's a very high-risk. I mean, I'm just scared -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- because I can't count on people to do the right thing. CV: Yeah. LB: We had to go over to the (laughs) community center, where one of our cars is parked in the garage there, and it has to be inspected -- the battery's run down, because we haven't used it in so long. CV: Of course. LB: So we had to go get the mileage for the inspection. CV: Yeah. LB: So I had to go into the parking lot. And to get into the parking lot, I had to walk by about twelve people. And maybe three of them had masks. And I was mad. I actually climbed over the wall so I wouldn't have to walk by these people. And I get to the car and look at the odometer, and I can't see it, because the battery (laughs) is -- CV: Oh, right. Right. Right. LB: So then I'm like (laughs) okay, well that's not an option. But I was -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- really [pretty?], "Well, you know, you didn't have to climb over the wall." I said, "I did. There were all these people there. I couldn't get through. There was no way I could have gotten" -- CV: Yeah. LB: You know, the alternative was to walk all the way around the garage. And then I would have passed a whole bunch of people that way too. CV: Yeah. LB: So it's very frightening, I think, and it's as frightening as finding out that people then during the AIDS epidemic were not testing and were not using condoms. CV: Yeah. LB: And I knew that there were people that -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- Steve Black died of AIDS. CV: Yeah. LB: And it was really late. I remember, it was just a little while ago -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- like (inaudible). And I knew Steve well enough to say that I don't think he knew he had it. CV: Or, it's very likely, because he was young enough, that he would have been in an age category that wasn't around for the first wave. And so it came in after all your friends had died. So he got it in I think after -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- the tail end of all that. LB: Yeah. CV: So it wasn't as in your face as much. You know, when you're walking to the club and you see six people that are ready to fall over dead, you know, your awareness of AIDS is pretty high. LB: Sure. CV: If you don't see anybody who's carrying AIDS, and if it's not in the press, and it's not in your face all the time, eh, you know. And that was a worry, and still is. I mean, a lot of the people I lecture to -- "lecture to" in quotes -- about safe sex, you know, are the ones that are in their 30s -- LB: Yeah. Yeah. CV: -- you know. Thirties and forties, because, you know, they were in that section of time where it wasn't a big deal. LB: Yeah. CV: And they're watching porn sites where there's all unprotected sex on these porn sites. So they say, "Okay. Everything must be good." LB: Yeah. CV: And, "No, it's not," you know. "It's not eradicated." LB: And there's also the reality that if you get the disease and you never get tested and you're not treated, then you're going to die. CV: And you're going to infect a whole lot of other people. LB: Right. Right. Did you come in contact with people who were -- I mean, testing became more of an issue and more available -- and certainly more available now, with the rapid test. It's so easy now, in comparison to the way it was. But, you know, how were people advocating testing at that time? CV: Well, I mean, it was the basics. Well, you know, your partner, or if you've had unprotected sex with somebody who you don't know, you know, you need to go get tested. LB: Yeah. CV: And there was the usual reluctance, for two reasons -- number one, "Oh, they're going to tell me I'm going to die. So why should I be in a hurry to go hear this news?" Number one, because there is no cure. LB: Right. CV: Number two, "Oh, now my parents are going to find out." LB: Yeah. CV: "Oh, my work is going to find out." Or, you know, "Somebody else is going to find out." So it had at least two stigmas to it that would have kept people not running out the door to go get tested. LB: I think -- CV: You know, they didn't know what it -- you know, "Do I have to like be signed up? Is my name going to be on some board some--" you know. In early days, there was just no information about, you know, how confidential was this really going to be, can I trust these people, I don't even know who they are, it's not my family doctor -- our family doctor doesn't even know I'm gay. Now he's going to know I'm gay, or she's going to know I'm gay. LB: Yeah. CV: I mean ugh. It's just a whole mess. LB: Yeah. CV: Yeah. LB: Yeah. And Dave Moyer was talking about disease tracking, you know -- once they had a positive person, they really had to say to them, "Okay, you have to tell us everybody that we have to notify." CV: Yeah. LB: And they were like, "Well you're going to tell them it came from me." So they're not going to tell them, but they might (laughs) be able to figure it out -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- you know. But we have to do this. CV: Yeah. LB: There's this, "Oh, you're putting this putting at colossal risk." CV: Yeah. LB: But it's interesting -- what you just said about testing, and one of the reasons that people didn't get tested was that if they were positive, their family was going to find out, or their boss was going to find out, or their neighbors, or something like that. And that talks a lot to the fact that most people in those days were closeted to at least a segment of the population. CV: Yeah. LB: I mean there's you and me and Trish, who every single person in the world knows, you know -- you ran for office as an openly gay man. (laughter) But not everybody's like us. And -- CV: True. True. And, in some cases, thank God (laughs), you know. But, to be honest, you know, when I first came to the Valley, I wasn't out, oddly -- I mean, believe it or not. And you have some personal experience with this, too, in that I used two names -- the Charlie, and the Chuck. LB: Yeah. CV: And, growing up as a kid, I was always Chuck, because my father was Charlie. And then somewhere along the way, in high school, the same kids that used to call me Chuck started calling me Charlie. I don't know how that happened. It just happened. LB: Yeah. CV: So I became a Charlie, and I was a Charlie all through college and grad school. And then when I moved here, I was a Charlie. But then when I started going to the Stonewall, I said, "Hmm. Maybe I'll be a Chuck here." LB: (laughs) Oh, that's interesting. CV: So when I hear someone call my name -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- I know where they're coming from. (laughs) LB: I get it. CV: How I know this person. LB: Yeah. CV: So that was the beginning of all that. And that, of course, all collapsed once, you know, Jimmy moved in, and, you know, people started coming here, and they would hear him call me Chuck. And they would go, "Who's that?" And, as more gay people came out at Air Products, the ones who knew me from the Stonewall as Chuck then all of a sudden went, "Wait a minute. Who's this Charlie guy? Is it the same guy we know, you know? How come he's got two names?" LB: Yeah. CV: And, as it turns out, there were lots of people that I met -- mostly guys -- who had two names. But it was more of a childhood thing, you know -- their real name was Harold, but -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- all their friends called them Butch. And their real name was Paul, but his family called him Skip, you know. And it was all these -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- there are versions to that all over the place, but mine had just a slightly different twist to it. And then I finally said, "That's enough," you know. (laughs) I can't (inaudible), and there's no reason for this to be. So it didn't have to be this complicated. LB: But the circumstances of you living with Jim -- and then really Jim dying, too -- really must have put you into the light, in terms of that you were gay. And did you find that there was problems with that? I mean did that happen? CV: Well, no. I mean I think people knew way before he died -- LB: [Can you move?] the microphone? CV: Oh, I'm sorry. Am I muting it? LB: Yeah. CV: Okay. LB: Something's rubbing ag-- there you go. That's good. CV: Okay. What was that? What was bothering the sound before? LB: (laughs) It's okay now. It's good. CV: Okay. It was just my notes, and I didn't want to have to -- LB: Oh, yeah. No -- CV: -- (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible). LB: -- that's what was happening. So you've got to -- CV: Yeah. So I had them up on the keyboard -- who knew that I had it on top of the microphone? I didn't know -- in fact, I never even knew where the microphone was on this bloody thing. Anyway. So people knew. I mean, again, when he was not sick, we would have parties here at the house, and there would be company parties, and I would bring Jim. So, you know, again, it was before rainbow flags out in front of the house things, but people drew their own conclusions. They said, "Okay, that's his date. And that's his date then, and again it was his date next time" -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- "and five years later, he's still the date. Maybe this is something going on, okay." (laughs) So, I mean, people just drew their own conclusions. And, again, I used to make people uncomfortable, because whenever they asked me about my experience being discriminated against, I'd say, "Well, you know, I'm discriminated against more because I'm five foot two than I am" -- (laughter) because I just never felt discriminated against being gay -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- you know. But seriously. At least in those days, and in the Air Products mentality -- I mean there was the physical, "This is what you look like," if you were going to be a senior manager -- "this is what you look like." And if you don't look like that, it doesn't make any difference what you are. If you don't look like that, you've got to perform your way into the circle. LB: Yeah. That's a good point. CV: So I just performed my way into the circle -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- and got there. And then they said, "Well, how did he get here?" you know. LB: Yeah. CV: And then they wiped the sweat off their brow, and said, "Well, thank God. Because we needed a gay senior manager. (laughter) So aren't we lucky. We didn't have to go" -- LB: You totally balance it out -- CV: -- "look for one." LB: -- though by not having a high, squeaky voice. So that's the -- CV: Oh, yeah. LB: -- you get away with being your height if your voice is like yours. CV: Well there's a funny story about that, too. And a lot of the vendors I would deal with in the IT community would just know me from the voice on the phone. LB: Sure. CV: And then they would come to the office to come meet me, and then they would always be, "Well where's the guy on the phone?" Like looking over my head like there was somebody else in the room. LB: Oh, that's funny. CV: I said, "No, this is the guy on the phone." (laughs) LB: Yeah. CV: "Oh, wow." LB: But, you know, in terms of discrimination -- and I've talked to a lot of people about this -- I mean there are some very significant instances of discrimination that are not unique circumstances, with regard to somebody, you know, throwing a brick through your window with "fag" -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- written on it or something. But let's face it -- you couldn't marry him. CV: Right. Right. At least not then. LB: And that would have been a very different thing. And when, you know, Steven Olofson died -- did you know Robert Rousch and Steve Olofson? CV: Yeah. LB: And Steve died of prostate cancer, and it was a long time, and at the end he was in hospice care. And Robert did a program for me -- Robert said -- this is relatively recently -- he said, "If I hadn't been married to him, I don't know how I could possibly have gone through this." CV: Yeah. LB: Because every single day, somebody would come in and say, "Well, who are you?" In hospice, you know -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- go in his room, or making decisions for him -- because he was really not able to make decisions for himself anymore. And he would say, "I'm his husband." And then they'd just be done with it. CV: Yeah. LB: Because he could make legal decisions himself. CV: Was that pre or post-HIPPA? LB: Oh, this just happened. CV: Okay. LB: I mean this happened -- I don't know -- three years ago, maybe four years ago. I think -- CV: You see, I don't -- LB: -- it's been (inaudible) since Steve died. CV: Yeah. Because I think again, back in the -- LB: Well, that's a good point -- the HIPPA -- CV: -- nineties. LB: Yeah. CV: I mean, if you want to know who was in the hospital, you can just ask the lady at the front desk (laughs), you know -- LB: Yeah, that's true. CV: -- "What room is it? Okay, thank you." Off you went, you know. But you did remind me that I was in the room when they had an attorney -- the hospital arranged to have an attorney to come, and a notary, and we took care of the advance directives and the will and everything, out of his hospital bed. LB: Yeah. CV: I remember, you know, pre-making up the disbursement checks -- he wanted handed out -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- and having him sign them before -- he authorized me as his power of attorney. So we did all that at his hospital bed. And, I mean, yeah, we weren't able to be married -- but, again, in those days, the regulations about who could come to the room and who could be providing help or providing care was not so rigid as they are now. LB: Except for that they could have said, "You can't be in here." CV: Yeah, they could have. LB: You could have had somebody -- because that actually almost happened to me. Trish was in an accident, and I rushed to the hospital. She was in the hospital, and she was knocked out -- she was injured. And, you know, I was in the hospital room with her. I wanted to stay there all night. They said she had a major concussion -- she could die in the night or something. I'm not leaving. CV: Yeah. LB: And then I was helping to fill out the form, and they said, "Well, do you have a power of attorney?" And I said, "Yeah. I have it in my pocket." CV: Yeah. LB: Because I never went anywhere without it. CV: Yeah. LB: And I had it in my pocket. Because they were going to throw me out of the room. CV: Yeah. LB: And that was a long time ago -- I mean it was about 20 years ago. But I think that the significance of that was that if it had been somebody who was the decision maker at that moment. Had they been somebody who was extraordinarily anti-gay -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- or really fearful of HIV/AIDS, they could have just said, "You have to leave." CV: Yeah. LB: So, you know, you can be in a circumstance where -- one of the things that -- this has become really apparent to me -- is that the Lehigh Valley really had an excellent response to AIDS -- CV: Oh, absolutely. LB: -- compared to other communities -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- that were terrible about it, and just let everybody die, and, you know, discriminated against them, and -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- bury them, and that kind of stuff. They just turned it's back on the entire gay population -- gay, male population -- CV: Yeah. LB: (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible). But the Lehigh Valley -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- and part of it was because that community center existed already, I think. CV: Yeah. LB: So there was -- CV: There was a community organization, and then quickly following it was FACT, and then the bar organizations as a fundraising machine -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- for the summer games and other things. And then you had the beginnings of the AIDS Services Center -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- and they had social services wrapping around. And the AIDS Services Center really being driven by the hospital system. LB: Right, right. CV: So you had the medical community engaged with the gay and lesbian community organizations. And it did kind of come together probably as a model way of dealing with an AIDS epidemic in that era, and probably on the -- you know, outside of San Francisco and New York -- may well have been in the forefront. LB: I think so. I think so. And part of that was there was a large part of the community that was out -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- and would be activists -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- who would stand up to be activists. And HIV -- I mean, when you'd have a common enemy like that -- because this was [the problem?] -- you are in a situation where people are banding together to help each other. And, you know, before that, I think there had been a sort of division between the gay, male population and the lesbian population. And this kind of brought this together, in terms of a force of people who were there to help each other. CV: Yeah. LB: I mean even the fact that we had three gay bars -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- or we had two gay bars in nineteen eighty-five -- just meant that people had a place to go every week -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- every day, if they want to -- to be around other gay people. And -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- that's what it was. And these weren't like little back rooms where like nobody knew they were there. CV: Yeah. LB: And I've been to bars -- I went to bars like that. CV: Yeah, yeah. LB: But, no, there was a very strong community and leadership within the community that was significant, I think. CV: Yeah. LB: And not just one leader, too. CV: Right. LB: It was not just one person that was doing stuff. CV: Yeah. LB: And, in many cases, there were communities where the one person had AIDS and died, and that was the end of the whole circumstance of activism. CV: Yeah. Yeah. And in organizations where there's not a lot of death, and they're dependent on one charismatic leader, and, you know, it's all defined by the one person, and then the one person goes -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- and everything else goes too. LB: Yeah. CV: Yeah. LB: Well, we're coming to the end. We've got about ten minutes left. CV: Yeah. LB: So, you know, I've talked to a lot of people about how this archive -- so this is all going to be archived at Muhlenberg. CV: Yeah. LB: And we've given all the papers -- Dixie White's papers -- forteen boxes of Dixie White's papers went over there -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- in just the last -- and I had a whole bunch of stuff from her -- and our papers and everything have all gone to Muhlenberg to be digitalized and stuff -- and we've been working on that for four years. It's in conjunction with the community center. We actually own it -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- but they're doing the work on it. CV: Right. LB: We generate the grants and stuff. And so this particular project is coming through Muhlenberg as well -- it's going to be digitalized. And so there's a really good chance that, you know, thirty or forty or fifty years from now, somebody's going to see this. CV: Okay. LB: So what do you want to say to them about that time, and maybe about this time too? I mean you've said a lot, so if you can't think of anything, that's fine. (laughter) CV: Well, you know, the question you're asking is "What would I tell my thirty year old friend thirty years from now?" LB: Yeah. CV: Hmm. Well part of it is that, you know, there's a whole bunch of messages now that are flooding through my mind. LB: (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible). CV: (laughs) And some of it is tainted by our current situation. But at number one -- I mean, I'll quote some of Tom Friedman, from yesterday's New York Times -- you know, "Science. There's this thing about science. So when you're dealing with disease, diseases are a function of science. So if you want to understand the disease, you've got to understand the science behind it. And that doesn't come from whatever the thirty year version of Facebook looks like, it doesn't come from the thirty year version of Twitter, it doesn't come from the thirty year any of those things. It's going to come from the science organizations and the researchers who are leading this charge" -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- "and they're not going to know everything on day one" -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- "they're not going to know much more than anybody else on day one" -- LB: Right. CV: -- "and it's really the caliber and the quality and the robustness of the intellectual science community, globally, coming together to go solve the diseases of the future." I mean that's how this one -- this COVID thing -- is going to get addressed, hopefully, and solved. And that's what was lacking thirty years ago in the AIDS world is that, you know, the research and science communities were scattered. They had no way of collaborating other than a phone call, or mailing -- God forbid -- mailing a research paper from one place to -- maybe fax. You could probably fax it, you know. But that was the extent of the network back in those days. So now we'll have a whole more robust communications world -- and that will be even much more easy to use and abuse -- that we have today. So one message is to leverage science, and make sure they have the tools and the technologies to help them work together on a global basis to solve, you know, whatever the disease problem is of the future. LB: Yeah. CV: Secondly is when there's a disease, you've got to learn what it means to you. You've got to figure that out. And you're not going to read it, again, by listening to a Facebook post about what it means to somebody else. No. You've got to unplug the things out of your damn ears and sit down and do some pondering, do some reading, and figure out what this disease means to you, to your family, to your friends, what are the risks to you, personally, and to the ones you love -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- you've got to understand those risks, understand the science, and then you take your responsibility -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- just like you did, jumping around the parking lot to get away from people. LB: Yeah. CV: You can take responsibility to manage your exposure to that disease and your reaction to it. And, yeah, the government may come by at some point and, you know, hand out masks and whatever. But if people don't take the personal responsibility to put the damn mask on -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- you know, it's macht nichts). It doesn't make any sense. So those are my nuggets -- my nuggets for the thirty years in the future. LB: Okay. I'll give you one more opportunity to comment on this, because when we talk about the difference between AIDS and COVID,one of the p roblems with the stigma of AIDS in the nineteen-eighties is that, governmentally, even the science world was not as desperate to deal with the disease and the cure for it, because it was affecting a minority group that they didn't like very much. And that can happen in other circumstances as well. This is only affecting poor people in Africa. CV: Yeah. LB: Or it's only affecting poor people in the United States -- in the slums of the United States. CV: Yeah. LB: So should we rush to figure this out? Or is it not as important? Now, right now, COVID is kicking everybody in the head. CV: Yeah. LB: Well everybody in the science world is trying to figure it out, which is pretty significant. So we may accelerate the understanding of this disease, simply because every scientist is working on it, as opposed to HIV/AIDS, where nobody even mentioned it for two years, you know, in a lot of those. CV: And this is more complex. LB: Yeah. CV: And one of the key differentiators -- and may be the key differentiator -- and this is going to sound terrible -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- is that HIV/AIDS did not pose an economic impact -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- regardless of who -- regardless of who it was. LB: Yeah. CV: If it was only attacking senior people in the senior center, you know, period, and no one else -- even if there were ten times the number of AIDS cases, there was not an economic impact. LB: That's a good point. Yeah. CV: The accelerator, for now, why this global thing is -- is the global shut down. LB: Yeah. CV: Well, you can't do that. LB: Yeah. CV: Now, it made the environmentalists happy. I mean, from a guy who spends his time four months in Jamaica, it made me happy for Jamaica, because the environment there gets a chance to breathe. LB: Yeah. CV: And here. I mean the air cleaned up here, you know, the noise. But the economic impact is the killer -- that's the deal. And I might be biased, but my perspective is that it's the economics that drove this free-for-all, go after the virus. LB: I think that's very -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- very reasonable. CV: I mean I think -- LB: But, economically to figure out that the way to slow this down is by wearing masks is ultimately going to make everybody have to wear masks. Yeah. It is often always about money. CV: Yeah. LB: It's about the economy, it's about greed -- but also, you know, I mean you said, "Well this is better for people." But you could say, "Well, look, you know, we're talking about fifty-thousand cases a day now." So if we've got fifty-thousand cases a day -- and that's an exponential thing. It's not fifty-thousand cases every day for the rest -- it's going to be fifty-thousand(inaudible). Pretty soon, it's going to be a hundred-thousand cases a week. And if that happens, somebody in a governmental situation is going to say, "Okay, now everybody has to wear a mask, we have to shut down. Otherwise, we're never going to stop this. So we have to -- I don't know -- evoke martial law." And people could say, "Well I don't want to do that." Well too bad -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- because there's money involved. And sometimes that really makes the difference. I think that is the case. CV: Unfortunately, it's sad -- LB: Yeah. CV: -- because, you know, the forty-thousand who died because of COVID, you know, are no more or less important than the forty-thousand who have died in AIDS. LB: Sure. CV: Those lives are the same lives, you know. LB: Yeah. CV: And the forty-thousand, plus, that died from car accidents, and all the other things that people die from. But none of those things shut down the globe. LB: Yeah. Yeah. That's true. CV: Okay. LB: That's very true. Well you've been brilliant, as usual. (laughter) CV: That's just because my shiny head is in the light above me. LB: Not at all. Not at all. (laughter) [Actually?] it's a terrific picture -- your house looks great. CV: Oh, thank you. LB: I think I could practically see it if I just look like this -- because I'm on my third floor, looking out the -- CV: Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. LB: But I really appreciate this, and I do want to say, for posterity, that Charlie Versaggi, or Chuck Versaggi -- either one -- has been an enormous, significant beacon, with regard to not only the work that codified the fight against AIDS in the Lehigh Valley, but working for the civil rights of people in the Lehigh Valley. Because you did some really important things right at the beginning, including -- I remember in ninteen ninety-eight when we were fighting for a passage of the ordinance that you got I think the vice president from Air Products to come and speak. Do you remember that? And you said, "Yeah, I could do it. But here's this guy" -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- "really high up in the" -- CV: Yeah. LB: -- "corporation." And that was very significant that that happened -- and that's just one of dozens of things that you've done I think that really mattered. I really appreciate that very much, Charlie. CV: Oh. LB: Thank you for all the work you've done. So, you know, that -- CV: I spend my time on things that are important. LB: Well I really appreciate that, and I hope that we can -- I'm going to turn off the thing now, but I really appreciate all the work you've done. Let me turn this recor-- END OF AUDIO FILE Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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01:29:39
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Charles Versaggi, July 2, 2020
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Charlie Versaggi talks about the early days if the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the loss of his partner to AIDS, his work with the Lambda Community Center (formerly Le-Hi-Ho), the AIDS Services Center, and Fighting AIDS Continuously Together (FACT).
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PH40_01
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2020-07-02
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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https://lgbt.digitalarchives.muhlenberg.edu/files/original/c9c01188f6dcdb5756a2effd8f86b307.png
8befef02e19e36e67708b11f0ec9bd9e
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40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community: HIV/AIDS
Description
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In the spring of 2020, the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive received a grant to collect oral histories and written stories for 40 Years of Public Health in the Lehigh Valley’s LGBT Community: Collecting and Curating Local LGBT Health Experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19.
The collection consists of oral histories from individuals who experienced the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as oral histories from members of the local community as they lived through 2020's summer of Covid-19. Running through both are the themes of dealing with the fear of an emerging health crisis, loneliness and isolation, and coming together as a community in support and activism.
The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Liz Bradbury
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T. Scott Allen
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=PH40_11.xml
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5.4 July 2, 2020 T. Scott Allen, July 2, 2020 PH40_11 01:34:23 LVLGBT40 40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg AIDS (Disease) T. Scott Allen Liz Bradbury video/mpeg AllenTScott_20200702_video.mp4 1.0:|1995(5) 0 https://youtu.be/DnT8oLHQ5Oc YouTube video 225 Interview Introduction LB: Oh, you’re young. We’re not there yet because we have to do this whole thing. So wait a minute. I have to say this. With this project, Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and Trexler Library at the Muhlenberg College will collaborate on forty years of public health experience in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community, collecting and curating local LGBT health experiences from COVID AIDS to from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19. My name is Liz Bradbury, and I’m here with T. Scott Allen to talk about his experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community during this time of the COVID-19 pandemic, as part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive. We’re meeting on Zoom, and today is July second, twenty-twenty. And you are in Allentown, is that correct? 0 383 Reflecting on early memories of the HIV epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s LB: Good. Let’s just start right into this. We sit in the middle of the current public health crisis, where experience that we had -- we want to take this opportunity to look back and reflect, and to capture the stories of those who lived through the worst of the HIV epidemic in the nineteen-eighties and nineties. And we start right out with that question. Do you remember the first time you became aware of the disease? And then just start talking from there. You can say whatever you want. 
 ; 
 ; TSA: Well, I came to the Diocese of Social Missioner in January of nineteen eighty-nine from Wheeling, West Virginia. 0 562 Engagement with HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Lehigh Valley / Involvement of religious communities TSA: When I got to the Lehigh Valley, it was much more -- engaged me much more because there were actually people here that had HIV/AIDS and people that needed help. I mean, and it was lots of things that they needed. It was like some of them just needed food, and some of them needed healthcare. Some of them needed housing. Because there was no safety net from Washington at the time or Harrisburg, really. It was a very hopeful time. While it was sad and this was a tragic thing going on, a lot of innovative things were being done, especially -- the church had a chance to really be a partner with groups that they wouldn’t have had partnerships with otherwise, and make friends, and show them the church wasn’t -- I mean, it was -- religious communities weren’t all great at the time, as you know. 0 662 Working as a grant writer for AIDS outreach / Collaborators in providing services for affected people TSA: And so, I think that was one of the things that was so amazing to me, is how much we cooperated with one another. I wrote grants. I was a grant writer for the Diocese. I wrote grants for the AIDS Services Center. I wrote grants for FACT. I wrote grants for AIDS outreach. 
 ; 
 ; LB: What were the grants for? What did they -- 
 ; 0 839 Providing housing and health care for underserved people in the community / The Transitional Living Center in Fountain Hill TSA: And then we tried to start, as you may remember, the Gilead House, which was supposed to be the Lehigh Valley version of Rainbow House in Berks County. And Kit Hower headed that project up. And that didn’t have a long life, mainly because some of the times, I hate -- and I’ll say this, and you can edit this out -- but sometimes, once the hospitals saw they could make money on something, they withdrew support of the community project and started offering it themselves. 
 ; 
 ; LB: I know that’s true. 0 940 Early discussions and misconceptions on how HIV was transmitted / Church and HIV transmission TSA: And so, it was a sad time on that level. But we tried to make up for it in the Lehigh Valley. There was a great deal of compassion here at the time, and a great deal of understanding about how people became homeless because they had an HIV diagnosis. We had to fight a lot of fear in the culture because like this pandemic, we didn’t know everything about it. We didn’t know everything, how it was transmitted. I mean, there was a time we had no idea how it was transmitted. 
 ; 
 ; LB: Yeah, it took years. 0 1472 Reflections on friends who were HIV positive LB: Did you have any friends that were -- that you knew well that were HIV positive that went through this time, or are still around, or whatever? 
 ; 
 ; TSA: Yeah. Well, everyone that I met who was HIV positive I met through my work, or being social in the gay community, or hanging out, and volunteering, and doing volunteer work at the AIDS Services Center. I didn’t have a lot of close social friends, if that’s what you’re asking. But I’ve had close social friends die since then, who were HIV positive, and had it for a long time, and long-term survivors, and had other underlying conditions that wasn’t good to have with HIV. I remember David Houseknecht. And what a character he was. And I remember our bishop. 0 1600 Role of the Episcopal Church during the HIV/Aids epidemic LB: The Episcopal Church really rose to this occasion, and I think there were a lot of people that sort of shifted their allegiances from other denominations to get into -- become Episcopalians because of this. It was remarkable because several people that I’ve interviewed have said, “Well, the Episcopal Church was really different compared to the other churches, other church involvement. ” 
 ; 
 ; TSA: And I wonder about that, of why that was, and I’m not quite sure why that was. But I think part of it was we were such an urban church. Our strength is really in cities. 0 1834 Gilead House / Asbestos problem LB: When you were talking about Gilead House and that was a -- where -- was that a place? Where was it? 
 ; 
 ; TSA: It was a place. We got a place over at the old Allentown State Hospital. They gave us one of the buildings. Of course, we thought, oh, this is great. Well, then we went in there and found out that we had to remediate half the building because the floor and the ceiling were asbestos. 0 2022 Reflections on the atmosphere of caretaking facilities run by minority groups LB: I had an interview with Bill Aull, who was really involved with Rainbow House. And there was such a significant community building feeling with regard to Rainbow House that -- I mean, I want to steer you into saying something about the fact that when a hospital takes over something that’s run by a minority group, things are different. 
 ; 
 ; TSA: They are different. You don’t have to steer me that way. I think when you have people whose primary concern is running a place to make money off of it, as opposed to people that are running the place to care for people, the quality is different. 0 2254 Common enemies of discrimination and prejudice / Politicization of social issues TSA: And I remember that there was energy, enthusiasm, support, particularly in the gay community at the time. It was a galvanizing force in the gay community. It was like you had a common enemy. Nothing galvanizes people more than having a common enemy. 
 ; 
 ; LB: That’s so true. 
 ; 
 ; TSA: And the enemy was multi-fraught. It was prejudice, and discrimination in the culture. It was the medical community and providing services. It was we can’t let our brothers and sisters languish. 0 2412 ACT UP / Demonstrations and Parades TSA: Well, I think what the result of that was ACT UP. I mean, people just had to go to the streets because of the ignorance, because of the lack of response from the national government, and the lack of compassion coming out of the White House seemingly. ACT UP had to be in your face, and they were until people -- until political leaders were afraid of ACT UP. They didn’t want ACT UP to show up at their office doing some kind of demonstration because it would not be -- it would be pretty explicit if they did. The phenomenon that I saw was that the Reagans were singularly unhelpful for a period. They came around, but begrudgingly. 0 2779 Involvement with the Integrity organization / Dixie White LB: What other organizations were you involved with? Were you part of the Gay Men’s Chorus? I don’t remember whether you were part of that now. 
 ; 
 ; TSA: No, I wasn’t. We started Integrity at the time. 
 ; 
 ; LB: Oh, right. Of course. Yeah. 
 ; 
 ; TSA: Which was the Episcopalian LGBT organization, which is now -- well, I’m declaring it defunct. I’ve got to go close our bank account. We don’t need it anymore. We don’t need it. And that’s a good thing. We won. We won. 0 3049 Experience as a priest in North Carolina / Racism and Anti-racism TSA: It was just before I left. That was starting to happen just before I left. I went to North Carolina from here. I was kind of burnt out after six years of just being on a treadmill, and I wanted to go to a little Southern sleepy town and be the rector for them, just be a priest for a while. 
 ; 
 ; LB: Where did you go? 
 ; 
 ; TSA: I went to Pittsboro, North Carolina, which is twenty miles south of Chapel Hill. But that’s a whole other story. That was not a good idea on my part. But anyway. . . 0 3374 Coming out experience in a religious setting TSA: No, I was unemployed. I left that church under, let’s just say, stressful circumstances. As you know, I was married and have two children. And actually, my involvement in HIV/AIDS movement and interaction with the gay community started making me ask questions and be honest to me about myself, and stuff that I was terrified to face, and did everything I could, including getting married, not to face. But I came out in the wrong place, which was down there. You can bleep this, but it was an S show, as you can imagine. 0 3615 Being sent for psychiatric evaluation TSA: Well, I was sent off for psychiatric evaluation, which was like what? They sent me to Minnesota. In all of this retrospective, it turned out for good. There was grace in all of this because the guy in Minnesota, who was my -- the psychiatrist who was overseeing my -- I had to do the Wassermann test, and the MMPI again, and all that stuff. But he turned out to be a guy -- a gay man, who said, “The bishop wants to defrock you. ”I said, “Why? I’ve done nothing wrong except announce the divorce from my wife, and trying to be honest about myself at the same time, and trying to be discreet about it as much as possible. 0 3995 Feeling joy and sadness in reflecting on the early days of the AIDS/HIV epidemic / Experiencing social breakthroughs TSA: That’s funny. Well, I think back on those times as -- they weren’t dark days for me. They were good days, as far as working with the HIV/AIDS stuff. They were full of hope, and there was joy in it. There was sadness. People died and we were sad about that. No question about that. But there was also equal and opposite joy and feeling of community and support that I haven’t felt like that since really. Maybe a little bit I’m feeling with the Black Lives Matter movement now, but it’s starting to feeling a little more like that. 0 4178 Caring for a young family during the AID epidemic / David Houseknecht and Dixie White LB: That’s true. Let’s see. I know that you’re busy and you’ve got some stuff that’s coming up really soon. I always ask people if they had been in a situation where they were caring for anybody with HIV, where you had to go and bring them food or care people like that.
 ; 
 ; TSA: Not on a consistent basis, no. Because you have to remember I had a young family then. 
 ; 
 ; LB: Oh, that’s true. 
 ; 0 4684 The return of virus related terminology / ELISA test TSA: I know. Well and truth is, we never came up with an HIV vaccine. I mean, that’s the thing. It’s funny how the language has come back to me because we were always talking about viral load, T cells. All of that language is back. All of that language is back. And the ELISA test. 
 ; 
 ; LB: I don’t know about that. What was that?
 ; 
 ; TSA: The ELISA test was the second -- if you -- the first one was a simple test that would say if you’re HIV positive or HIV negative. But it had a lot of false negatives and false positives.
 ; 0 4869 Advice and reflections for consideration for future generations / Focusing on humanity LB: We’re at the last ten minutes of this. If we’re thinking about how people are going to be watching this someday in the future thirty years from now, some kind of -- or more, and they’re going to look back at this, and here’s your chance to talk to the future. Tell them a little bit about just sort of the summation about that time in the Lehigh Valley with regard to HIV/AIDS during the height of the epidemic, and maybe some other words that you might want to toss in there. What do you think? 
 ; 
 ; TSA: That seems like a very heavy task, to talk to the future. But I think more what it taught me was communities can rise up together and address problems that seem insurmountable and seem bigger than us, and they can do it in a way that is phenomenal and not only helps the people with the disease, but it helps you. It helps you focus your own humanity. 0 5187 Attending events and interviews in a minister collar / Attending Allentown City Council meetings LB: I want to thank you personally for a couple of times when I desperately needed somebody who was wearing a minister collar to show up fast at an event. I remember when we were fighting the ordinance that time in City Hall --
 ; 
 ; TSA: I dragged Malloy. I said, “Come on, boy. We got to get up to City Hall and show -- put our mugs on the TV camera. ” 
 ; 0 5326 Passing the Allentown ordinance / Opposition of Allentown diocese LB: The big difference between Allentown and Bethlehem was that when we passed Allentown’s ordinance, the ordinance was already in existence, and it was passed in nineteen sixty-five to protect people based on race, religion, national religion, sex, and, I don’t know, one or two other things. And so, we had to add sexual orientation, gender identity. And that’s a tricky thing. And that was two-thousand and two. It actually started in 1998, and we worked all the way through two-thousand and two to actually pass it, and then we had to fight that referendum. It took seven years to put that in place, and it was really hard. 0 MovingImage T. Scott Allen talks about the AIDS epidemic in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. He talks about his years as an Episcopal minister and his work with AIDS Services Center, about people who had HIV/AIDS, and how churches supported people who were sick. T. SCOTT ALLEN LIZ BRADBURY: -- on this computer. Now to see other things, that there's a little dot up there that tells you it's recording. And now I know. I must look at that all the time. T. SCOTT ALLEN: Yes. I see it on mine too. It tells me you better watch what you say, bud. It's being recorded. LB: And I think you're pinned in there. I just want to be sure that you're pinned. TSA: Oh, I see. LB: And you are. TSA: You are using the enhanced encryption recording. LB: Pardon me? TSA: It just says I'm using enhanced encryption. So, I guess the Russians can't tap into (inaudible). LB: Thank goodness because they could use this. I know you have another thing right after this, so I'm going to -- and you've already done some big deal this morning. Man, you're a busy guy. TSA: And they're doing construction next door, so if you hear the sound of drills and circular saws in the background, that's what's going on. Of course they would pick today to do that. Of course, my neighbor decides always in the middle -- when I'm in the middle of noonday prayers daily to leaf blow their front porch at about midway through them. So much for urban living. We live in the city. We live close to each other. LB: And there's fireworks. TSA: Oh my God. Yes, there are. LB: On Monday night, I was working until about 1:30 in the morning to finish a project. And up until then and after I went to bed, I could hear the fireworks. And at 5:00 a.m., somebody set off two other huge, bomb like fireworks. Woke me right up. I had gotten three and a half hours. TSA: I thought there were gunshots for a while, and I thought oh, Lord, have mercy. But it wasn't. It was just these stupid one-boom fireworks that were just -- LB: It's fireworks. And the problem is because of this new law, which is I'm sure going to be repealed because it was such a mistake, but you can buy fireworks everywhere. TSA: Well, I don't know where they're getting these because most of the fireworks I see are just kind of small things. LB: You can buy those big, scary ones everywhere now. You can get them at the dollar store. TSA: Wow, really? Because I think they're making them -- LB: They're at every convenience store because they repealed the law because they wanted to tax revenue to fulfill some kind of deficit. So, they said, "Well, we'll just let them buy fireworks everywhere, and we'll tax them really high." And so, they are double tax than the regular sales tax. It was the biggest mistake ever because it's every person in this city who has to -- who doesn't like to be woken up twenty-four hours a day or hear gunshots is furious. And throughout the state. It's not just in the cities. TSA: It's bad for dogs and dog owners too. I remember I would take Martini, my dog -- who -- she's dead now -- but I would take her up to my bedroom -- which I had a window air conditioner in my bedroom -- turn on the air conditioner, turn on the TV, and that -- between the air conditioner and the TV, that blocked out a lot of that. She couldn't hear it. It was good. LB: We're on record, so I got to read you this stuff now. I got carried away. Let's see. I've got that. Oh, I need to turn my phone off. TSA: My only concern was having to give you my birthday. LB: Rose didn't want to give me her year, and I said, "Of course you don't have to do that." You don't have to do that if you don't want to. TSA: I was born just before Kennedy was shot. LB: Oh, you're young. We're not there yet because we have to do this whole thing. So wait a minute. I have to say this. With this project, Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and Trexler Library at the Muhlenberg College will collaborate on forty years of public health experience in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community, collecting and curating local LGBT health experiences from COVID AIDS to -- from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19. My name is Liz Bradbury, and I'm here with T. Scott Allen to talk about his experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community during this time of the COVID-19 pandemic, as part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive. We're meeting on Zoom, and today is July second, twenty-twenty. And you are in Allentown, is that correct? TSA: I'm in Bethlehem right now. But my church is in Allentown. LB: I have to put down where you are when you're doing this. You're in Bethlehem? TSA: I'm sitting in South Bethlehem right now. LB: We did all of those things. I pinned you. Thank you so much for your willingness to speak with us today. To start, can you please state your full name and spell it for me? TSA: Well, I'm just going to use my initial, T, period, Scott, S-C-O-T-T, Allen, A-L-L-E-N. LB: And would you please share your birth date or day? TSA: December twenty-second. A couple years before Kennedy was shot. LB: You're way younger than I am, Scott. Because I remember when Kennedy was shot. TSA: Well, no, I was in first grade actually. LB: I was in kindergarten, so you win. But anyway, do you consent to this interview today? This is the consent portion. TSA: Yes. LB: Do you consent to having this interview being transcribed, digitized, and made publicly available online in searchable formats? TSA: I do. LB: Do you consent to the LGBT Archive using your interview for educational purposes in other formats, including films, archives, websites, presentations, and even other formats? TSA: Absolutely. I'll be a movie star. LB: Yes. Do you understand that you will have thirty days after the electronic delivery of the transcript to review your interview, identify any parts that you would like to delete, and, or withdraw the interview from the project? If you say I don't want to do this at all, forget -- we'll do the whole thing again, if you wanted. Although, let's not do that. TSA: No. LB: But I will if you want me to. TSA: It's not like an answering machine message. Re-record. LB: So, you understand that? Okay? TSA: I understand that, yeah. LB: Good. Let's just start right into this. We sit in the middle of the current public health crisis, where experience that we had -- we want to take this opportunity to look back and reflect, and to capture the stories of those who lived through the worst of the HIV epidemic in the nineteen-eighties and nineties. And we start right out with that question. Do you remember the first time you became aware of the disease? And then just start talking from there. You can say whatever you want. TSA: Well, I came to the Diocese of Social Missioner in January of nineteen eighty-nine from Wheeling, West Virginia. I was aware of HIV/AIDS before I got here. But it was just starting to become in the national conversation, I should say. It was a few people sick in New York City and in urban areas, and hadn't really filtered out yet to towns and smaller rural areas. It was just starting to be of great concern in the national conversation when I arrived in eighty-nine. And it was a time of obviously great fear because the AIDS Quilt was just such a reminder of how many people were dying of this disease. And I remember seeing the AIDS Quilt in about eighty-eight in Cobo Hall in Detroit, Michigan. And the whole basement of Cobo Hall, which is a huge -- if you've ever been there, it's a huge convention center -- was just covered with the quilt. It was a very moving moment for me when I realized each one of these squares represents someone who's died. And usually, a gay person who died, at that point. That was also the sadness, that a minority community was being hit so hard by this virus. Anyway, so I came here in eighty-nine. It was also a time of great community energy. There was a lot of energy going on here in the Lehigh Valley that you just -- lots of coalition building. Lots of making connections, doing stuff together, writing grants together. Unusual bed partners: the Red Cross, the Episcopal Church, and -- Fighting AIDS Continually Together would do stuff. As I remember, it was an exciting time in a way because I saw so many people coming forward, and so much effort and energy that was having some effect happening. When I got to the Lehigh Valley, it was much more -- engaged me much more because there were actually people here that had HIV/AIDS and people that needed help. I mean, and it was lots of things that they needed. It was like some of them just needed food, and some of them needed healthcare. Some of them needed housing. Because there was no safety net from Washington at the time or Harrisburg, really. It was a very hopeful time. While it was sad and this was a tragic thing going on, a lot of innovative things were being done, especially -- the church had a chance to really be a partner with groups that they wouldn't have had partnerships with otherwise, and make friends, and show them the church wasn't -- I mean, it was -- religious communities weren't all great at the time, as you know. There was a lot of fear in churches. There was a lot of blaming. Seeing it as a class issue as opposed to a virus. And by class, I mean a category of people. And so, I think that was one of the things that was so amazing to me, is how much we cooperated with one another. I wrote grants. I was a grant writer for the Diocese. I wrote grants for the AIDS Services Center. I wrote grants for FACT. I wrote grants for AIDS outreach. LB: What were the grants for? What did they -- TSA: General programming. I mean, they were for what they needed. Basically, for services to people with HIV and AIDS. And it was at that time that I met Rose Craig and became actually good friends with her. And she was a great ally, being at the Red Cross I think at the time. And David -- I forget his last name -- at Lehigh Valley Hospital. LB: David Moyer? TSA: He was a vice president up there. Jo Clare Hartsig with (inaudible) of the homeless. LB: You just stopped for a minute. You said Jo Clare Hart-- TSA: Joe Clare Hartsig was at Center City Ministries, which was the standing homeless shelter here, which no longer exists. But she got involved because many of the people who came to her shelter were also HIV positive or having just full-blown symptoms of AIDS. And so, she got involved in stuff. Billy Leh. Real involved with him as his -- working on projects together, Rob-Win Press, with that. And then Linda Lobach at the time. She's got another last name now. But anyway, Linda at AIDS Outreach, which was started actually at Grace Episcopal Church. She was an Episcopalian. And of course, another Episcopalian became the director of the AIDS Services Center, was Dixie White. There was this explosion of cooperation, advocacy, concern. We spoke with a pretty loud voice when we all spoke together. We spoke in a louder voice than we would've spoken had we spoken individually. For me, it was a great honor and privilege to be connected in a network with these people, who were all bright and articulate people that had a lot on the ball. And thank God. And then we tried to start, as you may remember, the Gilead House, which was supposed to be the Lehigh Valley version of Rainbow House in Berks County. And Kit Hower headed that project up. And that didn't have a long life, mainly because some of the times, I hate -- and I'll say this, and you can edit this out -- but sometimes, once the hospitals saw they could make money on something, they withdrew support of the community project and started offering it themselves. LB: I know that's true. TSA: Right after we started the Transitional Living Center down here in Fountain Hill, which was for -- wasn't exactly for people with HIV, but it was for people that -- and it wasn't -- what we discovered is we found out about a lot of underserved people in general, who were being released from hospitals that had no place to live. People that lived alone, who had to give themselves eye drops. They couldn't manage that. Or give themselves some kind of complicated medication that involved maybe injection or IV. And so, we started the Transitional Living Center down here in Fountain Hill, and wrote grants, and got it going for people that were released from hospitals. And it also would include people with HIV and AIDS, who were treated and then released. And many of them, because they had become unemployed, lost their employment, had become homeless. And so, it was a sad time on that level. But we tried to make up for it in the Lehigh Valley. There was a great deal of compassion here at the time, and a great deal of understanding about how people became homeless because they had an HIV diagnosis. We had to fight a lot of fear in the culture because like this pandemic, we didn't know everything about it. We didn't know everything, how it was transmitted. I mean, there was a time we had no idea how it was transmitted. LB: Yeah, it took years. TSA: We suspected, but we didn't have solid proof that kissing someone would not give you HIV. So, anyway... LB: People still say that now. TSA: Really? LB: People still will describe certain circumstances, and they'll talk about it, and (inaudible) at the same risk as needle sharing or at the same risk as anal sex. You could say, well, you could get it from this, this, this, and this, or anal sex, or needle sharing. I'm thinking yeah, well the first two, I mean, there is no statistical circumstance where anyone has ever gotten it that way. TSA: And in our church tradition, communion is so important that we had to do a lot of stuff with the church about communion, about how you couldn't -- finally, we got doctors to come out and say, "You cannot get this from the common cough. Period." You can't. Unless you're doing something else at the altar rail besides taking communion, you can't get HIV. (laughs) LB: You still can't, even if you are. You still can't because once you have -- TSA: Unless you're engaging in unseemly behavior in church, you can't get it at church. And that was one of the things that we were fighting, is that prejudice and that fear in the culture. Because one of the blocks, as you know, to getting people to buy onto, and volunteer, and giving money to HIV as service groups was to relieve them of fear of a lot of the fear they had. So one of the big things that we did in the Episcopal diocese that we did ecumenically, actually -- it wasn't just us, but it was kind of spearheaded by us -- but it was the healing -- we had that first healing service at the cathedral. I don't know if you remember it. But it was at the cathedral and we did it for a couple of years or three years. Then it kind of died out because it wasn't needed. As with a lot of things that you do, things take on a life of their own, and they outlive their time, and it just kind of dies this really sad death at the end. Because for what it was started for, there's no longer a need. I remember that first thing. The bishop, Mark Dyer, was the celebrant. And we got the guy in New York that Cousin Bobby was about. I don't know if you remember Cousin Bobby. It was about Jonathan Demme's cousin, who was an Episcopal priest in Manhattanville that was doing a really active ministries with people with HIV. In fact, helped start that hotel there down in Christopher Street that was pretty much a residence for people with HIV, which started to expand rather quickly to not just gay people, but straight people too, particularly in areas like New York. Cousin Bobby was the preacher. I can't remember his name. We wanted to let people with HIV and AIDS know that we would touch them, that we would actually touch them, that they can take communion with us, and we're not going to be afraid of you, and we want you not to be afraid of us. And so, that was the big message that we were trying to put forth in that service. And I remember that it was packed. I mean, there was not a seat left in the room, mainly because allies -- a lot of allies came. Once again, all these organizations that were in relationship from one another would support each other in that kind of thing. I would encourage people to go to FACT events from the Episcopal Church. I'd advertise the summer games, and the Snowball, and things like that. It was a ton of great cooperation that I haven't seen a lot since, although I'm seeing it again with the Black Lives Matter movement now. But there was great cooperation in the Lehigh Valley. LB: When we compare this to COVID, we have to remember we've only been dealing with COVID-19 for about four or five months, or six months. We're not talking about by nineteen eighty-nine, people in the Lehigh Valley had been working to codify our community for four years. But when you had that big healing service, where was it? TSA: It was at the Cathedral Church of the Nativity down here. I'll never forget this. This was great. At the time, they were just drag queens. Now we probably call them transgender people: men who dress like women, but not all the time. Anyway, but they came dolled up, their wigs, everything. Looking very conservative, but they weren't like they were going to go on stage at The Stonewall or anything. And I remember one going up at the time of laying on the hands of healing, one going up. And I think Dixie and I were sitting together maybe at that. I don't remember. But I remember her leaning over to me, and say, "I wonder if the bishop realizes that the woman that he's laying hands on is not a woman." (laughs) I said, "You know, it doesn't matter." She's still getting healing. LB: Because those people were cross-dressers. They really were not trans people. They weren't transgender people who were living their lives as women. They were people who were -- TSA: These were cross-dressers, yeah. LB: -- who would dress as women. That was a really big contingency of people at Renaissance early on. And I remember that some of the first work that we did was in that community as well. Yeah, that was pretty interesting. TSA: I mean, Billy Leh was about the most secular person I've ever met in my life. And he came up to me and said how meaningful that that service was at the end of it for him, that we were touching, embracing everyone, not caring what your HIV status was. And offer you communion. We will drink after you. It was very powerful at the time in nineteen ninety-one, ninety, ninety-one maybe. But it was also trying to be a message to the churches that you don't have to be afraid either. There's not this huge outbreak of HIV afterwards. LB: Of course, with COVID-19, it's a different story. TSA: That's a different story. Absolutely. But we're kind of in that same place where we're not sure. We don't know. We don't have a really good personality profile on this virus yet. LB: That's true. TSA: And there was a point we didn't really have that for HIV either. We didn't know exactly what was going to happen, how it -- if it would mutate, how it would mutate. Would it get better? Would it get worse? Will the antivirals that we come up with still be effective in two or three years? There were all those questions back then, I remember. But still, we persevered. We persisted. LB: Did you have any friends that were -- that you knew well that were HIV positive that went through this time, or are still around, or whatever? TSA: Yeah. Well, everyone that I met who was HIV positive I met through my work, or being social in the gay community, or hanging out, and volunteering, and doing volunteer work at the AIDS Services Center. I didn't have a lot of close social friends, if that's what you're asking. But I've had close social friends die since then, who were HIV positive, and had it for a long time, and long-term survivors, and had other underlying conditions that wasn't good to have with HIV. I remember David Houseknecht. And what a character he was. And I remember our bishop. The house of bishops in the Episcopal Church, the presiding bishop told each one of the bishops in the house of bishops that he wanted them to go back to their diocese, and befriend and make a -- work on a friendship with someone with HIV/AIDS. And so, our bishop did that. And the person he chose was David Houseknecht. And Bishop Mark would visit him, and call him, and stay in touch with him. That's kind of one of the remarkable things that happened at the time, Liz, that just -- unexpected relationships grew up that, except for this disease, otherwise wouldn't have happened. LB: The Episcopal Church really rose to this occasion, and I think there were a lot of people that sort of shifted their allegiances from other denominations to get into -- become Episcopalians because of this. It was remarkable because several people that I've interviewed have said, "Well, the Episcopal Church was really different compared to the other churches, other church involvement." TSA: And I wonder about that, of why that was, and I'm not quite sure why that was. But I think part of it was we were such an urban church. Our strength is really in cities. And I think probably the first wave of people with HIV were members of those congregations who had to get over it real quick to minister to them, and had to learn real quick how to minister to them and how to -- and that this was something that they weren't getting support for in the general culture. Maybe that's why it was. I don't know. I don't know. But it was definitely a time that our church really became anti -- I don't know how to say it -- anti-homophobic. I don't know. Well, it wasn't just homophobia. Treating them like lepers. We decided that Jesus didn't treat lepers like they couldn't be touchable, so why should we? I think that was it. But then also, the time I'll never forget, Peter Helt was the pastor up at the MCC church. LB: Yeah, before Beth Goudy. TSA: Yeah. And I remember going to a dinner at Linda Lobach's house, and having -- because of that dinner, becoming friends with him, and was glad to know that he was ministering to gay people that wouldn't step foot into a traditional church. Those are the kind of connections that were invaluable. And I could refer people to him too that I knew weren't going to come to the Episcopal Church and sit through an hour and a half service, not knowing that they were really welcome. I'm enough of an evangelist as a Christian. I want them to become Christians. So I sent them up to Peter. But it was really a time too that I think we had to really get over fear, prejudice. And folded into that, which was a blessing, was homophobia. I think if it weren't for the AIDS/HIV crisis, we wouldn't have heard the stories of gay people that moved us so much. Even though we were clear that gay people weren't the only ones getting it, they were really the first wave to get it. Gay men particularly. And people got to hear their stories, see them as human beings, have compassion for them. And then following up from there, why aren't we ordaining them? Why can't they be ordained? And that came out of that, really. LB: Oh, that's interesting. TSA: It did unlock the stories of gay people in a way that nothing else had before that. LB: When you were talking about Gilead House and that was a -- where -- was that a place? Where was it? TSA: It was a place. We got a place over at the old Allentown State Hospital. They gave us one of the buildings. Of course, we thought, oh, this is great. Well, then we went in there and found out that we had to remediate half the building because the floor and the ceiling were asbestos. LB: Made of asbestos, yes. TSA: Anyway, we were like -- LB: Having been there empty, they can't even tear them down. They'd kill everybody by just tearing them down. TSA: Well, they had to remediate Martin Tower for that reason before they blew it up. They had to spend all that money getting the asbestos out of Martin Tower because all of that stuff would be aerosolized when they blew it up. LB: That's why it stood there vacant for so long. That building that we were going to have for the community center that's on Turner Street turned out to be totally made of asbestos. And we would say what needs to be done to that building is to tear it down, but they can't tear it down because the cost of tearing it down is worse than just leaving it there. TSA: Well, and the health danger. All that dust flying over the city and into windows. LB: You can't just go and tear this thing down. You've got to put it in a giant plastic bag and then carefully take it apart. TSA: Well, we thought that was a great thing at first. And then we found out about the asbestos problem. And of course, we were trying to get personal care home licensure. We did do some remediation. We wrote some grants. Rose was on the board, actually, of that. Because we really wanted to have a home where people with HIV could go, whose families didn't feel like they could manage them. Because as you know, at the time, there weren't the pharmaceuticals and the antivirals that we have now. And it was a debilitating and withering disease. And eventually, you would -- you couldn't even go to the bathroom by yourself. People had to make everything you ate and bring it to you. You weren't able to do any of that. So that was the need at the time, which thankfully was not as much of a need shortly after its demise. We only had one person in Gilead House. Only had one person. Well, and this is, once again, the hospitals realizing, oh my God, we can get money for having a HIV floor and putting on the floor. Okay. And so, then when they realized they can make money off of it and get third-party payments, which is how we were going to support the Gilead House. We were completely undercut by the hospitals on that. LB: I had an interview with Bill Aull, who was really involved with Rainbow House. And there was such a significant community building feeling with regard to Rainbow House that -- I mean, I want to steer you into saying something about the fact that when a hospital takes over something that's run by a minority group, things are different. TSA: They are different. You don't have to steer me that way. I think when you have people whose primary concern is running a place to make money off of it, as opposed to people that are running the place to care for people, the quality is different. And it begs the question, had we not done the Transitional Living Center, had we not done Gilead House, would the hospitals have done what they did? We were kind of the canary in the mineshaft, and they said, "Oh, wait a minute. If Medicaid or Blue Cross Blue Shield is going to pay for them to be in these places, or the state's going to give us money for that, why can't we do that?" I think it really spurred them on to do what they did. But as you say, the quality is very different. And I know people were well taken care of at the Transitional Living Center, which was pretty full from the minute it opened. LB: Where was that? TSA: That was here in Fountain Hill. I forget what street it's on. It's not far from where I'm sitting. There's Old Silk Mill that we got a piece of. And it had rooms. It had probably about eight or ten rooms and a kind of a nursing station, so there was medical access to people. You could see all the doors and all the rooms. What's that street north of me? I'll think of it in a minute. I think that one of the things that we did in that period was we made the culture start responding, albeit not with the same caring touch that we had. No question about that. Another remarkable thing of the time is that nonprofits, churches, were stepping up immediately to deal with the people and the needs of these people who were diagnosed with a disease. It wasn't a plague. It was a disease like cancer or anything else. We did, I think, remarkable work on very little. It was kind of like some projects were like stone soup. Okay, I have this idea. Okay, well, we can do this piece of it, but we probably need someone to do this piece. Well, you know what? We've got the infrastructure to do that piece of it. That's kind of how a lot of the things have happened. And I remember that there was energy, enthusiasm, support, particularly in the gay community at the time. It was a galvanizing force in the gay community. It was like you had a common enemy. Nothing galvanizes people more than having a common enemy. LB: That's so true. TSA: And the enemy was multi-fraught. It was prejudice, and discrimination in the culture. It was the medical community and providing services. It was we can't let our brothers and sisters languish. We've got to do something. We can't just sit by and watch this happen. There was a lot of energy around that. LB: That's a good point. That's a good way of framing it, I think, the common enemy thing. I think that's the way maybe we need to frame COVID-19 because I don't think people understand that as much. We need to say that's the enemy. The illness is the enemy. The pandemic is about that. It's not about the (inaudible). The enemy isn't the mask. TSA: The problem we have in this culture, and it happened with HIV and AIDS too, is things get politicized right away. It's like you're a red state ; you don't wear a mask. If you're a blue state, you wear masks. Well, that's ridiculous. And Ronald Reagan -- you know how he was. Ronald and Nancy? They didn't want anything to do with AIDS/HIV. LB: These archives will really put -- will give people an opportunity because these will be archived at Muhlenberg College, and people will be able to access these online and stuff. Thirty years from now, the way history will be written is Ronald Reagan was a beloved, moderate Republican president and was still, for the LGBT community -- we're like wait a minute. That was not what was happening. TSA: I thought George W. Bush was the worst president in history until -- I'd love to have George W. Bush back now. (laughter) I'll take him back in a minute. LB: But I don't think people always understand that when you're talking about Ron and Nancy Reagan and what they did or what they wouldn't do -- and so, talk about that a little bit. I think everybody was aware of -- TSA: Well, I think what the result of that was ACT UP. I mean, people just had to go to the streets because of the ignorance, because of the lack of response from the national government, and the lack of compassion coming out of the White House seemingly. ACT UP had to be in your face, and they were until people -- until political leaders were afraid of ACT UP. They didn't want ACT UP to show up at their office doing some kind of demonstration because it would not be -- it would be pretty explicit if they did. The phenomenon that I saw was that the Reagans were singularly unhelpful for a period. They came around, but begrudgingly. Here's the other thing. It also tied to homophobia. It was interlinked with homophobia with just -- initially, anyway. And thank God straight people started getting HIV because then it's like, oh, they're not gay and they got HIV. Oh, this must be a disease. This was not a gay thing. And of course, gay people always get politicized still. People vote for Donald Trump because he's going to put Supreme Court justices that are going to limit transgender rights or repeal same sex marriage. I just have one, two words for them: stare decisis. We've already done that, man. We can't keep spinning that wheel. That was -- been decided. But I do think that it was a lot of things going on like that at the time. I mean, I remember ACT UP, I think, was compliments of Ronald Reagan. If we hadn't had Ronald Reagan's response, people wouldn't have felt the frustration that they had to go out and set their hair on fire in public to get attention and say this is worthy of public funding, and public research, and public attention. LB: Did you go to any of those ACT UP things? TSA: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. There weren't many in the Lehigh Valley, as I recall. I don't think. But I went to one in Philadelphia, and it was in front of City Hall, actually. But being in the church, I had to -- well, I wanted to engage my own folks in a way. I spent my energy trying to engage people who claimed the Christian faith to actually claim the Christian faith, and to be what they said they were, and to give them opportunities to show that towards people with HIV and AIDS, and inviting them into that. Because Martin Luther King, he -- I think one of the things I've noticed that -- a lot of people have read King, but not thoroughly. And one of the things that I'll never forget -- and this was when I was involved in the anti-nuclear movement in Connecticut when was in seminary -- but we did demonstrations up there where we actually were arrested. But Martin Luther King always said that whatever public demonstration you do, you always have to have an element of it be an invitation for those who witness it to join you. You cannot create a demonstration to be intentionally off-putting, which I've always thought was really good advice. It's got to be non-violent, and it's got to be an invitation to people to join you, not to reject you. LB: Trish and I were just in a pride parade in Amelia Island, Florida last year at this time actually. It was their first pride festival, their first parade. They have a little park there. It was about eight-hundred people there all together. It was small. It's a small place though. The first thing we did was we paraded down the street a few blocks, maybe five or six blocks. And we came back up, passed by the Episcopal Church. All these people, they were the mom and dad's brigades, and they were coming out and hugging everybody. It was really wonderful. It was some church. But the church didn't participate, but the congregation did. It was sort of interesting. There's someone in the congregation that organized people to do this thing. But one of the things that Trish and I were doing -- we were near the front of the parade -- is that every time we walked by and we would see people that were clearly LGBT standing on the side of the road, and we would -- or even just people who had -- and they were cheering and they had -- and we would say, "Come on. Come on. Come and do this." Because sometimes, they feel like, well, I'm not part of that particular group. And we would say to them, "Come out to be with us and walk with us. We want you in our group." And I think that that was a great thing. People are still doing that today. That was a significant thing. What other organizations were you involved with? Were you part of the Gay Men's Chorus? I don't remember whether you were part of that now. TSA: No, I wasn't. We started Integrity at the time. LB: Oh, right. Of course. Yeah. TSA: Which was the Episcopalian LGBT organization, which is now -- well, I'm declaring it defunct. I've got to go close our bank account. We don't need it anymore. We don't need it. And that's a good thing. We won. We won. LB: If you have any leftover money, I know someplace that you could donate the money to. TSA: Oh, no, no. We're donating it to the Bradbury-Sullivan Center for the Dixie White room. LB: Yes, okay. Definitely do that. TSA: It's not a lot of money. I warn you. It's like two or three-hundred bucks. LB: That's terrific. We're about a little bit less than six-hundred dollars -- three-thousand six-hundred dollars from the goal. We're doing really well with that. It's very significant. TSA: And what room is it? LB: We haven't decided. That will be something that Dixie's folks and other contributors and stuff can decide. There's a lot of different options, as far as that goes. TSA: While Dixie was still alive, Dixie and I, and David Moyer were about the last three standing people that could still -- were still vertical that -- LB: Well, now there's two of you. TSA: Yes, and now there's only two of us left. But anyway, we did say we're going to close this account because Dixie was very concerned that we not just let this money languish and just put it in a checking account. It's a little of it. We need to put it towards something. And I suggested that we send it to the Bradbury-Sullivan Center in thanksgiving for the ministry that Integrity had. And we had a good ministry for a few years. It was really good. LB: I used to advertise it in the paper. TSA: Yeah. And we provided affirmation and a safe place for gay Episcopalians to be and know they weren't alone. That was really great. But we started that. That came out of that. I think there was a clergy group that Ann Hughie may have convened that I was part of. Donna [Seepley?], Nancy Adams, Jo Clare, me, Peter Helt. God, these are old history names, aren't they? LB: There's a guy at Saint John's Lutheran who was (inaudible). TSA: Yeah, Tim. No, no, no. He was at the UCC church. But that was the other thing, is getting -- doing education for clergy about -- so they could assure their congregations that they could have communion. Because it would scare people if you say, "We don't know if anyone in this room is HIV positive or not." They don't care. And they'd say, "Oh, yeah. It bothers me. I'm not going to take communion." And people thought by dipping their wafer they were going to be avoiding that bad germ floating around in the wine or something. I don't know. Rather than sipping from the cup. Whatever you need to do. And some people stopped taking the cup for a while. They just took the bread. So we had to do a lot of education with clergy, not just Episcopal clergy, but ecumenically. Presbyterians, Methodists, UCCs, Mennonites. Of course, Roberta Kreider was doing a lot of work with the Mennonites. And she was kind of doing this underground Mennonite gay ministry. LB: Was that then? TSA: She was starting it then, I think. LB: Cool. TSA: It was just before I left. That was starting to happen just before I left. I went to North Carolina from here. I was kind of burnt out after six years of just being on a treadmill, and I wanted to go to a little Southern sleepy town and be the rector for them, just be a priest for a while. LB: Where did you go? TSA: I went to Pittsboro, North Carolina, which is twenty miles south of Chapel Hill. But that's a whole other story. That was not a good idea on my part. But anyway... LB: It's interesting that you have this idea that it's going to be like Mayberry, and then you look underneath, and you say, "Oh, wait." Look in the closet of those guys in Mayberry and there's a bunch of white robes hanging up in there." TSA: Well, I told somebody, "I'm on the diocese in anti-racial and social -- and racial justice committee here in the diocese now." And I was telling them about my past and that when I was rector of that church, the Daughters of the Confederacy invited me to give an opening prayer for their centennial meeting, which was a big deal. Culturally, that was a big deal. I struggled with doing it. They were asking me because Saint Bartholomew's is one of the oldest churches in town, and a lot of the glorious dead were buried in our church yard. So anyway, I went down, and it was real creepy. The place was decorated in red, white, and blue, but there were the -- there was the Confederate flag everywhere. But the Daughters of the Confederacy are singularly responsible for most of those monuments in the South. These women baked pies and raised money for that statue of General Jubilation T. Cornpone in the (laughs) -- LB: Well, and I raised the money, and I think people don't quite understand that those statues were just being bulk produced. They were spitting out one after the other. They all looked exactly the same: Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, a couple of other generals, Jefferson Davis. They didn't have any artistic value. They weren't put up as a monument for a specific battle that happened. It was just absolutely created as a white supremacy -- TSA: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. LB: -- thing. TSA: I was not a racist, but I didn't know enough not to be anti-racist. And there's a difference. I mean, I grew up in the South. I had a Confederate flag in my bedroom as a teenager. My parents didn't see anything wrong with that. I didn't either. We're related to the Lee family, the Robert E. Lee family. We're related to his brother, actually. But when the Sons of the Confederacy found that out, boy, howdy, they came and got me and wanted me to be a member of the Sons of the Confederacy. I'm like, "I'm really busy here at Saint Bartholomew's. I can't join one more organization." But both of the Sons and the Daughters of the Confederacy had chapters in Pittsboro. It was crazy time. It was crazy time. And here's this guy that came from the activist northeast. I'd just done all this stuff, as you heard, with AIDS and gay people, and stuff. There was some backwardness in the town, no doubt. But fortunately, a lot of my -- it was an Episcopal church. And so, there was a huge retirement community nearby called Farrington, and a lot of my parishioners came from there, and they had moved down from New Jersey. There was a level of sophistication in my congregation that was saving for me. I wasn't stuck with just southern ethos. There was a little more progressiveness going on. LB: Twenty miles from Chapel Hill means you're twenty miles from the university too. TSA: Right, right. And we had people that worked at the university in the congregation. And it was a place for cheap land if you wanted to build a house, and people did. It's in Chatham County, which is south of Orange County, which is the county that Chapel Hill is in. But it was -- LB: How long were you there? TSA: I was there for four years. LB: And then you came back here? Directly to here? TSA: Yes, came back directly to here. Came back here again. LB: Did they provide you with a church? I don't know how this works, so I'm not really -- TSA: No. Oh, coming back here? LB: Yeah. TSA: No, I was unemployed. I left that church under, let's just say, stressful circumstances. As you know, I was married and have two children. And actually, my involvement in HIV/AIDS movement and interaction with the gay community started making me ask questions and be honest to me about myself, and stuff that I was terrified to face, and did everything I could, including getting married, not to face. But I came out in the wrong place, which was down there. You can bleep this, but it was an S show, as you can imagine. LB: Bleep it. I love this kind of stuff. If you want to take these things out, you certainly can. But don't think that you need to do that, Scott, because, believe me, this is [nothing?]. TSA: I don't want to scandalize people. But it was a shit show. Let me just tell you that. It was awful. And the bishop didn't know what to do. And he was coming down to retirement. He was in his last lap, not wanting to deal with this. And there was a lot of scandal and rumor that wasn't true that was going around about my behavior, and that I was an alcoholic sitting in the house with my -- the gun in one hand and a bottle of vodka in another. It was crazy stuff. And I'm like, "What?" It just opened a floodgate of homophobia that I didn't think existed. LB: I think that often happens with people who are tangential to the community. I have two friends who were going to adopt. They were a lesbian couple, and they were going to adopt a baby. The adoption agency said, "It would be a good idea for you to be a member of a progressive -- a church that was a progressive church." So they went to the church in their neighborhood that was the denomination they were very comfortable with. I think it was the Church of Christ. And they went in, and this was in New Jersey. And they explained their situation. But they said, "Look, we don't really want to come out to everybody right away. We're not out like that in the neighborhood. We're going to have a child. We'll ease into it. We need to know people, et cetera, et cetera. But please be discreet about this and don't tell everybody." TSA: Oh, God. LB: They've already filled out the forms to go into the position of becoming a member of the church. And the next day, they go in there, and some really well-meaning clerk in the office there said, "Everybody's so excited that we're going to have a lesbian couple." And they're like, "Whoa. You told everybody at the church before we even got there?" What happens sometimes is a very, very caring, well-meaning straight person, who has no idea what kind of world of discrimination happened to LGBT people -- that was before could get married -- they were relatively new to the community -- thinking we're just -- I'm one-hundred percent supportive of you. You seem like a nice group of people. Why would people be negative toward you? And they (inaudible) into two-hundred people in one day. TSA: Well, I was sent off for psychiatric evaluation, which was like what? They sent me to Minnesota. In all of this retrospective, it turned out for good. There was grace in all of this because the guy in Minnesota, who was my -- the psychiatrist who was overseeing my -- I had to do the Wassermann test, and the MMPI again, and all that stuff. But he turned out to be a guy -- a gay man, who said, "The bishop wants to defrock you." I said, "Why? I've done nothing wrong except announce the divorce from my wife, and trying to be honest about myself at the same time, and trying to be discreet about it as much as possible. But that's obviously not going to happen." And so, he said, "I think I can get your bishop to back down with this. Are you willing not to work in the church for a few months?" I said, "Absolutely." I said, "It's like an attorney. You can lose your practice. You don't want to lose your license. And being what we call deposed is losing your license, and I'm fine not to have my practice for a while." He says, "What are you going to do?" I said, "I'm going to move back to Bethlehem. I own a house in Bethlehem and the tenants are really bad, so I feel no compunction giving them eviction notices. And they're four months behind in rent anyway. And I'm going to move back there. And he says, "Well, you know, one of my best friends is a therapist in Bethlehem." It was John Falbo. I don't know if you remember John Falbo. LB: Oh, of course I know John Falbo. TSA: But this guy in Minnesota -- LB: (inaudible) around, isn't he? TSA: -- hit me up to be probably condemned by him and said that he's a raving lunatic. Don't let him be a priest anymore. Sent me to John Falbo, who was the best thing for me. LB: Oh, yeah. No, I recommended a hundred people to John. And it was such a shock when he died. TSA: He died too soon. What happened? That was awful. LB: I'll tell you. He died after a huge snowstorm. I think he was out there shoveling snow. TSA: Oh, God. LB: He had a massive heart attack, and frankly, what would cause that? It was a blizzard day, and that night, he died. And I think that's what it was. I think he was outside. I really think that's what it was. I'm just guessing about that. I mean, he wasn't in the hospital or anything. He just had a heart attack and died. And I had literally dozens of people calling me up saying, "You need to refer me to another openly gay therapist in Bethlehem." I said, "Well, I'm sorry. But I don't have anybody." And it's been what, three years? And I still don't have anybody. And I just got another call from somebody who said, "I really need somebody that's more -- that's a man." Really what they were saying is, "I need a man." This is a woman. And she was lesbian, and she said, "I need a man to be in this position for me." And I just don't have anybody. I don't know. TSA: He was a lifesaver for me, and I was with him for three or four years, decreasingly seeing him. But when I first got here, I saw him about every couple weeks. I mean, no one was more helpful to me in coming out than John. He was great. But that's another story. And when you do the people's coming out story video, I'll be in that if you'd like. Because I have a hellacious story. Everything awful that could happen to you as an Episcopal priest happened to me. The only fault of mine is coming out as a gay man. LB: Mary Foltz at Lehigh University is doing a series of archive videos of people in the community. She's done Harold and Roberta Kreider, and they had ten people. And I contributed. They could only do ten people. That was the first grant. And they're still working on this, and there's going to be more money to do this. But the first grant was to do ten people, and I said, "Well, you got to do Harold and Roberta. They're in their mid-nineties. Hurry." And I said to do Dixie, and they were set to do her, and then she died. And it was so -- such a shame. TSA: That's such a loss. LB: I'll do Charlie Versaggi later today, and then I will have ten of these HIV/AIDS interviews. And every single person has mentioned Dixie White. I mean, she was so essential in that early (inaudible). TSA: Well, she had the AIDS Services Center at a critical time. That makes perfect sense to me that they would mention her, and as well as Linda Lobach and Rose Craig. Those were some always people that had -- were big noises in the AIDS community at the time. Absolutely. LB: So there will be more, and I will suggest that they interview you because I work with Mary. She's going to interview me tomorrow. I think that's one of the last ones. And I said, "Honey, you got to give me more than one day." They're like, "You can do this in ninety minutes." I'm like, "No way in hell. I can't even do five years in ninety minutes." TSA: That's funny. Well, I think back on those times as -- they weren't dark days for me. They were good days, as far as working with the HIV/AIDS stuff. They were full of hope, and there was joy in it. There was sadness. People died and we were sad about that. No question about that. But there was also equal and opposite joy and feeling of community and support that I haven't felt like that since really. Maybe a little bit I'm feeling with the Black Lives Matter movement now, but it's starting to feeling a little more like that. But it was just all of the breakthroughs that we made at those times in the -- and really had to break through a lot of prejudice and misinformation, just like now. I mean bleach and lights in your body, and things like that. I was like, "No, no, no. That's not going to take care of this." LB: We had really good local leadership. We had a common enemy. And here's another thing, Scott: we were a lot younger. TSA: Oh, hell yes. I can't imagine myself doing now what I did then. I just can't imagine it. The Summer Games, the FACT games, were always on Sunday, which was hard for me because I had to do church somewhere. But I remember Saturday, there was something, and then Sunday, I had to do church. And then I got right in the car, pretty much changed while driving up thirty-three in my car, and attended the FACT games and was at an information table there. That was it. The reason I was going is I was going to stand at a -- I think it was the AIDS Services Center information table or something. I didn't think of it at the time. Now, I'm like, oh my God. I'd no more do that now than fly to the moon. LB: Yeah, we did a lot of hard work in those days. We're still doing it. TSA: We're still doing it. Well, we can be the elders that give wise advice now. LB: And have people not listen to us. TSA: Well, we've got some wisdom. We've got some scars here and there, and some places that still hurt that we can talk about. LB: That's true. Let's see. I know that you're busy and you've got some stuff that's coming up really soon. I always ask people if they had been in a situation where they were caring for anybody with HIV, where you had to go and bring them food or care people like that. TSA: Not on a consistent basis, no. Because you have to remember I had a young family then. LB: Oh, that's true. TSA: I had little kids. In addition to doing my day job, I had a night job of being a father, and doing laundry, and do things like giving baths, and things like that. And that was important to me, to be present to my kids, even though I would leave early in the morning sometimes. And sometimes, I had night meetings. They didn't see me until the next morning because they'd gone to bed by the time I got home. Or I saw them briefly at dinner and had to run out to a meeting at seven o'clock or something. So, no. My only really tangential work in that direction was taking meals with Dixie to David Houseknecht and visiting him with her when she took -- LB: I didn't know him. I mean he was obviously a (inaudible). TSA: He was one of the first people diagnosed. He was a character. He was flamboyantly gay. Flamboyantly gay. He wore clothes like I have on, and then he'd have a yellow feather boa that he'd wear. He always had some accessory on that was outlandish, or long earrings that dangled and stuff. And it was clearly women's earrings. These weren't like Mr. Clean little gold things. These were dangly, sparkly things. So, yeah. He was one of the people that was first. I don't remember a lot about his story, where he came from. He was from this area. Of course, Houseknecht is not an unusual name in this area. But he had been involved in something. Dixie adored him, and it took a lot for Dixie to adore you. Dixie didn't have a long adore list. LB: I knew Dixie pretty well. I know what you mean. TSA: And usually, it was mutual, so it worked out fine. Well, as you know, I was a primary source for a David Houseknecht article on Dixie in The Bethlehem Press. There's a big article on Dixie in The Bethlehem Press, and I was a primary source. I didn't realize it, that I was going to be a primary source. But David Houseknecht was someone that she originally -- was a client of theirs at the AIDS Services Center. Since they're both dead, I don't think I am violating any HIPAA laws by saying that. I don't know. And he was the one that Mark Dyer decided to have a relationship with, and I think it's because of Linda Lobach that had -- because he was also -- Linda Lobach was very enamored of him. Her name's Eisenreich right now. She's still around. She might be a person on your list to talk because -- LB: Well I had grant funding for ten people. And you're the ninth. And I have one more. I have Charlie Versaggi later today, and then I'm going to be done. TSA: Cunningham. What was her name? LB: Vicky. TSA: No, she had a man's name I think. She had short black hair. I think she was Jewish, actually. LB: Marty? TSA: What? LB: Was it Marty or something like that? TSA: No. I'll think of it in a minute. She had a whole other ministry. I mean AIDS Outreach did material aid to people with HIV: food, medicines, connecting them to social services, things like that. Randall. No. He's a baseball -- I mean, a football player. No. But she did a spiritual -- just did spiritual stuff. Just did prayer services, coached clergy on dealing pastorally with people in their congregations that had people with HIV and the kind of concerns that they might want to be looking out for and being sensitive to. And also, having them know the referral points, where if they hear this need, you send them to this person. So it was making them a better helper to people in their congregations. What was her name? Bernie maybe. Bernie Cunningham. I think that was her name. LB: That makes sense. I didn't know her. TSA: She wrote several editorials in The Morning Call, as I recall. Bernadette Cunningham. That was her name. And they called her Bernie. Bernadette Cunningham. She was a very striking looking woman: tall, thin, kind of Sinead O'Connor hair. LB: Was she a minister? TSA: I don't know. Like I said, she's Jewish, and Jews are less I guess clergy focused than a lot of places -- I mean, a lot of religions. I mean, they have rabbis of course. But you don't have to be seminary educated to be a rabbi. So she could've been. But I never heard anyone refer to her as rabbi. But she did a lot of work at Temple of Peace in Easton. I think that's the name of the Temple there. So she was another character that was in the mix. But David Houseknecht was a favorite of Dixie's and a favorite of Linda Lobach's, which meant he got a lot of attention from both AIDS service organizations. So whenever he lifted his little finger to want, one of them provided it for him. He was a spoiled brat of the people with HIV (inaudible). And he was also witty and smart. Also, the Rodale's involvement too. I don't know if anybody's talked about that. LB: I interviewed Maria Rodale on Monday. TSA: Okay, good. Good. LB: And I talked to her about her brother and then about her mother, and it was interesting. I mean Ardath Rodale's extraordinary. I'm very happy about her because she had a different take on it. TSA: And she was great. I had several interactions with her, as you can imagine. I was always wanted to just touch the hem of her garment because she was such a wonderful person. It just brought out the best in the community. It brought out goodness in people that didn't have an opportunity to be brought out until that crisis in a way that I don't COVID-19 doing yet. LB: It's only been four months. Five months. TSA: I know. Well and truth is, we never came up with an HIV vaccine. I mean, that's the thing. It's funny how the language has come back to me because we were always talking about viral load, T cells. All of that language is back. All of that language is back. And the ELISA test. LB: I don't know about that. What was that? TSA: The ELISA test was the second -- if you -- the first one was a simple test that would say if you're HIV positive or HIV negative. But it had a lot of false negatives and false positives. Particularly if you were positive, they'd send your blood to a second test, which is a little more specific because the first one -- if you had a virus like HIV but wasn't really HIV in you, it would trip the alarm on this one test. But the ELISA test was what you did for a deep analysis of your blood and the viral content of your blood. LB: I see. TSA: Many times, the ELISA test would come back as negative for people that had taken that first test and gotten a positive. I don't know why it's called ELISA, but it's called ELISA. LB: If it came back negative, that was because they didn't have it? TSA: Right. I mean, the ELISA test was authoritative, which I don't know why they didn't give that right away. But there was some reason. It may have been cost. It was a costly test. And there was a simpler test that could -- you could show symptoms of HIV and AIDS, and that first test was enough. It's clear you've got this. We don't have to go any further. But then sometimes, you would get a positive test, and you're asymptomatic, and they'd send it to the ELISA test to make sure that you had -- often, it would come back negative, saying, no, you don't have human immunodeficiency virus. But anyway, I notice a lot of the same language is happening. A lot of the same uncertainty about the personality in the virus. Are there long-term effects, even if you were asymptomatic? Do you have some kind of organ involvement and compromise because you had it? They don't know any of that yet. LB: Yeah, they don't. TSA: As we said, it's only been four months. There haven't been any longitudal studies that can be done yet. LB: We're at the last ten minutes of this. If we're thinking about how people are going to be watching this someday in the future thirty years from now, some kind of -- or more, and they're going to look back at this, and here's your chance to talk to the future. Tell them a little bit about just sort of the summation about that time in the Lehigh Valley with regard to HIV/AIDS during the height of the epidemic, and maybe some other words that you might want to toss in there. What do you think? TSA: That seems like a very heavy task, to talk to the future. But I think more what it taught me was communities can rise up together and address problems that seem insurmountable and seem bigger than us, and they can do it in a way that is phenomenal and not only helps the people with the disease, but it helps you. It helps you focus your own humanity. It helped us focus our own relational needs, our own relational -- what am I thinking of? I can't think of it. And our common humanity to be able to address something that seemed so -- and it was very frightening. A lot of misinformation. And just to keep serene during all of that and focus on the sick people. What do they need? Not answering questions about the future. Not blaming things for the past. But being present to those who had HIV and AIDS, and to advocate in governments and health systems for care, and increased services, and more useful services to these people. That really was part of it for me, just focusing on your mission. Not making your mission complicated, like I'm going to cure AIDS in the world. I am going to make life for someone with HIV living in the Lehigh Valley more tolerable, more humane, more compassionate, by golly. And whatever else is happening in the world, I can't control that. But I can control my environment, my community, and the people that affect me the most. And I can have something to say about that, and I can do something about that that's good, and positive, and makes a difference. And I think that's what the AIDS crisis taught us in the Lehigh Valley, is that we are better together than apart. We are stronger together than apart. We're actually smarter together than apart. And we can address things together that we couldn't address by ourselves. And the encouragement we gave each other too, the encouragement. That was also it too. Sure, there were moments you just wanted to just sit down, and throw up your hands, and cry or whatever. Are they ever going to get it? Are we ever going to get this resource for this person? All of that. And there was always someone there to buck you up and say, "Yeah, we're going to get it. We care a lot about that person. We care about that person, and they're going to be okay because of us. So fear not." LB: I lost you. There you are. TSA: I'm sorry. I missed that. LB: We both froze up a little bit. I said I thought that was great. We just have a couple minutes left. So I just want to thank you so much, Scott, for this (inaudible). TSA: Oh, it was my pleasure. LB: Really great. TSA: I was just remembering all the stuff and the energy then, and just -- and all the good people that -- some of them aren't with us anymore, and that makes me sad. But also, that's life, isn't it? LB: It is. And there's (inaudible) wonderful thing you've done. TSA: People that come after us are going to do phenomenal things together like we did. LB: I want to thank you personally for a couple of times when I desperately needed somebody who was wearing a minister collar to show up fast at an event. I remember when we were fighting the ordinance that time in City Hall -- TSA: I dragged Malloy. I said, "Come on, boy. We got to get up to City Hall and show -- put our mugs on the TV camera." LB: That's so great. And the look on your face. You had that great, serene look. And we were plotting out that we were going to fight this effort to repeal the ordinance, and we already had hundreds of people who were going to take their names off of the petition. The anti-guys were just petrified. We're riding up in an elevator, and I think we were with you in the elevator, and the bad guy. And he's thinking, oh, there's a guy who's a minister (inaudible). I love that. Thank you for that. That was a long time ago. Way more than twenty years ago. TSA: I'm crying thinking of that moment because it was just so moving for me to be able to be there on a moment's notice. LB: That was really something. TSA: Have collar, will show. LB: And there was television. It was television and reports, and we were saying to people things like, "These people are lying to people to get them to take their names off." And plus, I have to say, you're really eloquent. You did a terrific job on this interview. And I'm thinking, oh, yeah. Scott's really good at this. Thank you very much for doing it. TSA: Well, thank you. I've verklempt. No. But also, I remember doing that in Bethlehem too, and going to those interminable city council meetings. And it seemed like we had to go every week for four weeks. LB: Truthfully, we had to do that in Allentown too. But it's just harder to remember because it was so long ago. TSA: Oh my God. And Dixie always went. And Esther Lee was there, and I think she was begrudgingly okay with it. She's a very conservative African American woman. LB: The big difference between Allentown and Bethlehem was that when we passed Allentown's ordinance, the ordinance was already in existence, and it was passed in nineteen sixty-five to protect people based on race, religion, national religion, sex, and, I don't know, one or two other things. And so, we had to add sexual orientation, gender identity. And that's a tricky thing. And that was two-thousand and two. It actually started in 1998, and we worked all the way through two-thousand and two to actually pass it, and then we had to fight that referendum. It took seven years to put that in place, and it was really hard. But when we did the Bethlehem one and Adrian led that effort -- and Easton was a breeze -- but in Bethlehem, because of really some odd city council problems and some other issues -- but the thing about Bethlehem was that ordinance was created to -- from scratch, and it included everybody. In Allentown, it was a lot easier to say don't keep those gay people in. It's okay to protect these people but not those people. We don't need those people. We never had. Blah, blah, blah. But to say we don't want to protect anybody, and that's what they were doing in Bethlehem. And so, Esther Lee, who's the leader of the Black community -- that ordinance has protected people based on race. It was awful hard to say, well, you can protect me, but not them. TSA: And you know who the main opponent was in Bethlehem? LB: Yes, but go ahead and say. TSA: It was the Allentown diocese. LB: Yeah. So what happened was that they were really trying to manipulate people who were Catholics on council. TSA: They did. And they sent their attorney. I remember that. But I was astounded. And so, I was just like by golly, I'm wearing my collar every time, and I would stand up and I'd say, "I'm here on behalf of the Episcopal Church to support this ordinance to be added to the City of Bethlehem's ordinance and civil rights ordinance." That was the most discouraging thing about that whole situation for me, was that they were pushing one of the members had -- was thick of thieves with that. He was actually somehow on their legal team of attorneys. LB: Their legal counsel was trying to rewrite the law to have such a religious exemption that anyone could just simply say it's against my religion to do this. But they tried to write the law that way, and then I rewrote it. And I said, "Okay, this is the language we would have because churches are always exempt for any kind of thing because, after all, a church doesn't -- a Catholic church doesn't have to hire a rabbi to be the leader of the church. They get their mission church, and then that's their mission. That's perfectly fine." So I changed them to say religious entity. They said, "Any business that had a religion -- that was tied to religion." And I changed it to any church or other religious congregation or something like that. And that's the way the law was, and that's protected by the Constitution anyway. TSA: And with this COVID thing, the governors didn't close the churches. The churches closed themselves, following guidelines of the health department. We could've been keeping church open. Of course, we'd have everybody on a ventilator by now if we'd done that. But it wasn't the government that was closing the churches. Nobody got that. Churches were never closed by the government in Pennsylvania, and I don't think anywhere else. There's too many Constitutional issues with that. But they closed themselves out of protection for their people. LB: They should. TSA: And they should have. Right, exactly. LB: I know you have another gig in a couple of minutes. TSA: I know. And I have to run upstairs and see a man about a horse. But one more time, was in front of the federal courthouse. One of my favorite pictures I have of Dixie -- and you may have it -- is Dixie and I standing there with a no DOMA. LB: I told (inaudible). TSA: Yeah, you did probably. But that's one of my favorite pictures of us. It kind of encapsulates how our relationship was throughout the whole thing: no DOMA. LB: That was the picture I used for all of the mentions of her. I said, "Here's a picture of Scott." Because Dixie looked so great in that picture. TSA: She did. She looked happy. She was in her element. She was in her element, man. LB: It was a (inaudible) thing. TSA: Thank you, Liz. Namaste. LB: Thank you. I really appreciate it, Scott. You're the greatest. See you around. TSA: Yes, ma'am. Let me know how this all pans out. LB: We'll send you the transcript of this too pretty soon. TSA: Okay, great. LB: Bye-bye. TSA: Thank you. LB: Bye. END OF AUDIO FILE Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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01:34:23
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T. Scott Allen, July 2, 2020
Description
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T. Scott Allen talks about the AIDS epidemic in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. He talks about his years as an Episcopal minister and his work with AIDS Services Center, about people who had HIV/AIDS, and how churches supported people who were sick.
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PH40_11
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AIDS (Disease)
Date
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2020-07-02
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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https://lgbt.digitalarchives.muhlenberg.edu/files/original/c9ad16be34cedf3e114a260e680a3c52.png
0a52ecce01ce3edd1edcc8b364c9a2cc
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40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community: HIV/AIDS
Description
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In the spring of 2020, the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive received a grant to collect oral histories and written stories for 40 Years of Public Health in the Lehigh Valley’s LGBT Community: Collecting and Curating Local LGBT Health Experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19.
The collection consists of oral histories from individuals who experienced the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as oral histories from members of the local community as they lived through 2020's summer of Covid-19. Running through both are the themes of dealing with the fear of an emerging health crisis, loneliness and isolation, and coming together as a community in support and activism.
The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Liz Bradbury
Interviewee
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Rose Craig
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=PH40_05.xml
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5.4 June 30, 2020 Rose Craig, June 30, 2020 PH40_05 01:29:17 LVLGBT40 40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg AIDS (Disease) Rose Craig Liz Bradbury audio/m4a CraigRose_20200630_audio 1.0:|25(9)|50(5)|83(7)|106(15)|127(8)|142(11)|165(2)|184(12)|207(12)|232(2)|255(5)|274(7)|295(12)|320(3)|341(8)|364(10)|383(8)|408(8)|429(9)|452(6)|475(9)|504(3)|519(15)|540(14)|557(12)|580(6)|605(6)|634(8)|655(13)|678(6)|707(16)|728(12)|751(11)|772(9)|791(13)|814(6)|837(7)|858(7)|879(6)|896(14)|919(13)|940(9)|967(11)|988(13)|1013(8)|1040(2)|1071(3)|1098(2)|1121(5)|1146(6)|1173(12)|1206(9)|1225(13)|1252(17)|1271(11)|1292(16)|1317(9)|1346(16)|1367(17)|1390(11)|1411(15)|1444(7)|1463(10)|1488(7)|1509(11)|1534(13)|1559(12)|1580(5)|1597(9)|1620(10)|1641(15)|1660(8)|1683(8)|1716(8)|1743(5)|1762(13)|1785(5)|1810(17)|1829(8)|1858(2)|1877(16)|1900(9)|1923(9)|1946(14)|1973(16)|2008(3)|2031(3)|2054(5)|2055(5) 0 https://youtu.be/MAXUETF8CYM YouTube video English 32 Interview Introduction Okay, there we go, I’m starting again. So, with this project, Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College will collaborate on forty years of public health experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community, collecting and curating local LGBT health experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19. My name is Liz Bradbury, and I’m here with Rose Craig to talk about her experiences in Lehigh Valley LGBT community during this time of the COVID-19 pandemic as part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive. 0 216 First Awareness of HIV/AIDS LB: But do you remember the first time you became aware of AIDS and HIV?
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 ; RC: Yes, I actually do ; I remember that. And it was probably around nineteen eighty-five, I would say, and I think I was the last president of the Lehigh Valley Gay and Lesbian Community Center, located in Allentown, Eighth and Hamilton. And we began to hear things and stories from our friends, mostly the boys, as we called them, went to New York, there was a lot of that, to the big city, because we had easy access, and they came back with stories of people getting sick, and you know, really, we felt bad about it, but we really didn’t know it’d be anything in relationship to us ; we just thought it was a New York thing. 0 423 Involvement with the Lehigh Valley Gay and Lesbian Community Center and the AIDS Services Center LB: But you were involved with the AIDS Services Center too, is that true?
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 ; RC: Yeah, absolutely. Actually, that came about from the community center. We were beginning to have so many people that we socialized with all the time getting ill that suddenly there were not many more parties, frankly, but it was mostly, okay, how do we help our friends? You know, and it was a joint effort by the guys and the lesbians. Dixie White was a great trooper with myself and a couple of other women, that were pretty good organizers ; we both had had long histories organizing the community around different issues, and at that point, and again, I was the last president, so I proposed that we, instead of being a community center, we change ourselves to being a service center, and we also took our models from New York, Philadelphia, there weren’t many towns or areas our size that had this. 0 754 Formation of Fighting AIDS Continuously Together (FACT) At the same time, we went out there and we hustled money, and this was the time that actually FACT grew out of that ; Brian and several of the guys thought, okay, we really need to get an arm of raising money from our community. And they, I understand, continue to do that, and have done an extraordinary job. And that’s kind of where the guys went more into that area of fundraising, which was great. So we took on the politics ; we took on the day-to-day coordination, and they took a lot of the fundraising. 0 952 Activism evolved from friends dying RC: Oh yeah, it was like, hey Joe is in trouble ; he’s down the street. You know, it was a very great network of people who knew people. And you know, again, this all evolved out of our friends dying, and us trying to figure out what the hell can we do to do that, and that was the basic reason why it all went that way. 0 983 Grants and funding for care and support ...as I said earlier, the Ryan White money began to be available. And I was just talking to Kathleen Kelly who is a good friend who was head of human services and drug and alcohol and all those things for Northampton County, and her counterpoint in Lehigh County, were looking at this money and saying, okay, how can we help? Because by this time also, the health bureaus were involved from each city, magnificently involved and wonderful. So many people, I couldn’t even, you know, remember all the names of all the people who came forward from the beginning. And that was so important to the community.
 ; 0 1198 AIDS Services Center case management LB: I’ve interviewed a number of people already and they were talking about FACT, and what FACT did, and where they funneled their money. But for AIDS services center, when you’re talking about case management, was that specifically to try to get people into healthcare?
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 ; RC: I mean, every month, practically, we were learning more about what this disease, and believe me, we watched, and very closely, New York, Philadelphia, the big cities, San Francisco, you know, conversations with people there to find out, so how do you this? Or how do you do that? Because there were some, you know, unique things about this particular disease and situation. 0 1399 Handing out condoms / educating about AIDS And the education piece, though, was very, very important ; I don’t know if you talked to anybody about that. But, we were out everywhere talking about condoms, you know, we had condoms everywhere, including my two teenage kids who were like, mom, can’t you have cookies at the front door and not a bowl of condoms for us and our friends? You know, but that was, you know, we’re scared to death of how that could spread everywhere. So it was all tragic, tragic. 0 1843 Helpfulness of doctors and healthcare professionals RC: Can’t remember a single name. (laughter)
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 ; LB: Other people can.
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 ; RC: There were wonderful doctors, oh gosh, I’m sure if you talk to somebody who might have been there during the health bureau, I remember at St. Luke’s we had some wonderful -- I’ll tell you who would also know would be some of the chaplains from St. Luke’s who have been there a long while, Ann Huey would know some of this, as per, because they worked very closely with the doctors too, so that’s a good source. I was on the end of hustle, so I was not a direct care person ever. 0 1901 Obtaining corporate support for funding LB: So, you were talking about some of the corporations that were supportive, and how did you get into some of those places and get them to step up? Were there instances, and I know there were some corporations that had CEOs who had children, adult children, who were sick, or who had HIV, and talk about some of that kind of stuff.
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 ; RC: Well, if you could find somebody, and there was always somebody who had a child that was gay. That was where they started. Or you know, it was not beneath us to reach out to anybody that we knew that maybe had a parent working somewhere, and also, you know, some of us were very connected and into the community by that time. When I first started this, I worked for the American Red Cross, and I ran several programs there, and when this became so, taking up some of my time, the Red Cross gave me permission to just focus on developing the ASC, now this had nothing to do, because we didn’t do blood services in the Lehigh Valley. 0 2116 Medications for HIV/AIDS LB: So, what was I going to say? Okay, so there was a time when people were getting AIDS, or they were becoming infected ; there was absolutely nothing they could do. It was a death sentence.
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 ; RC: Oh yeah, there was no medication or anything. They were just trying to figure out what was it, and what were some of the symptoms, and you know, and again, all of that information rolled quickly through a whole United States, in terms of, okay, look for these kind of sores. Well, if they’re having diarrhea and this, you know. So it rolled quick.
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 ; LB: There was a time, I think, when some medications, AZT, and some other medications, I was talking to somebody yesterday about a couple of medications, that he was a nurse, and he said, this isn’t working ; this is killing people. And it was a medicine that was destroying people’s hearts. It was such an interesting thing because I’d never heard of it before. Once there was medications involved, do you think, when was that shift, and how did that influence everything?
 ; 0 2456 Providing AIDS education in schools LB: So, with regard to that, this is going back a little bit, when you were doing education, were you able to get into schools, or were they not comfortable with that? I mean, some schools are so reticent about AIDS education.
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 ; RC: Yeah, and I would say the religious schools never let us take a step towards them. But, I’m trying to think of when that popped a little. I think it’s because, we saw the importance of using the health bureaus to do that, because the health bureaus had a foot in a lot of places that we couldn’t, as a community. 0 2581 Providing condoms in nursing homes RC: Well, going back to like nineteen ninety-three, I would say, I remember taking all my stuff, dragging it up to one of the, I can’t think of the nursing home, the county nursing home, in Northampton County, and so I, you know, set up my display next to, you know, the transportation, or Meals on Wheels, and everybody, you know. And I had to call my staff twice to bring me more condoms. And I talked to the nurses up there, and they said, oh yeah, there’s a lot going on there, believe me. And it was, again, like you said, one of the funniest experiences. I thought well, life is not, it goes on, you know? And they didn’t care much about AIDS, although we still gave them the information. They had to take a brochure to read along with the condom, but it was hilarious, hilarious.
 ; 0 2742 Specific fundraisers for the AIDS Services Center and FACT LB: So, did the AIDS services center have specific fundraisers? Did you do Rainbow Restaurants, was that Red Ribbon Restaurants, or was that --
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 ; RC: Oh no, what did we do? It was hilarious, number one. I was always thrown in jail.
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 ; LB: Okay, one of those things.
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 ; RC: Yeah, we had, I wish I could remember the name of it, but yes, we had wonderful, that you provided, you sold a table of people, and then you, servers, something, something with the word “servers” in it, somebody will remember it, but you know, you would fix a meal, and you would serve it to them, and it would cost them a certain amount, and if they wanted a fork, that would cost them another buck. You know, things like that, so we were very creative in doing that, and there were a whole lot of people, was it “Star Servers” or something like that, I don’t know, it was hilarious ; we did that. 0 2832 Mental health impact and support LB: Sure. But also, you were losing people, and I know that that was happening really quickly. I talked to one person who said that there were so many funerals that he had to stop going to them, because it was just too much for him. And Dave Moyer said to me, as I interviewed him last week, he said that, you know, it takes a while to get over the death of a friend, or a death of a close person. And if you’re having that every week, or three times a month, or twice a month, or once a month, that it takes two years to get over the death of a close friend, and if you have six close friends die, and I think that that might have been some of the issues that you were dealing with, were you providing mental health care too for, that kind of stuff?
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 ; RC: We were hooking people up. We had some wonderful therapists. See, you’re bringing up different things, and then I remember, oh yeah, that whole, the mental health piece. We had some wonderful therapists in the area that put their services right out, you know, free counseling and stuff like that. So we’d hook people up with that as well, so there were some, everything from psychiatrists to a therapist, so it was quite a network of people. 0 3081 Involvement with passing the anti-discrimination ordinance in Allentown LB: But, some of the papers that Dixie gave me were about the effort to pass the anti-discrimination ordinance inclusion in nineteen seventy-eight. And were you there for that?
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 ; RC: I was around for that, yes. And I knew Melissa Lee ; that was part of that. I don’t think I was involved with the center at that point in time. I don’t remember that.
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 ; LB: Well I don’t think they had the center.
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 ; RC: But I remember going into the hearings and being very vocal about the right with all of that, and stuff, so it was a strange time. In fact, back when that first one, I’m actually bisexual, and I was married at that time. I think I got Divorced, but I had always been involved with justice issues and things like that, so that’s why I got involved with that. 0 3229 Meeting Dixie White / Individuals who were on the FACT board RC: Yeah, I really don’t. It was, when I ended up being with someone, I remember hearing about this. How would I have heard about, I heard about it somehow. But by that time, I was in social services working at the Red Cross at that time, and they would have like, get-togethers, and parties, and come meet. And so I started going to those, and I think that’s how I met Dixie, at that, and it was social ; it was fun. It was a great way to get into the community and know the community, and because I hadn’t been involved with the community, so I started to know people, and it just grew from there. 0 3708 Involvement of the Latino community RC: For those other communities, and it brought in a whole bunch of wonderful, I think of Anna Claudio and people like that who just became wonderful, wonderful partners in all of this, and the Latino community just rallied, they really did. It was their family, and again, because so many gay people still were getting very ill, you couldn’t not know someone, you know, even if you were in South Bethlehem Latino community and you never in your life for sure ever saw anybody gay except maybe your second cousin Ricky who was a little strange. But you know, they met through feeding people, and taking furniture. They met gay men, and gay women, and you know, it’s again, in my mind, what community is really, really about. And you know, that was transforming, you know.
 ; 0 3777 Working with Dixie White at the AIDS Services Center LB: ...when you were working on this, and you were talking about Dixie, were you and Dixie working, both working at the same time, or were you one and then the other?
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 ; RC: She was our first hire. We hired her as the executive director, and it was a small board ; it was myself, and Brian, and a couple of other people. I’m so bad with names, that I can’t remember. But there were several people, and we hired Dixie, and the Red Cross let me spend a lot of time helping her get that whole thing organized, and again, the piece that I did most of was out in the community, doing as much. She was the, do we have enough rubber bands? How are the paper clips? You know, here’s the file folder, you know, all that kind of stuff, and organizing, a wonderful organizing ability that she has. And I was more the ideas person, or the person who would go out there and talk about it. Because they already had some credibility in the community. And so I could do that very quickly. And then, the guys were raising money, and it was so crucial, and everybody was just doing as much as they could. But everybody had a niche of how they would be able to do it.
 ; 0 3965 Comparison of HIV/AIDS to COVID-19 LB: So do you want to talk a little bit about, you said a few things about COVID-19, but let’s talk a little bit about that in relation to the AIDS epidemic. I mean, you know, #ItsNotOurFirstVirus, which is what people are saying. But I think that, one of the things that’s pretty interesting about this is that, during the AIDS epidemic, during the height of the epidemic, those who were in the LGBT community were young ; I mean, we were in our twenties and thirties, maybe in our forties at the end of the epidemic when it was at its height, and we were helping our friends. You know, it’s pretty easy to do that when you’re in your twenties, to really do a lot of that work. Now that we’re aging, it’s a little harder, where also not only do we have this COVID epidemic, but for that baby boomer generation, we also have the aging epidemic which is a whole different ciRCumstance. But I mean, a lot of people have talked about the similars and the differences with regard to COVID and COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS, and you want to say some stuff about, how are you seeing that?
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 ; RC: Well, I think the first thing that strikes me about it, going to the politics of it all, is that like HIV/AIDS, there was no recognition at the top. So we didn’t have like a national focus on, hey, let’s take care of this, together as a nation. Took a while, and I think the passage of Ryan White money was key, that there were some people in legislature who got it, and they got it usually because they had a child die, or they knew someone, and that’s how all of that, you know. So we had at least a framework within to work, and I think that’s been, certainly one of the issues with COVID. 0 4473 Advocating for your community LB: ...People are wanting COVID to be over now. And I think, for people who are minorities, because that’s what the LGBT community is, we are more used to dealing with things not necessarily going our way just because we want them to, and you know.
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 ; RC: That’s a good point, yeah. And you know, we’re used to doing hard things. Because, everyday living is hard for members of our community. And it has been for a long time. And so, you kind of get used to that, and you also push back, which I think we do too ; we push back as much as we can without getting killed. And I think that’s why we probably have a lot of simpatico for all the racial justice things that are happening now. 0 Sound Rose Craig talks about her work as the last President of the Gay Community Center in Allentown in the 1980s and how the Center evolved into the AIDS Services Center in the late 1980s and early 1990s to address the crisis. She talks about what services the AIDS Services Center provided and her role in securing funding and support. ROSE CRAIG LIZ BRADURY: audio. Whoops. I'm going to start the recording thing, recording on this computer. There we go. And I'm going to say these things. Uh-oh. ROSE CRAIG: (inaudible) lost you. Hold on. LB: There we go. RC: You there? LB: Yeah. RC: All right, I was trying to turn up my volume. There we go. LB: Oh, that's good. I'm going to do that too. Okay, there we go, I'm starting again. So, with this project, Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College will collaborate on forty years of public health experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community, collecting and curating local LGBT health experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19. My name is Liz Bradbury, and I'm here with Rose Craig to talk about her experiences in Lehigh Valley LGBT community during this time of the COVID-19 pandemic as part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive. We're meeting on Zoom on June thirtieth, and Rose, what town are you in? RC: I'm actually in Columbus, Ohio right now. LB: Okay, all right. That's good. Now I have to go to page two. There we go. Thank you so much for your willingness to speak with us today. To start, can you please state your full name and spell it for me? RC: Yeah, it's actually Rosemary Craig, known as Rose, and Craig is C-R-A-I-G. LB: Okay. And, will you please share your birthdate? RC: The year too? LB: You don't have to. (laughter) You don't have to. It's okay if you can't -- RC: November twenty-seventh, a long time ago. LB: Okay. Do you consent to this interview today? RC: Yes, I do. LB: Do you consent to having this interview being transcribed, digitized, and made publicly available online in Searchable formats? RC: Yes, I do. LB: Do you consent to the LGBT Archive using your interview for educational purposes on other formats, including films, articles, websites, presentations, and other format? RC: Yes. LB: Do you understand that you will have thirty days after the electronic delivery of the transcript to review your interview, identify any parts you'd like to delete, or withdraw, from your interview from the project? So we will send you a transcribed interview, and if there are parts that you want to tweak up, that's fine. If you say, I hate this whole thing, we can throw it out, we can do it again if you want. Although I'm sure it'll be fine. RC: I'm sure it will. LB: So, okay. So then I start by saying, in the midst of the current public health crisis that we are experiencing, we want to take this opportunity to look back and reflect, and to capture the stories of those who lived through the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the nineteen-forties and through the nineties, and we're really specifically talking about nineteen eighty-five to nineteen ninety-three. So, the first question, and really you can say whatever you want on this Rose, and you can, whatever you want. But do you remember the first time you became aware of AIDS and HIV? RC: Yes, I actually do ; I remember that. And it was probably around nineteen eighty-five, I would say, and I think I was the last president of the Lehigh Valley Gay and Lesbian Community Center, located in Allentown, Eighth and Hamilton. And we began to hear things and stories from our friends, mostly the boys, as we called them, went to New York, there was a lot of that, to the big city, because we had easy access, and they came back with stories of people getting sick, and you know, really, we felt bad about it, but we really didn't know it'd be anything in relationship to us ; we just thought it was a New York thing. And at that time, nobody knew what it was, whether it was a flu, kind of like the COVID situation, or cancer, perhaps. But, in very short time, people began dying from it. So there was only a tiny, tiny space between learning about it and suddenly a lot of dead people. But still, that was in New York. It didn't take more than a month or two for some of our friends, and good friends at the Community Center began getting ill. And back then, as I recall, it was a quick dive. It was not a long, long, long time between contracting whatever this was and then really bedridden and then dead, frankly. The hospitals didn't know what to do with them. In the hospitals, they had quarantines of all sorts because nobody knew what it was, but everybody knew they were gay men, so that was one of our first battles was getting that to stop, so that they weren't singled out or anything. You know, back in the eighties, it was very progressivist for us to even have a community center in Allentown, and we not only were a social group, but we also helped change the law in Allentown with the human relations commission, Melissa Lee was the head back then, and we got gays and lesbians on as a protected class in Allentown, and we also had worked with a couple school districts to do the same. So, you know, we had a little bit of politics going, certainly an awareness of it, but it was nothing like the deep water we got into when AIDS really came to town. LB: Right, yeah. So you were involved with the community center, and then you had additional involvement. I'm just going to turn off my air conditioner, but go ahead and just take a second. But you were involved with the AIDS Services Center too, is that true? RC: Yeah, absolutely. Actually, that came about from the community center. We were beginning to have so many people that we socialized with all the time getting ill that suddenly there were not many more parties, frankly, but it was mostly, okay, how do we help our friends? You know, and it was a joint effort by the guys and the lesbians. Dixie White was a great trooper with myself and a couple of other women, that were pretty good organizers ; we both had had long histories organizing the community around different issues, and at that point, and again, I was the last president, so I proposed that we, instead of being a community center, we change ourselves to being a service center, and we also took our models from New York, Philadelphia, there weren't many towns or areas our size that had this. But because of our proximity, I think, to New York, we had a lot of people who were in and out of the big towns. So we got besieged pretty quickly, and it didn't take long at all for all of us to agree that that's what we need to do. So we dissolved the community center, and we began the AIDS Services Center. We moved out of our location in Allentown and moved into a smaller place in Bethlehem, and Dixie White was the first executive director, and again, because she'd had a lot of experience at organizing, we were able to get the organization up-and-running within a few months. So we had a board of directors ; we had everything we needed for the 501(c)3 application, got that approved. Part of my job was to get out there and sell this to the typical regular funders in the community to make them aware of what was going on. Because back then, nobody was really talking about it, especially in Allentown or Bethlehem, or at least in Pennsylvania. And the whole issue about being gay was again something that wasn't a real popular topic. LB: Where was the community center, do you remember? Was that on Hamilton Street? RC: It was on Eighth and Hamilton, up above, on the second floor. LB: I'm losing your picture ; your picture is disappearing. Can you tilt your phone a little bit? There, that's perfect. RC: I got excited thinking about the Chinese restaurant, Rubes, right below us. Yeah, it was around, I guess Eighth and Hamilton, Ninth and Hamilton, up on the second floor, on the south side, and it was a great big area because again we were a community center, so we were having parties and dances and all the other kind of stuff. So, we knew that that wasn't going to work for what we needed to do, and so that's why we got out of that place and went into a smaller place, and started the business of taking care of people. LB: Yeah. And so, when you moved to Bethlehem, do you remember where that was, the address of that, approximately? RC: Yeah, I've been trying to think of that today, and can't remember where it was. But it was probably, not quite in downtown, but right around that neighborhood of downtown in Bethlehem. So we just moved one city over, and then eventually, we moved to a suite of rooms in a space in downtown Bethlehem, so that was a real nice space. LB: I think I remember where that was, yeah. So, people were saying to you, like people are dying and stuff. What was some of the stuff that you were providing in terms of services for people? RC: That's a good question. Part of what we provided at that point in time, now, there were people in the community, and people associated with us that were really doing the handholding, feeding, taking care of, wiping the behinds of our friends who got ill quickly ; there were a lot of angels out there doing that kind of work. And we were certainly associated with that. One of the skills that we could actually bring was the fact that both Dixie and I knew how to navigate the system, the human relations system, and the nonprofit system within the Lehigh Valley. And it was important, because part of what we had to do was also educate, to inform the community about what this was, why this was important, and again, it just brought out a whole lot of different issues. But we know how to work that, and we did. We politically were very savvy and knew how to work that aspect of it. At the same time, we went out there and we hustled money, and this was the time that actually FACT grew out of that ; Brian and several of the guys thought, okay, we really need to get an arm of raising money from our community. And they, I understand, continue to do that, and have done an extraordinary job. And that's kind of where the guys went more into that area of fundraising, which was great. So we took on the politics ; we took on the day-to-day coordination, and they took a lot of the fundraising. Myself and a couple of others went after grants and things which were just beginning to show, money for AIDS, the Ryan White bill was huge, and bringing actual money from the government. So, we jumped on all of that, and wrote grants and did things like that, and also looked for corporate sponsors to see if we could find some. So that was a whole bit of what we were doing. So we knew that we wanted to add case management, was what we called it at the time, and basically, that was a matter of looking at the person, sort of holistically, and seeing, what did they need? Did they need a place to stay? Did they need some nursing care? Did they need food? You know, what was it that each particular person needed? So in order to coordinate that, we needed to hire some people who could actually do that social work aspect of making sure that the needs were met. And so that grew to be a very important part of what we did, and what we provided for the community, and also an important part of the grant-writing so that we had something to offer. Now at this same time, it's kind of like having plates spinning in the air, because there were several things going on at the time as well. Part of it was the religious community ; there were courageous people within the religious community who were also looking at this issue, and I'll very proudly talk about our association with the Episcopal diocese, was wonderful, from the beginning. There were Catholic priests from the beginning who were willing to -- it was in the basement of the church but were willing to give -- we had to think of the whole thing, including funerals and burying people. And don't forget at that time, and I suppose this still goes on, but at that time, there was a lot of separation of people from their families, and the community became people's family, so there weren't the usual supports in place that one might expect if you had cancer, or something like that. So we had to all be involved doing it all for that particular person. And we shot up very quickly until we were covering about three-hundred people a year at least in servicing all that stuff. LB: So people would come to you, or they would be referred or something, and then they would be -- RC: Oh yeah, it was like, hey Joe is in trouble ; he's down the street. You know, it was a very great network of people who knew people. And you know, again, this all evolved out of our friends dying, and us trying to figure out what the hell can we do to do that, and that was the basic reason why it all went that way. And you know, again, the religious community came in and supported, and then as I said earlier, the Ryan White money began to be available. And I was just talking to Kathleen Kelly who is a good friend who was head of human services and drug and alcohol and all those things for Northampton County, and her counterpoint in Lehigh County, were looking at this money and saying, okay, how can we help? Because by this time also, the health bureaus were involved from each city, magnificently involved and wonderful. So many people, I couldn't even, you know, remember all the names of all the people who came forward from the beginning. And that was so important to the community. So anyway, we, and Billy Leh, and people like that, we wrote the first big government grant that was like a million dollars to get some of that into the Lehigh Valley, and then out of that, we needed to have a coordinating base. It wasn't the AIDS service center, because we were too busy then providing services ; we were really busy. I think out of that, the AIDS Task FoRCe group, and that was made up of a whole lot of different people, not only from the service area, but from the religious area, from the business community and government, and so this was the first place that everybody was kind of coming around that table, and looking at each other and saying, okay, we've got a major health crisis here, you know, and it's with a group of people, a community that are not very popular ; again, people didn't want to talk about, certainly, AIDS, and they also, it was just a hard time to be gay. Anyway, but as we all well know, all of us older people know. But we all came around this table and sort of looked at each other like, okay, well what are we going to do here? And we did get the grant, and we did come up with ways to get the money, setting up a way to give the money out to certain organizations within the community to best spend it, including the health bureaus and everything, and because it was a, we're trying to think today, when I was talking to Kathleen, it must have been a federal grant that came down to the states. So there were a lot of crossing Ts and dotting Is, and a lot of follow-up with, okay you have to do this. You know, but we had people who knew how to do that, and they all volunteered to be part of this AIDS task force, and so that's when it kind of really got off the ground that we were a movement here in the Lehigh Valley. LB: When that happened and you go that money, do you know about when that was? RC: That must have been around, I would say, venture to say maybe eighty-eight, eighty-nine? LB: Okay, so that's really in the height of stuff. RC: So actually, you know, it was a little earlier than that because, no it was eighty-eight, eighty-nine, around that time. LB: When that happened, and you had that money, so if somebody came, AIDS, oh there's a huge rainbow out my window. It's an omen. So, the folks, I've interviewed a number of people already and they were talking about FACT, and what FACT did, and where they funneled their money. But for AIDS services center, when you're talking about case management, was that specifically to try to get people into healthcare? RC: I mean, every month, practically, we were learning more about what this disease, and believe me, we watched, and very closely, New York, Philadelphia, the big cities, San Francisco, you know, conversations with people there to find out, so how do you this? Or how do you do that? Because there were some, you know, unique things about this particular disease and situation. And so, we really were finding out more and more as we went along, and we matured as we were doing that. Believe me, not without a lot of pain and suffering by the people who were organizing. (laughs) As you know, Liz, being an organizer yourself, you know, trying to get everybody, I didn't care if they were happy ; I just wanted them at the table and contributing something, you know. As a lot of dear old friends would say, you know, I was a real -- they called me "the bitch," but you know, there it is, a real straight-shooter. That was okay ; we were fine with that. No problem. And Dixie was the other bitch, but we were good. But they also loved us, and knew that we were really making a difference, and that was important too, so. LB: "Bitch" is just another word for the person who gets things done. RC: Exactly, that's exactly right. (laughs) LB: But I guess what I'm trying to find out is that, when the money came in, what did it go for? Did it go to support people's medical bills? Did it support their rent? Did it support everything? What kind of -- RC: Yes, yes, and yes. And it also supported education, and it supported funerals, and we got to watch the metamorphosis of HIV/AIDS going from just gay men at that time on to other populations. And in the early nineties, for instance, I actually ended up being the executive director at the AIDS services center for a couple of years, and at that time, we were just discovering about the HIV, about the intravenous drug users, and so needle sharing, and all of that was just hitting the road. And Lehigh Valley has always had a wonderful Latino population, and we were finding more and more that it was hitting that population hard. And not only the person who was doing the shooting, but also family members, we had children. So all of this was, again, this maturing, this rolling on and seeing oh my god, okay, now what do we do with that, you know, we got to take care of a family. The family needs their rent, you know, so we just went on and on. And believe me, this money went quick. And the education piece, though, was very, very important ; I don't know if you talked to anybody about that. But, we were out everywhere talking about condoms, you know, we had condoms everywhere, including my two teenage kids who were like, mom, can't you have cookies at the front door and not a bowl of condoms for us and our friends? You know, but that was, you know, we're scared to death of how that could spread everywhere. So it was all tragic, tragic. But there were people, like I said in the community, gay and straight, who just held the torch for all of this, and I'll never forget losing a couple of very close friends, some guys, and also when it hit the kids, that was heartbreaking. I remember kids that we would drop things off for, and you know, four years old, five years old, babies, all of that. So it was a nasty thing. Meanwhile, the rest of the community had some, a semblance of looking at this and saying, oh, this is bad, you know. We had reduced the number of people who were saying things like, well, that's what they deserve, because I don't know how you say that to a child. So you know, that was something I could really promote to banks and places like that to give money. It's a terrible thing to say, but you know, we hustled everywhere, everywhere, and there are some banks, like, I'll say Chase Bank was one of the very first to come on board, and you know, there were just some businesses that got it, and stayed involved, and we were lucky to have some of those in the Lehigh Valley. LB: Did you have any politicians that were really in your corner that you should name, I'd love to hear about those, because some of them were terrific, I know. RC: We actually ended up having some people that were like state legislators, some mayors ; I remember Bethlehem, and Allentown, you know, the people within their own organizations. You know, this was starting to be, everybody started to know somebody who had it. And so it began that kind of groundswell so that it popped up to higher levels. And there were some people, even within the school districts, who came forward and did support. So I would say, you know, I wouldn't say any of that happened overnight, and I wouldn't say any of that happened without a lot of effort and a lot of tears. I remember myself and another good friend, a guy, we used to be the spokespeople ; we'd go out and talk about what it was like to be mainstream, because neither he, he worked, he had a very important job at Air Products and you know, I looked like everybody's chubby mother, you know? So we would go out and talk to people about, so this is what gay looks like too, you know, and -- LB: Who was that? RC: -- we went to the universities and things like that, and tried to enlighten people as much as we could. LB: Who was that from Air Products? Was it Charlie? RC: Charlie Versaggi. LB: Charlie Versaggi, I was just talking to him a few minutes ago. RC: Love him ; he's a darling. Yeah, oh he'll remember all that. LB: I'm going to interview him at the end of the week, so yeah. RC: Oh, good. Well that was a lot, the community center, we did that to upgrade, but all of that helped us then be able to communicate and talk about HIV/AIDS. And I knew many a straight wonderful woman who went out with their cucumber and condoms and you know. (laughs) We're giving that talk all over, bless their hearts, I really mean it. Bless their hearts ; they were unafraid, and that was really something. LB: There was a time I think when people were, when you were talking about nineteen eighty-five when people were noticing that people were dying, and a lot of people didn't know how this was happening. I remember, I was a college teacher then, and somebody, a student asking me, well how do you keep from getting it? Because like, we didn't know where it was coming from, how is it passed around? And was there a time that you can remember that you started to pinpoint that say, oh, this is how you keep from getting it, and this is what we need to tell people? RC: Yeah, absolutely. We were in the pipeline early on, with the health bureaus, especially were very, very connected. You know, and we learned from them. And again, the whole world was just learning this. It's so funny, when I see the doctor, can't think of him of course at this moment, who is the one to believe about COVID, was the same guy who worked a lot on AIDS, yeah. And so, we had our trusted sources that we paid attention to, and we learned and we learned, and we let anybody who knew something come in. It was a very open kind of, what do you got it? Oh, come on in, you know. What can you do? Can you go do that school tomorrow? (laughs) You know, so it was a community of people, and how we learned everything was by having some of those people be very smart and very connected to health systems and stuff. And like I said, we would call into New York, or we would call into Philadelphia to say, hey, are you seeing this? You know, have you seen this yet? And as we, at the AIDS Services Center grew, we hired more case managers and we had bilingual people, and you know, and they were right on the front line of, you know, figure out how to do the best thing, and everybody shared every and all their information. That was one of the things I think that always stayed with me, about how willing people were to contribute in any way that they could, and believe me, we were not without infighting and, you know, he said this, she said -- that kind of thing. But the better good really is what ruled the day, and when it got right down to brass tacks, people were there. LB: So, when you were doing this and you were doing case management stuff, did you have specific doctors and health care workings that you were referring to people who were really like heroes at the time? RC: Yes, absolutely. LB: Can you remember some of those people? RC: Can't remember a single name. (laughter) LB: Other people can. RC: There were wonderful doctors, oh gosh, I'm sure if you talk to somebody who might have been there during the health bureau, I remember at St. Luke's we had some wonderful -- I'll tell you who would also know would be some of the chaplains from St. Luke's who have been there a long while, Ann Huey would know some of this, as per, because they worked very closely with the doctors too, so that's a good source. I was on the end of hustle, so I was not a direct care person ever. But I could get you anything you needed to do it, and that was always my job, so I don't have the, I don't remember the names of folks, but they were there. They were there in every hospital system. Sometimes they couldn't talk about it. And sometimes it wasn't something that the hospital would even talk about, but they were there ; they were there. LB: So, you were talking about some of the corporations that were supportive, and how did you get into some of those places and get them to step up? Were there instances, and I know there were some corporations that had CEOs who had children, adult children, who were sick, or who had HIV, and talk about some of that kind of stuff. RC: Well, if you could find somebody, and there was always somebody who had a child that was gay. That was where they started. Or you know, it was not beneath us to reach out to anybody that we knew that maybe had a parent working somewhere, and also, you know, some of us were very connected and into the community by that time. When I first started this, I worked for the American Red Cross, and I ran several programs there, and when this became so, taking up some of my time, the Red Cross gave me permission to just focus on developing the ASC, now this had nothing to do, because we didn't do blood services in the Lehigh Valley. The Red Cross didn't do it, rather. But I was given time and we had members of the board from the Red Cross. We'd just find one person who knew another person. The Churches brought in people. Dear guy, who died recently I understand, Bill Coles, was from Dun & ; Bradstreet, and he was there. He committed all the Resources, you know, that he could. There were people from Beth Steel. You know, there was, Air Products became, and some of these people organizing this, some foundations locally, you know, we became really good friends with them, and just sort of said, hey, here we are. What can you help us with? What can you show us? We were a very humble beginning, because it was like, we don't know what we're doing, but we're doing it, and it's got to be addressed ; how can you help? And it was one person by one person. There was still big corporations that didn't want anything to do with it, you know, that's fine. But I have to say that everyone involved knew someone who knew someone who knew someone, and that, again, it was that groundswell that we started from the beginning, and reaching out, which I think is true community organizing, but it also got us up there with the big guys, and you know. We did a lot of that, as much as we could. And again, I count as friends some incredible people who were part of all that who gave a lot, at risk in some times, because it was new. Air Products is a good example of someone who said, okay Rose, you know, what's this about? You know, and they were there, and Ed Meehan from the foundation at Lehigh Valley Hospital. People like that, I mean, we were all together in this pretty quickly ; we just, you know, converged. LB: So, what was I going to say? Okay, so there was a time when people were getting AIDS, or they were becoming infected ; there was absolutely nothing they could do. It was a death sentence. RC: Oh yeah, there was no medication or anything. They were just trying to figure out what was it, and what were some of the symptoms, and you know, and again, all of that information rolled quickly through a whole United States, in terms of, okay, look for these kind of sores. Well, if they're having diarrhea and this, you know. So it rolled quick. LB: There was a time, I think, when some medications, AZT, and some other medications, I was talking to somebody yesterday about a couple of medications, that he was a nurse, and he said, this isn't working ; this is killing people. And it was a medicine that was destroying people's hearts. It was such an interesting thing because I'd never heard of it before. Once there was medications involved, do you think, when was that shift, and how did that influence everything? RC: That shift, as I recall, happened in the early nineties, maybe ninety-three. I'm thinking around that time, when we called it "the cocktail," of course, was starting to be given. And I'll tell you, everybody, doctors, everybody, were surprised as hell that this worked, because nothing had worked before, the different things they tried. And suddenly, I wish I were more knowledgeable on all the medical ends of it, and if I knew it once, I don't remember, but suddenly they got the right combination of things and it was having a real effect. So we moved from, as soon as you get it everybody, you're going to die, kind of thinking, to okay, well you know, there might be some people who aren't, and so that grew then, of course, and that's the story today, grown so much better. But through all that, we still had to do a lot of prevention, because there were still scores of young people, young men getting the disease, and nothing you could tell anybody would stop them. And is that any different from what's going on right now? You know, people not wearing masks out on the beaches, stuff like that, it's like, it's that invincible feeling that you have at certain span of years. Well that was the same thing with AIDS, you know, they were sure they weren't going to get it. You know, sometimes you were supposed to tell anybody if you had it. That became a legal issue later on. You know, so it brought out, as does any public health issue, I think, that gets to the pandemic stage, brought up every single corner of things that could go wrong, do go wrong, and trying to repair it and fix it, and you know, two steps forward, three steps back, that kind of thing. And that is to me reflected so much today in what we're currently battling. But that, on top of, we have to remember always, and this is why you're doing this wonderful work, that the basis was in the gay community, and that was always a struggle ; that was always because people, to change, it didn't happen overnight for a lot of people, but they were willing to try, and eventually they had a whole different view of the community. But that was a long time coming. It was a lot of education that had to be made again and again and again and again. I don't know how many city council meetings in different cities did I talk to, to tell them why this is an issue that we all share ; why this is important for Allentown, or Bethlehem, or Easton, to take this on as something that needed their support, needed their interest, and you know, just, it took a lot to do that. I think with the COVID, there's not quite that stigma, I would guess, I don't know, that the gay people -- "the gay people" -- what we endured during that time. But I can also see the things that are happening today with, you know, the populations, the minority populations and such, you know, getting infected, most. Well of course, those are the same people who couldn't get anything, or have anything. We were lucky, actually in some ways, and starting, that it was gay white men who had money, and had income, and were willing to share. So, that was one thing, and have insurance, so it did start. That went all to hell quickly, believe me, but it did start with some people being resourced, as is very different from what we're experiencing today. LB: So, with regard to that, this is going back a little bit, when you were doing education, were you able to get into schools, or were they not comfortable with that? I mean, some schools are so reticent about AIDS education. RC: Yeah, and I would say the religious schools never let us take a step towards them. But, I'm trying to think of when that popped a little. I think it's because, we saw the importance of using the health bureaus to do that, because the health bureaus had a foot in a lot of places that we couldn't, as a community. So, they became our friends, and very willingly, they were. And so they got in under that, you know, that credibility, and was a great help. We knew people, we had all kinds, everywhere we went, we took condoms ; I remember that. And believe me, that was not a popular thing, and some of the social services, what are those things, that you get a fair, some place with all the social services, well we would come with our little pot of condoms, you know, and do our thing, and sometimes, that was not viewed very well. But for the most time, we were all pretty ballsy, so we were right there, saying, uh-huh. Well let me tell you about this. LB: I got to tell you, Rose now, because of my age, I do senior fairs sometimes, and I have a big bowl of condoms. RC: Oh my gosh. LB: And it's so funny. Like I've actually said to the younger people at the center, if you want to have a hilarious, hysterical laugh, come and do this thing with the condoms with the seniors, because they're not, they're like, well, I just put my name on eHarmony, so maybe I should take two. I actually had a woman say that. So it's been pretty hilarious, you know? I honestly love that. RC: Well, going back to like nineteen ninety-three, I would say, I remember taking all my stuff, dragging it up to one of the, I can't think of the nursing home, the county nursing home, in Northampton County, and so I, you know, set up my display next to, you know, the transportation, or Meals on Wheels, and everybody, you know. And I had to call my staff twice to bring me more condoms. And I talked to the nurses up there, and they said, oh yeah, there's a lot going on there, believe me. And it was, again, like you said, one of the funniest experiences. I thought well, life is not, it goes on, you know? And they didn't care much about AIDS, although we still gave them the information. They had to take a brochure to read along with the condom, but it was hilarious, hilarious. LB: It's pretty funny, isn't it? So I know that the bars were doing the summer games. You were probably going up there to set up with the summer games. RC: Oh yeah. Yup, up the Poconos, yeah. LB: So, did you have a table there, or were you sort of working the room, or may speaking -- RC: Well, I was always working a room, as you can imagine. But we always had a table. Wherever we could take our information, we did. And we were blessed to have, like I said, a lot of people out there who were willing to go and, you know, have stuff out, answer questions, things like that. And we got to, testing was part of, I think, what we ended up doing too ; I'm trying to remember all that. So there was, you know, important stuff to be done, and we just tried to be able to provide what we could provide, you know, to the community. LB: Yeah, so yeah, now you know, it's interesting, because then tests took so long, and now we've got the twenty-minute testing stuff, and it's really significant at a pride festival where people can just go into a truck or something. RC: I know. That's wonderful ; it's incredible. LB: Because that was (inaudible). RC: But again, the maturity of everything connected to this whole industry, I remember calling it that, and scaring some people. But it really was by that time. You know, there was just so much to it, and so many different aspects of it that we had to figure out how to cover, so. LB: So, did the AIDS services center have specific fundraisers? Did you do Rainbow Restaurants, was that Red Ribbon Restaurants, or was that -- RC: Oh no, what did we do? It was hilarious, number one. I was always thrown in jail. LB: Okay, one of those things. RC: Yeah, we had, I wish I could remember the name of it, but yes, we had wonderful, that you provided, you sold a table of people, and then you, servers, something, something with the word "servers" in it, somebody will remember it, but you know, you would fix a meal, and you would serve it to them, and it would cost them a certain amount, and if they wanted a fork, that would cost them another buck. You know, things like that, so we were very creative in doing that, and there were a whole lot of people, was it "Star Servers" or something like that, I don't know, it was hilarious ; we did that. You know, there's nothing more fun than a group of gay people, actually. (laughter) When it gets down to it. And of course FACT, always had their balls, which, that will be taken many different ways, I'm sure. But my point is, they always had a big celebration -- LB: The snowball. RC: Yeah, snowball. LB: They celebrated. RC: (inaudible) a lot about that, yeah. So you know, every way we could figure out to do it, we were trying to do it. But there were some very fun times connected to all that. LB: Sure. But also, you were losing people, and I know that that was happening really quickly. I talked to one person who said that there were so many funerals that he Ahad to stop going to them, because it was just too much for him. And Dave Moyer said to me, as I interviewed him last week, he said that, you know, it takes a while to get over the death of a friend, or a death of a close person. And if you're having that every week, or three times a month, or twice a month, or once a month, that it takes two years to get over the death of a close friend, and if you have six close friends die, and I think that that might have been some of the issues that you were dealing with, were you providing mental health care too for, that kind of stuff? RC: We were hooking people up. We had some wonderful therapists. See, you're bringing up different things, and then I remember, oh yeah, that whole, the mental health piece. We had some wonderful therapists in the area that put their services right out, you know, free counseling and stuff like that. So we'd hook people up with that as well, so there were some, everything from psychiatrists to a therapist, so it was quite a network of people. And then, as I recall, when the counties were involved, we were able to get some of that stuff funded for people, so the services were free. We integrated it into, so you didn't know someone was going for a therapy for that as opposed to therapy for, you know, something else, bulimia or something. So we tried as much as we could to integrate people into the regular systems, because there was such a need out there, and you know, so that's how we worked that. But it was a time of great tragedy, and great -- courage. LB: Courage is the word. RC: Yeah. And people, at the beginning, it happened so quickly, and I think that's probably some of what David's talking about. It just was, it was just right and left, right and left. And it was a terrible time for all of that ; we just didn't know quite know what to do, except to honor that person as best as we could, and that's what we did. LB: And then organize. RC: And then try to prevent less, so it wouldn't spread to everybody. All, just like this big ball that rolled, yeah. LB: I have to say that, you know, I was in the Valley then ; I didn't know as many people, but I can really say that as a small community, which per se, compared to New York, Chicago, you know, San Francisco, there was an extraordinary response. And part of that was, because you had an organized community, because you had that community center already organized. So how did that start? Were you there -- let me just step back a little bit more -- because Dixie White gave me a lot of her papers, and just, Elizabeth Goff just moved another fourteen boxes of Dixie's papers into the community center. They're all going to go into the Muhlenberg ARChive, which is terrific. RC: As they should. LB: And thank goodness that she kept that stuff, even though some people may have said it was hoarding, but still, we had those papers too, and they started that aRChive with about ten boxes of our papers, because we kept every single thing, and so it was real good that we did that. RC: You know, I think the AIDS Service Center, I had like four boxes forever in my closet wherever I lived, like I got to get this back somewhere. I finally did get it back, and I can't remember -- LB: Well if Dixie has it, we have it now. RC: I was going to say, probably you have it now -- LB: That could be good. RC: -- forever kind of like, I got to get that to somebody, but yeah, it was precious. Precious stuff in there. LB: But, some of the papers that Dixie gave me were about the effort to pass the anti-discrimination ordinance inclusion in nineteen seventy-eight. And were you there for that? RC: I was around for that, yes. And I knew Melissa Lee ; that was part of that. I don't think I was involved with the center at that point in time. I don't remember that. LB: Well I don't think they had the center. RC: But I remember going into the hearings and being very vocal about the right with all of that, and stuff, so it was a strange time. In fact, back when that first one, I'm actually bisexual, and I was married at that time. I think I got Divorced, but I had always been involved with justice issues and things like that, so that's why I got involved with that. And my brother was in the Bethlehem school district who helped get some of that going in the eighties to make sure that people's sexual orientation was part of their -- so we grew up like that, our parents were social ministers, we had a soup kitchen in Philadelphia, so that's where our minds went and our thinking went. Yes, so I didn't get involved with, I'm trying to think where I met Dixie. I didn't know Dixie at that time ; I had seen her, but I didn't know her at that time. I met her a little bit later, and I think it was around the, I don't know, it could have been a party ; who knows? LB: That effort was in nineteen seventy-eight, and then people came together to start the community center. I think Bob Whitman was involved with that, Bob Whitman and Frank Whalen. RC: Oh Frank Whalen, yes. LB: Yeah, he's still around. Well, I think they've moved to Philadelphia now. But they've talked about that. And then their papers, I think, are all at the library, although we wish we had them because we're (inaudible) cataloging them. But still, the question is, my question is, do you remember, like, how the community center really started, or when you got involved with that community center on Hamilton Street? RC: Yeah, I really don't. It was, when I ended up being with someone, I remember hearing about this. How would I have heard about, I heard about it somehow. But by that time, I was in social services working at the Red Cross at that time, and they would have like, get-togethers, and parties, and come meet. And so I started going to those, and I think that's how I met Dixie, at that, and it was social ; it was fun. It was a great way to get into the community and know the community, and because I hadn't been involved with the community, so I started to know people, and it just grew from there. And I guess it was at least a few years of that. And then, I'm trying to think why that, it started to dwindle before, the popularity of that. I think there were several clubs you could go to. You know, I think just people ran out of steam for organizing. And then just when we're like comfortably thinking, oh well maybe we could close this down, AIDS hit. And so, we all, whether we were tired or not, we had to ramp it up, and the rest is history, so to speak. Parties were over for a while, for sure. LB: Yeah, that's for sure, yeah. And so, who, do you remember any of the people that were on the board then that were making those decisions, did you make those changes? RC: I think Brian -- LB: Brian [Marks? RC: Yes, Brian Mariks, Markie, who I can't remember her last name. I think she was part of it. David Houseknecht, he was very instrumental in putting together -- he was sick, but he lasted for a few years, but he was right there with all of it. Carl. LB: Yeah, Carl Mancino. RC: Carl Mancino. LB: He's still around, sure. RC: Who I love, love, love. David Moyer, I mean, just folks like that that were, there were a couple of women too, I'm trying to think of. I can see them in my mind, but I can't remember their names. But, they're still around ; I know that. Anyway, so it was not a large group of people towards the end, but it was at least a couple of dozen people who would show up for different things, until it changed. But people who are still around, because now we're all old, but you know. I remember a lot of community center funds, and then we'd all go to the bars. So that was all that anybody had at that point in time, you know, going to Stonewall, or Rosemary's, a couple of other places, Diamondz and things like that. That was our life, our community, until it got to be not so much fun and we had to work. (laughs) LB: Yeah, although there were still people ; I think the bars were really instrumental in making FACT happen, and -- RC: Oh, totally, absolutely. LB: And there was quite a, they really rose to that occasion I think in a lot of ways in a positive way. RC: Oh, they did indeed, and you know, I can't say enough. Brian and I didn't always get along, but -- LB: You're all working for the same thing, though. RC: Yeah I mean, but again, we both knew that we were fighting for the same cause. He'd give me the shirt off his back, and he knew I would do the same. So I think that was, you know, just sort of what the bottom line was for everybody. But we were very vested in it, and I mean that in the way that, this really was our community, and we knew it. And we knew that if no one else was going to do something, and we knew that that was going to be the case, we were going to do it. So you know, people, like I said, stepped away from lots of fun things, or were spending time doing things in their lives, and dedicated themselves to this, and that was no small feat for a lot of people. It think Scott Allen and so many wonderful -- Kit [Hower?], wonderful people who were involved. LB: Yeah, I'm interviewing Scott on Thursday. (laughs) RC: Oh, my love. LB: Say hi to him for me. Yeah, he was enthusiastic about it, so. I think that one of the things that happened was the changes with regards to medication and finally science was weighing in, and people were acknowledging that this was happening. But a lot of people have talked about the lack of response from society, and particularly elected officials. Were you aware and thinking about that then? I mean, what do you think about that? RC: Oh my goodness, oh yeah, yeah. I mean, that was, you know, the politics that, I mean through my time at the Red Cross, I was very involved in different initiatives that involved politicians, you know? But you know, this was the time you have to remember that nobody even wanted to say the word HIV/AIDS, or gay, or any of that. You know, a politician would no more have said, you know, my lesbian friend here, I mean, just, I remember when Clinton said "lesbian" the first time on national television, I about fell off my chair, you know, I was so proud of him doing that. But no, nobody was talking about that. LB: It's so amazing when you would take that tiny little thing, you know, that one little thing, can't you just do this, you know, that one thing. RC: Yes, exactly. Say the word! You know, and again, I have to say that when, some of it shifted into other populations and things, it made it more palatable, if I can say that, and you know, fine. Whatever gets you on the wagon, get on the wagon, and we'll teach you more as we go, and that's what happened to a lot of people, that they learned to love some of the men, just as friends. There was a lot of learning, and a lot of evolving that we got to see too. And that was, I don't know how we would have done it without the whole community of people, honestly. LB: Right. RC: They saved lives. LB: I remember one of the things that happened, you know, people would do fundraising. I remember somebody calling me up here at one time, it was coming from the hospital, and they said that they wanted me to donate money, because children had AIDS, and I said, okay, all right. Tell me more about this. And they said, well they're innocent victims. And I'm like, okay, what does that mean? So they're innocent, huh? RC: That wasn't one of our folks. LB: I know, (laughter) I thought, this is not -- RC: Well I'll tell you, I was able to really raise some money. LB: This does not come from an LGBT organization. RC: For those other communities, and it brought in a whole bunch of wonderful, I think of Anna Claudio and people like that who just became wonderful, wonderful partners in all of this, and the Latino community just rallied, they really did. It was their family, and again, because so many gay people still were getting very ill, you couldn't not know someone, you know, even if you were in South Bethlehem Latino community and you never in your life for sure ever saw anybody gay except maybe your second cousin Ricky who was a little strange. But you know, they met through feeding people, and taking furniture. They met gay men, and gay women, and you know, it's again, in my mind, what community is really, really about. And you know, that was transforming, you know. LB: Yeah, well that's pretty great. I think, when you were working on this, and you were talking about Dixie, were you and Dixie working, both working at the same time, or were you one and then the other? RC: She was our first hire. We hired her as the executive director, and it was a small board ; it was myself, and Brian, and a couple of other people. I'm so bad with names, that I can't remember. But there were several people, and we hired Dixie, and the Red Cross let me spend a lot of time helping her get that whole thing organized, and again, the piece that I did most of was out in the community, doing as much. She was the, do we have enough rubber bands? How are the paper clips? You know, here's the file folder, you know, all that kind of stuff, and organizing, a wonderful organizing ability that she has. And I was more the ideas person, or the person who would go out there and talk about it. Because they already had some credibility in the community. And so I could do that very quickly. And then, the guys were raising money, and it was so crucial, and everybody was just doing as much as they could. But everybody had a niche of how they would be able to do it. LB: Yeah, a lot of people had special skills that they were all bringing together. RC: Even when I went on to work at Just Born, I was their community affairs person, I was able to take that message about AIDS to people who hadn't heard a whole lot about it, to get their understanding and support. Then I had a lot of colleagues in different corporations, and that's one of the ways that we started really talking about it by then, and this was about ninety-five, ninety-si around that time, and being able to bring it to other places that hadn't previously really been involved. So it was just a spiderweb of all kinds of connections. LB: Yeah, everything coming together, yeah. RC: Yeah, and that's how, I can guarantee that every grassroots cause has started the same way. Somebody knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody, you know, and thought they might have a truck, you know. LB: That's true. Well, of course, when you talk about grassroots organizations, lots of different reasons spark it into place. When all of your friends are dying, you're really motivated in those situations, as opposed to just, you know, we need a new baseball field, or something down by the school, so. RC: Absolutely. And we never knew who was next, that was the thing, because we had so little information about it. It was like, you know, you just never knew. We saw that women weren't particularly getting infected at that time, but yet, we always had dental dams that we would give away and everything, but you really didn't know who was going to be next. LB: So do you want to talk a little bit about, you said a few things about COVID-19, but let's talk a little bit about that in relation to the AIDS epidemic. I mean, you know, #ItsNotOurFirstVirus, which is what people are saying. But I think that, one of the things that's pretty interesting about this is that, during the AIDS epidemic, during the height of the epidemic, those who were in the LGBT community were young ; I mean, we were in our twenties and thirties, maybe in our forties at the end of the epidemic when it was at its height, and we were helping our friends. You know, it's pretty easy to do that when you're in your twenties, to really do a lot of that work. Now that we're aging, it's a little harder, where also not only do we have this COVID epidemic, but for that baby boomer generation, we also have the aging epidemic which is a whole different circumstance. But I mean, a lot of people have talked about the similars and the differences with regard to COVID and COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS, and you want to say some stuff about, how are you seeing that? RC: Well, I think the first thing that strikes me about it, going to the politics of it all, is that like HIV/AIDS, there was no recognition at the top. So we didn't have like a national focus on, hey, let's take care of this, together as a nation. Took a while, and I think the passage of Ryan White money was key, that there were some people in legislature who got it, and they got it usually because they had a child die, or they knew someone, and that's how all of that, you know. So we had at least a framework within to work, and I think that's been, certainly one of the issues with COVID. Now what I think is a little different, or maybe it's not different, I don't know, but we learned everything medically and otherwise from each other and from people who had just had it. And I think now with the COVID, and I look at New York, New York State, as a good example of a place that really approached this in a pretty organized way, and a lot of the experience they had, I mean if you had half a brain, you could see that that was going to go other places, you know. Everybody was susceptible, and I think again, everything they were learning, as they were doing, which was exactly what happened in the medical field and the service field with HIV/AIDS, you learned it as you got along, and then you know, researchers and folks like that were working on all of the stuff with HIV/AIDS pretty damn quick, but it took them a long time to get anywhere, and so I have faith in the researchers working on the COVID as well, because I've experienced, it can work. You know, there can be things that can change that whole paradigm. So I'm hopeful for that. But I think that not having the top political support has been a problem. But people, the thing that's very much the same is people are inventing themselves, and inventing how to approach this as they go along, and as they learned, and that helped, I hope everybody's sharing all that stuff. I know not all ears were open to sharing it, but certainly in the medical field, they were there. And they continued to be there, and this has, I guess the advantage with HIV/AIDS epidemic is that we were close to the ground, so it wasn't, the bungling didn't happen close to the ground, you know? What happens close to the ground is usually pretty god damn good, and that's what's happening with the COVID, and that's the doctors and nurses and medical people and all the support people, and people who are working hard at that are doing an incredible job, just like they did back in the HIV/AIDS ; there was no room for blunder, because people were dying right in front of you. So that's how I think every pandemic works in my mind. And I think, again, I think that New York State did a good job of wrapping its arms around, and being the most infectious place of course and trying to really pay attention ; a lot of that was about communication and keeping people apprised of what was going on, which is so key. So I think that's been important. But you know, it's a mess ; it's a mess, it never should have been like this. There were so many things. I have very little patience with people who don't wear a mask out in public ; I mean, what the hell? This is a piece of cloth that can not only help you, but it can also help anybody else that you come in contact with. And you know, I've been known to be in stores, and someone without a mask comes very close, by going, "Hey, back up!" You know, because it's just ridiculous. So, I can get pretty pissed off about that. (laughs) But you know, it just, I don't know what's the matter with people? What's the matter with you? I say it every time I see another Looney Toon kind of a thing, and lord knows there's plenty of opportunity for that. So, I think, you know, we're all learning, maybe on a different level. I was pretty impressed with a lot of people staying home. I think that was pretty incredible. And I think a lot of that is also about, people's workplaces that didn't want people there anymore. Yeah, and so that people could work from home ; I think that was a great advantage. And I also think, talking about baby boomers, I'm telling you, we changed the world, and we always have, and we always will. I don't care how old we are, frankly. But you know, the first people who said, yeah, we're going to cozy up at home. I'm going to do a Costco run, get everything I need, and I'm not coming out for a couple months. That was us baby boomers, thank you very much, you know. And we saved a lot of people from dying in that way. But then, the other craziness that was going on that we, you know, really didn't have a lot of affect with, like people opening up too soon, and stuff, you know, that stupid, stupid stuff that they're paying for now, you know. LB: But don't you think a lot of that really boils down to leadership? RC: Yeah. LB: So, and you can see that in everything you're talking about. You can see it in terms of, how you run the community center, it has to do with leadership, and people coming together, and a good board, and a good leader and stuff. RC: Exactly. LB: You have a state that has Andrew Cuomo as the leader, and it's totally different than a state that's saying, should we open, should we not? You know. RC: Florida. LB: Yeah, Florida's a good example, I mean, to just ignore reality -- RC: I know, the politics. LB: -- if you have Reagan, who's just, his response when somebody asked him about it for six or seven years, I mean, we're really six months into COVID-19. When we talk about that big, the serious Circumstance of HIV when it was really HIV/AIDS, which was really the killer time, it was eight years. So it took eight years -- RC: That's very true. LB: -- for people to figure out, how are we going to keep people from dying? How do we keep, where is this coming from, it took eight years to figure this out. People are wanting COVID to be over now. And I think, for people who are minorities, because that's what the LGBT community is, we are more used to dealing with things not necessarily going our way just because we want them to, and you know. RC: That's a good point, yeah. And you know, we're used to doing hard things. Because, everyday living is hard for members of our community. And it has been for a long time. And so, you kind of get used to that, and you also push back, which I think we do too ; we push back as much as we can without getting killed. And I think that's why we probably have a lot of simpatico for all the racial justice things that are happening now. I mean, really, we're right there, right there with that, because we get that ; we get that. And like I said, you know, I just remember all of those years, and still being an advocate to today. I used to write on my resume that, "I had a head for business, and a heart of an advocate." I combined those two things, because you know, see what's going on. Makes me a little mad that I can't get out and march anymore, you know. But, I would like to have been part of that. But physically, just decided that that was not -- I mean I could have marched, if my knees are good. But you know, it was just not good for the other thing ; didn't want to risk getting anything. I have a daughter who has some real immune system issues, so we have to be very careful with her. So anyway, but I get it ; I get it. Been there, done that. And yes, oh yes, let's do it again, if we need to do that. And I think it's amazing. I don't know about you, but I think what's happening right now is just amazing. LB: Yeah, I do too. RC: I think things are changing in a way that I really had hoped that I would live to see a woman as a president ; that was my big dream. Still a Hillary fan. (laughs) But to see some of these changes that are happening, I'm just so happy about it, like so, it's about fucking time. LB: I think, you know, it's an interesting thing. RC: I'm glad to be able to still be alive to see it. LB: Yeah, I was talking to Maria Rodale yesterday, and she said, you know, we were talking about her brother and everything (inaudible). RC: Oh, Ardath Rodale, oh my god, yes. LB: Yeah, Ardath Rodale, the wonderful Ardath Rodale who was her mom, who was such an advocate. But one of the things Maria said was, which was brilliant I thought, was, you know, it's really the height of privilege to think that this is the absolute worst time ever. Because, you know, there have been horrible times in the last hundred years, and to suggest that, because we all have to stay home, and you know some people have lives -- yes, it's very bad, but you know, for many of us, it's not devastating. We're healthy ; we're okay. We're not at war. They're not bombing our neighborhood. RC: You know, and the privilege of being white, and being able to afford to have enough food, and a nice house, to you know, have to bundle up, and just have fun with, you know, your partner, or your husband, or your wife, and you know, that's not so bad. But yeah, you know, Liz, a lot of people don't have a clue ; they just don't have a clue. I don't know how else to say it. And Maria was just absolutely correct, yeah. It's a first-world problem, I have to say. LB: Really, really tough stuff and all of the things that we should be desperately concerned about. But one of the first things she said was, we will get through this, because we've been through horrible other things, and you know, humanity will get through it, even if the worst stuff happens, we'll still get through it, because if you look back at the last hundred years, there have been incredible, horrible, horrible things. And people get through it, and they learn from it, and sometimes they don't pay attention. And then it goes (inaudible) -- RC: Well they know, and not that they forget, it's just that it hasn't been in front of their face for a while. So when something happens and it's right there again, it's like oh yeah, I kind of remember this feeling, you know. Oh, okay, good, we're glad you got it a second time. So yeah, you got to be open to learning, and I think there are a lot more people who are than aren't. At least I have to believe that, or frankly I couldn't get up in the morning. LB: I know what you mean, yeah. RC: So, I really do believe in the good, and I wonder a lot about the not-so-good out there, and I'm absolutely waiting to vote, and I agree with whoever it was who said listen, people are going to crawl across broken glass on their knees to vote this idiot out, and I believe that that's true. (laughs) LB: Well I hope so, and I've said that many times, so I really hope that that is the case, and that everybody feels that way. But I also, and I hope that thirty years from now when somebody sees this videos, and we're maybe not around anymore, that people will say, oh, everything turned out great. You know, and they'll know what's happened in the same way that we can look back at the HIV/AIDS crisis and say, it was a tragedy, but it was also a time of courage, and a time where people really stepped up, and that there is not a cure for that ; there's absolutely not a cure, but, and people still in some ways were kept from still being able to teach our children how to not get diseases like this. But there's PrEP, and PEP, and those are really significant things and I'm beginning to see the dawn at the end of this epidemic which has been going on for such a long time. It's not over. I mean that's something Brian Marks says every time he's (inaudible). RC: No, it's not over, and I'll tell you, I think many a days, none of us could have seen this future, because it just didn't seem conceivable that anything would come and be able to really help. I mean, it was, we just never could see this day. Not that we didn't have the vision, but we didn't have the hope. I think that was it ; we really ran out of hope early on. LB: At the beginning. RC: But I'm happy to see that today, and, you know, there'll always be something. And there'll always be a time, this is for thirty years from now, by the way, there'll always be a time when you were called upon to stand and to show courage, and you know, you have a choice, you can do it, or you could just not do it, it's up to you. But you know, you got to live the rest of your life looking at yourself in the mirror, and you know, there are so many days I think back on my whole career and I think, oh crap, I wish I could have done this, or I should have done that better, or you know, I was always out on a limb, you know, with my big mouth, and stuff like that. But you know, I had to live to my truth. I had a really good friend who said to me, "Rose, can't you just go keep your head down, do your job, shut up," and I looked at her and I remember thinking, and saying, "No. I cannot." And that is the story of me, and a bunch of other people out there who showed up. And everybody will have that, at some time in their life, they'll be given that choice, to act or respond to it, certainly you respond to it, and you know, just the incredible center that you have there. LB: Yeah, we're happy that that's working. RC: It's incredible, and wonderful. LB: And I'm so glad that you've been able, you've done, you can look back and say, a lot of things wouldn't have gotten done had I not done it. I think that there are people when they're in positions of leadership, you can look at a Circumstance and say, well this leadership, if there isn't that leadership, then sometimes things don't happen, and I think you were really instrumental in making a lot of these very significant things happen at the height of the epidemic, and thank you for doing that, because you saved people's lives, or made people's lives better, and education certainly did that at then end of the time. That really was a question of, you know, this is what you can do to keep yourself from dying, and how essential that was at that time. RC: That's very kind of you ; thank you. And cheers to all those white-haired white women who went out with a banana and a cucumber, because that's what changed this world, their willingness and their matter-of-fact way of just saying, listen, this is how you put it on, and you need to put it on. LB: Yeah. I remember when I got to the point, where, because I do trainings all the time now, that I used, I'm comfortable using the word "penis" in huge groups of, you know, and so, you know, I could just say that in any situation. Any my younger self, I don't think I would ever have thought, oh yeah, that's something you say in front of loads of people all the time. RC: They used to always carry their cucumbers with them. They were all ready, a small group, and just do it, god bless them all. LB: Oh, that's hilarious. That's great. Well good for them. I'm so glad you could come, and I'm so glad you could talk about Dixie, because I'm so sad that we've lost her ability to tell all of those stories, but thank goodness she -- RC: She was instrumental. She was instrumental. LB: Thank goodness she saved every single scrap of paper she ever touched. I don't think her (inaudible) -- RC: Yeah, that was Dixie. LB: Yeah, I don't think her heirs are saying that, now that they're clearing out her house. But they were able to rescue the papers. RC: Yes, I'm sure. I think of her house and all the things that she's always had growing, and collecting, and oh my gosh, yeah. I don't envy them at all. She lived a life, for sure. LB: Well they're coming to an end now, and I think that the great thing is that all that stuff that she saved is going to be archived, and this video is going to be Archived, and so thank you so much for being on it. You got about three minutes to say anything else you want to say. Anything else? RC: Well, like I said, just, you know, the Lehigh Valley is home to me, and I grew up there, and my dad was a radio personality and he was a minister, went from social ministry to radio, and he always was doing community things ; he got that, way back in nineteen-fifty, whatever. You know, he got that, and he would bring people along to form more community. And in the Lehigh Valley, when he died, quite young, the whole funeral was about community members coming out and saying, hey, Vern Craig helped me with this, and he started this, and he went to people in the community and talked about mental health issues, just was there, and so I've seen that area, the Lehigh Valley grow in so many ways, and I'm so lucky to have been able to, be able to show up for my own community there, a place I loved and, you know, will always love and care about, so thank you, Lehigh Valley, for letting me be invited to the dance. (laughter) LB: Well thank you, Rose, I really appreciate it very, very much. RC: Thank you, Liz. And keep doing the great work you're doing. LB: Thank you, have a great day, and keep you, keep up the good fight yourself. Okay, bye-bye. RC: Thank you. Bye-bye. END OF AUDIO FILE Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source.
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01:29:17
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Rose Craig, June 30, 2020
Description
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Rose Craig talks about her work as the last President of the Gay Community Center in Allentown in the 1980s and how the Center evolved into the AIDS Services Center in the late 1980s and early 1990s to address the crisis. She talks about what services the AIDS Services Center provided and her role in securing funding and support.
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PH40_05
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AIDS (Disease)
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2020-06-30
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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ba7eb22f6ab69f37462c6a2fdba4c58d
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40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community: HIV/AIDS
Description
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In the spring of 2020, the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive received a grant to collect oral histories and written stories for 40 Years of Public Health in the Lehigh Valley’s LGBT Community: Collecting and Curating Local LGBT Health Experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19.
The collection consists of oral histories from individuals who experienced the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as oral histories from members of the local community as they lived through 2020's summer of Covid-19. Running through both are the themes of dealing with the fear of an emerging health crisis, loneliness and isolation, and coming together as a community in support and activism.
The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Oral History
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Liz Bradbury
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Maria Rodale
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=PH40_06.xml
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5.4 June 29, 2020 Maria Rodale, June 29, 2020 PH40_06 01:33:20 LVLGBT40 40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg AIDS (Disease) Rodale, Ardath H. Rodale Press Maria Rodale Liz Bradbury video/mpeg RodaleMaria_20200629_video.mp4 1.0:|25(15)|54(11)|81(5)|100(4)|125(13)|140(14)|155(12)|176(9)|193(6)|214(13)|241(6)|256(13)|277(12)|294(15)|311(7)|330(8)|345(16)|368(11)|383(18)|408(8)|431(3)|454(8)|467(11)|482(9)|499(11)|520(13)|537(12)|556(13)|585(3)|604(3)|615(11)|632(13)|649(14)|670(11)|693(7)|704(13)|721(3)|746(12)|761(15)|776(4)|791(9)|810(2)|829(6)|840(15)|859(7)|872(3)|891(2)|904(13)|921(18)|936(12)|953(6)|978(8)|997(2)|1018(9)|1041(10)|1064(2)|1085(5)|1106(2)|1129(8)|1148(2)|1165(4)|1184(5)|1205(6)|1230(5)|1255(3)|1280(5)|1303(8)|1324(10)|1343(8)|1362(13)|1391(2)|1416(11)|1439(9)|1452(3)|1465(18)|1482(9)|1501(4)|1516(10)|1533(6)|1546(11)|1567(12)|1590(3)|1623(10)|1646(11)|1665(12)|1696(6)|1717(7)|1748(11)|1777(13)|1802(10)|1831(7)|1856(3)|1887(6)|1904(5) 0 https://youtu.be/zZGKCY969IY YouTube video 0 Interview Introduction 0 147 First memories of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in 1983 / Losing a brother to AIDS LB: So the first part of this, and, you know, you can say whatever you want about the -- however you want it to go. We have three props on here, one of them is that, what was the first time -- to start it off -- that you remember the first time that you became aware of the disease? 
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 ; MR: I first became aware of the disease in probably nineteen eighty-three or eighty-four when I was actually a student at Muhlenberg College, and my brother David gave me an unpublished manuscript to read. 0 1024 Coping with the loss of a family member / Channeling grief into activism LB: Yeah. So let me just ask you, and I know this is hard, but after he died, was it something that...? I mean I know how involved your mother was in all sorts of stuff after he died, and maybe you weren’t. I don't know where you were at that time. It sounds like you were in DC. When did you come back -- 
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 ; MR: Well, my father made me promise that I would only stay there for a year and then I would come back after a year. So when I came back, I started working for my father at the company, which again in retrospect I was glad I did because he died five years later. So I had that time with him, which was really precious. But by the time I came back, my mother, well I will say, she never got over my brother’s death, ever, and I think a lot of her recurrence with breast cancer that she had was her grieving, her feeling of loss and sorrow. 0 1400 Trying to understand human differences and anti-LGBTQ sentiments through research, writing, and blogging LB: Well, talk about that writing that you do or you did then about it.
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 ; MR: Well, I’ve been a blogger since two-thousand six. And I’ve written a few books where I’ve never shied away from the fact that he had AIDS, but I’ve never also addressed it specifically. It’s like, oh, I had a brother who died of AIDS. The book that I’m working on now and that -- that’s (laughs) the “Why Sex Matters” book is there is I’m working on a book about love and how we can learn to love each other and -- through not just relationship but through work, through the environment, through politics, and through connecting with all sorts of diversity not just the LGBTQ, whatever, but racial diversity, sexual diversity, all of it. 0 1714 Addressing the shock of brother's death throughout the Lehigh Valley and its effects on his friends / Maintaining a close bond with David's partner LB: Let’s see. Let me see what these other questions are. Sometimes I hurry. So you were living here. Were you seeing with David’s friends -- because other people were dying too. It’s interesting that the other people that I’ve interviewed, they seem to be just a little bit after that really devastating early time. And that’s not going to be true for everybody because this is, I think, the fifth interview I’ve done. But were people seeing in the Lehigh Valley this kind of rapid realization of the disease? Were other people that happening to, his friends or David’s friends who were in the Lehigh Valley or other people that were around always (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible). Like David’s death is such a shock to everybody because they didn’t really expect this when it happened? What do you think about that? 
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 ; MR: Yeah. David had a lot of friends all over the place. Most of them are dead, most of them are dead. In the Lehigh Valley, I think there was... The big shock for my brother’s death was as much the family business -- the heir, David Rodale of Rodale Press as it was the AIDS thing. 0 1970 Mother's turn to activism in order to cope / Prioritizing the memory of David over the living LB: (laughter) So let’s see. We talked about a lot of different things. Let’s see. So you were saying this -- and I can really understand this -- that your mother was finding solace in the activism. And then I could see why you might not have wanted to step into that because she was doing that. Were you aware of pretty much all this stuff? I guess I asked you this already, but were you aware of what she was doing? Because she even -- I don't know if you were part of this, but she narrated a big concert for the Gay Men’s Chorus at the church on Center Street. And it was a musical performance about a young man who killed himself actually, and she was the narrator for that. Were you aware -- 
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 ; MR: I wasn’t aware that she did that, but I’m not surprised at all because that’s the kind of thing she really loved to do. Yeah. Yeah. 0 2255 Societal death and the loss of creativity / End of the sexual revolution LB: And so many people who were lost in those circumstances left people behind that were in that -- in the same circumstance. It was such a shock. It’s such a shock to you to lose someone who was young and seemingly so vital and healthy. That’s the thing that is so, I think, devastating for people. 
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 ; MR: Yeah, I mean any death in a family is devastating. But that was like the beginning of just a whole societal death -- you know, the death of creativity, the death of fun. (laughs) 0 2523 Reflections on similarities and differences between the AIDS epidemic and the COVID-19 pandemic LB: Yeah, I really agree with that. I think that people will often say -- it can be very privileged to say this is the worst moment. I mean, really? (laughter) (inaudible) McCarthyism, (inaudible), flu epidemic of 1918, come on, it’s... I think that’s true. How do you see this? I mean, you’ve been -- you lived through that epidemic, you’re looking at this epidemic that’s happening now. What do you think about the relationships of how people are dealing with it and stuff like that, and how you’re dealing with it? What do you think about that? 
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 ; MR: Well, I think this one is both similar and incredibly different. So similar is the sense of like anxiety and dread. I mean just the shutting down of the whole global economy is very different. AIDS didn’t do that. 0 2919 The Rodale Institute LB: So what is your relationship with the farm? 
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 ; MR: The Rodale Institute? 
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 ; LB: Yeah. 
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 ; MR: So when my father was alive, I was on the board of directors of the Rodale Institute with my father. When my father died, I shifted my focus over to the company, and my mother became more involved with the institute and my brother Anthony. And then in -- like around two-thousand eight, two-thousand nine, I came back on the board. I became the cochair of the board with our longtime legal counselor Paul McGinley. And as of today, I’m still on the board, but my daughter Maya is now the cochair of the board, so... So my activism has always been more on the quiet, unseen side of things. 0 3151 PrEP, vaccines, and other drugs discussed in context with both HIV and COVID-19 LB: Yeah, it is. So are you familiar with PrEP? What do you think about PrEP? 
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 ; MR: What? 
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 ; LB: PrEP is the pill that people can take so that they won’t contract HIV if they come in contact with it. And PrEP is -- 
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 ; MR: I think I’ve seen some commercials for it, which I’ve not done any research on. But if I would apply my gut knowledge of what I know about advertising and health, I think it’s probably not the best thing. I mean probably the best thing is to just be cautious and careful, right? But I don’t know. What do you think of it? 0 3815 Lehigh Valley doctors' awareness and understanding of AIDS early in the epidemic LB: That’s a very good point. When you were talking about it -- I wrote a little note. When you were talking about David, was he -- what hospital was he at? 
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 ; MR: He was at Lehigh Valley Hospital. 
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 ; LB: Mm-hmm. And in general, I mean, were there doctors that understood what was happening, or what was that feeling like? 0 4022 Lessons learned from losing a family member to AIDS and its effects on life MR: Yeah. But definitely my mother that was her -- in many ways, the crowning glory of her life was the AIDS work that she did. And there was an organization she was involved in too, I think, called The Compassionate Friends where it wasn’t just AIDS, any parent who lost their child and dealing with that, so that was her gift. 
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 ; LB: Yeah. But I guess it sounds like you -- if you would think about it if this hadn’t happened, that your entire life or her entire life would have been vastly different.
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 ; MR: Everybody’s life would have been vastly different. I’m not saying it would be better or worse. It would have been more fun. (laughs) 0 4195 Reflections on the COVID-19 pandemic and AIDS epidemic for future generations / Social and economic complications of epidemics / Importance of education and awareness LB: Yeah. I think that’s true. Hmm, I think that’s an interesting point of view, and I think you’re right. I do think you’re right about that. Yeah, we’ve got a little bit more time left and so -- but thinking like when you talk about this and you want future -- when you’re talking to future generations, because we are. I mean truthfully, there’s no information from the flu epidemic of nineteen-eighteen, there’s nobody who you could really... Because we’re right in the middle of COVID so we have -- I mean somebody’s going to read this twenty years from now and go, “This is what’s going to happen!” 
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 ; MR: Yeah, yeah. 
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 ; LB: It’s like watching World War II movies where they made the movie after World War II when we know we won or the movie during World War II where people have no idea whether we’re really going to win or not or what’s going to happen. 0 4967 The negative effects of COVID-19 on grief and loss / The current state of politics and the spread of inaccurate information LB: But in the meanwhile -- I think that’s one of the reasons that we’re doing this project is to remind people about what’s going on. Because you can say, Well everybody in those days fought this thing. That’s true. There are people who had all sorts of different experiences. And I can also say that one of the things that’s come out of the interviews that I’ve done that I’ve shared with a couple of people, there’s one person who said, it was David Moyer, and he said he was a nurse with the Health Bureau and so he came in contact with literally dozens of people who died. And one of the things he said was that psychologically, people will tell you -- great counselors will tell you that if you -- if somebody close to you dies, it takes a couple of years, you get over that. 0 5524 Concluding Remarks LB: Positive, very positive thing. Well, I think we’re at the end of this now. Oh, I’m supposed to say this, wait a minute, I’ve got some stuff. I have to say don’t forget that -- so at the end of this time, what we do is we send this. The people that are doing this archiving take this from -- coming through Muhlenberg College and they send it to some interns that will transcribe it quite rapidly -- it’s quite remarkable -- and then they will send that. 0 MovingImage Maria Rodale talks about the death of her brother David Rodale, which happened during the early days of the AIDS epidemic. She also speaks about her mother’s involvement in local AIDS activism and about the impact of the epidemic on society and culture. Her family owned Rodale Press and continues to be closely involved with Rodale Institute and organic farm. MARIA RODALE LIZ BRADBURY: -- computer, yes? MARIA RODALE: Yeah, I see it. LB: Let's go. Now, I have to read you these things that are important. My phone is off, okay. With this project, the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College will collaborate on 40 years of public health experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community collecting and curating local LGBT health experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19. My name is Liz Bradbury, and I'm here with Maria Rodale to talk about her experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community during this time of COVID-19 epidemic as part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive. So, at the beginning of this, I have to say -- oh, wait, here I'll do that -- thank you for much -- so much for your willingness to speak with us today. To start, can you please state your full name and spell it for me? MR: Maria Rodale. M-A-R-I-A R-O-D-A-L-E. LB: Thank you. Will you please share your birthdate? MR: January twenty-fourth, nineteen sixty-two. LB: Okay. Do you consent to this interview today? MR: Yes. LB: Do you consent to having this interview being transcribed, digitalized or digitized and made publicly available online in searchable formats? MR: Yes. LB: Do you consent to the LGBT Archive using your interview for educational purposes in other formats including films, articles, websites, presentations, and other formats? MR: Yes. LB: Do you understand that you will have thirty days after the electronic delivery of the transcript -- so we will deliver the transcript that will be transcribed after this interview to you -- to review your interview and review any parts you'd like to delete or withdraw from your interview for this project? MR: Yes. LB: Okay. So I am actually going to turn my air off because it's making too much noise. MR: And I can't hear it. LB: I'm having to yell. Yeah, but I'm having to yell, (laughs) and it's weird. Okay. Okay. So the first part of this, and, you know, you can say whatever you want about the -- however you want it to go. We have three props on here, one of them is that, what was the first time -- to start it off -- that you remember the first time that you became aware of the disease? MR: I first became aware of the disease in probably nineteen eighty-three or eighty-four when I was actually a student at Muhlenberg College, and my brother David gave me an unpublished manuscript to read. I don't remember the book, but it was definitely talking about the possibility that there was an epidemic that was about to happen. My first response was like, "Well, why are you giving this to me?" and then as I read it, I realized he was kind of giving me a heads-up. So my brother David was gay, as everybody knew, and was very open about it, and we all loved him dearly. And so that was my first awareness of -- that something was happening. LB: Yeah. I just want to interpose in this that this -- one of the reasons I think we're doing this archive is that lots of people don't know stuff. And in fact, this is going to go into the archives for thirty years into the -- 20, 30 years into the future, and there will be a lot of things that people don't know. In fact, it's shocking when -- how much people don't know. Lots of times that most of the people who work at our community center are about half my age, they don't have a -- they don't understand a lot of this. I was going to say they don't have a clue, but that's not true. MR: Yeah. LB: But they don't understand a lot of stuff. So talk about how that proceeded. What happened for you as far as that stuff went? MR: Well, first of all, my brother came out as gay when he was maybe in his late teens, early twenties, and it didn't surprise me. I wasn't upset. My parents, obviously at that time, were quite upset, but they really came around. They came around quickly, and he was just such a delightful and wonderful person and kind of the life of the family, so... So nineteen eighty-four, he gave me that book, but I was just like -- you know, at that point, I was very young and a single mom going to college, so it wasn't really my problem. I personally was not gay or doing drugs or anything -- any of the risk factors. But I don't even think back then we knew what the risk factors were other than it was related to being gay, so... Then, I would say -- well, his birthday December twelfth nineteen eighty-five. I remember he had a birthday party. I remember I wore black leather pants. (laughs) But he was coughing a lot and -- coughing and sweating, but he was like, "Oh, it's nothing," and he had actually been to the local doctor who had diagnosed him as having bronchitis. And so we're like, "Oh, it's just bronchitis," and he was like, "Oh, it's just bronchitis." And then December twentieth, he and his partner Mark were about to go on -- away for Christmas together. He was at the airport, and he was coughing so badly that Mark was like, "You have to go to the hospital. There's something wrong here." At that point, I knew it might be AIDS because of what he had told me about, and I remember calling a couple of my friends. I was like, "You know, I think my brother has AIDS," and they were like, "Oh, no, he's just stressed out. It's winter ; it's just bronchitis." But when he went into the hospital, and they did the test, and he did have AIDS, it was -- well, first of all, it was a death sentence back then. So this is nineteen eighty-five, it's a complete death sentence, and none of the nurses or doctors wanted to go near him because we didn't know. Nobody really knew at that point exactly how it was spread. And I remember my mother like -- well, first of all, she was deeply upset and crying and -- but she was trying to find private nurses to take care of him in the hospital. I'm like, "Mom, we'll do it. Let's -- let's... Let's take shifts." So all of us had shifts, and we were with him. And I remember on December twenty-third, I had my -- so this was like three days in the hospital -- I had my last exam for Muhlenberg College. So I was like technically graduated at that point, and I got my stuff together to go in for my shift, which was a late-night shift. It was like nine to threein the morning and so I remember I had a little tray of a McDonald's milkshake, McDonald's coffee, my journal. And I went to the room, and I said to the nurse outside. I was like, "Do I need to mask up?" and she's like, "Well not anymore," and I'm like, "What do you mean?" She's like, "He expired." (sobs) And I went into the room, and my whole family was there. I don't know why -- oh, it's before cell phones, so I don't know why that's how I found out, but that's how I found out. So my parents were there. The woman was who his friend, Sarah who was with him when he died was there. Some of his other best friends were there, his partner Mark, and it was just... He was dead. LB: Wow. MR: Three days and... I mean and -- LB: He was there three days in the hospital? MR: Yes. And so he had died of, well, pneumocystic -- the pneumonia that is common with the AIDS patients and... So, needless to say, we were all devastated and stunned. LB: How old was he? MR: He was only thirty. That was his thirtieth birthday party. LB: Oh, God. MR: And I was twenty-three -- I was twenty-two, so... LB: When you were taking care of him and others were taking care of him, was that you were really doing nursing care for him? MR: You know, it -- LB: Days, gosh. MR: -- not really. They would do the technical things, but we would be sitting with him and communicating with the nurses and things like that. So the nurses did get over their fear and put on all their equipment and do what nurses are supposed to do, but it was not something that everyone was willing to do. I think certain nurses took it on. And I remember he must have been on a lot of painkillers because the conversations were really interesting. (laughs) LB: What do you mean? MR: Well, he'd be like, "Oh, gosh, I -- I'm seeing the most incredible gardens, I wish you could see them." (laughs) In retrospect, I think he knew for a while he had AIDS. I remember the Christmas beforehand, I had made some offhanded stupid remark like, "Oh well, we know David will always be here for Christmas because he's gay and --" you know. And he gave me a look that was like don't count on that, and so... I mean, he didn't even make it to the next Christmas. LB: Yeah. Did he tell other people in your family before you found out? Was it because you -- or did you-all know at the same time about...? MR: That he had AIDS? LB: Yeah. MR: We all found out at the same time when he was tested in the hospital, so... Yeah. LB: I mean there's so much stuff, you know, because so many things were happening then in the world, and people didn't know about it. People didn't know where it came from. Was that something that you were aware of earlier or any time? MR: Well, I think I was peripherally aware of it and scared for him. What happened for me is I had already planned to move to Washington, DC, with my daughter. I had a job lined up, an apartment. And then our family situation, of course, there was the family business that was a factor in it and my brother had been considered the heir of the family business. And my father kind of alluded that he needed me to stay, and I was like, "But I've got this stuff lined up, and I need to... I made commitments to people." When I moved to Washington, DC, my apartment was in the Dupont Circle area, which was a hotbed of the AIDS crisis in Washington. And so every day, walking my daughter to school and to work, I would see people who were dying just... It was horrible because I felt that they were looking at me as a white, straight woman, and being like, Fuck you, you know? And I wanted to say to each and every one of them, it's like, "Well, I lost my brother, I feel for you," but I was just trying to get by at that point and... I think the hardest thing too is that I wasn't with the rest of my family grieving. I was doing all that grieving on my own, and they were doing their grieving without me, so there was a weird disconnect. LB: Were you aware of like...? Could you just fill people in because I kind of know about this, but what David was doing before he died? He was involved with the theater, wasn't he? MR: Well, that was earlier. By the time he died, he had been actively involved in the company business, working specifically on social media back then and computers and working for different magazines as -- in an editorial aspect. I often think like if he would have lived, we would have been way ahead of the curve on social media and the internet. He was one of the first people involved with like online communities. I remember he would take his laptop and go to phone booths and plug it in and upload his (laughs) stories and his -- before it was called blogs -- they were kind of blog posts. He was definitely involved in the business and had committed to it. But he and I had also talked, because he lived in Provincetown for a while and I would go visit him there, and that he -- his heart wasn't in the business, so... There's a lot of complicated theories, but the truth is he was in a very high-risk group at a very early time. LB: It was the time. MR: Mm-hmm. LB: Yeah. So let me just ask you, and I know this is hard, but after he died, was it something that...? I mean I know how involved your mother was in all sorts of stuff after he died, and maybe you weren't. I don't know where you were at that time. It sounds like you were in DC. When did you come back -- MR: Well, my father made me promise that I would only stay there for a year and then I would come back after a year. So when I came back, I started working for my father at the company, which again in retrospect I was glad I did because he died five years later. So I had that time with him, which was really precious. But by the time I came back, my mother, well I will say, she never got over my brother's death, ever, and I think a lot of her recurrence with breast cancer that she had was her grieving, her feeling of loss and sorrow. It impacted her and my father's relationship too because they were both grieving, but they were also products of their upbringing where it was hard for them. They didn't go to therapy together or -- you know? So he was a very traditional father in that respect where he kept it to himself. And I often think his increased travel at that time of his life was like a way of dealing and maybe escaping his pain and sorrow. But there's no question it left a giant, giant hole in our whole family that never was filled again. LB: I think people may not realize that the numbers -- number of deaths -- and I think people need to understand that about things that are happening today. But the number of deaths that had happened particularly with young men, young, creative men in the nineteen-eighties had an enormous impact on everything that happened. MR: Right. LB: And here is an illustration of that because you're talking about how differently that could've had an impact on -- you're talking about the publishing company, is that correct? MR: Right, the publishing company. But the publishing company, the family, it was a devastating blow to us. My mother channeled her grieving into her activism, which was really brave and courageous. Because in the later -- from nineteen eighty-five to the nineties, early nineties, there were still not a lot of people especially parents who were speaking in support of the gay community, and her whole message was about loving and accepting our children for who they are. It was kind of stunning how many people didn't think that at the time and maybe still don't. LB: So at that time after he died, was there an acknowledgement of what he died from? Because people were so afraid of that kind of stuff. I mean soon after because really, we -- I've had people that were close to me that died that nobody knew what was wrong with them. Nobody said anything. They just -- you know? MR: I think in the newspaper it said pneumonia, but we were very transparent and up front, you know? LB: Yeah. MR: I mean, from the day he died, it was -- my mother, myself, my siblings, my father is like he died of AIDS, he died of AIDS and -- you know? I don't think we felt the stigma of that, or if we did, we felt it was important to work through the stigma. Yeah. LB: Well, I know your mother really rallied her friends to support causes. And I think some of their sons that had died as well, [probably?] rallied then that it really was the source of a lot of the funding that came through FACT, the Gay Men's Chorus, and stuff. Do you remember that kind of stuff, or what do you think about that? MR: Yeah, no, I mean I definitely remember her being a major activist. I think that she got a lot of her loneliness from my brother leaving -- was fulfilled through that community. She was involved with the AIDS Quilts. She was a member of the Harvard AIDS Institute International Advisory Committee. So she made the most out of her tragedy to try to help others. For me, it was not a matter of public activism because that was her terrain and she was doing a great job in that world. I think for me, it became more a form of like personal activism in terms of how I interact with people and a lot of the writing that I do. It wasn't the time for me to be a public activist because that was her role and -- LB: Well, talk about that writing that you do or you did then about it. MR: Well, I've been a blogger since two-thousand six. And I've written a few books where I've never shied away from the fact that he had AIDS, but I've never also addressed it specifically. It's like, oh, I had a brother who died of AIDS. The book that I'm working on now and that -- that's (laughs) the "Why Sex Matters" book is there is I'm working on a book about love and how we can learn to love each other and -- through not just relationship but through work, through the environment, through politics, and through connecting with all sorts of diversity not just the LGBTG, whatever, but racial diversity, sexual diversity, all of it. I'm one of those people who -- like I've been just quietly observing and watching and studying and researching, and this next book that I'm working on will be my contribution to the conversation. LB: Hmm. I think that's like a theme or...? You've sort of described what the theme was, but thinking about the point that you're trying to make, I don't mean to be obvious but that's sort of -- or is it just presenting a lot of information? Are you trying to really communicate some specific thing that you want people to understand? MR: Well, I mean it started as me trying to understand for myself and understand. And just curious -- curiosity like, well, why are people like this, and why do we -- why are people so anti-gay, and why are people racist and -- you know, so... My approach that I'm taking is that it all starts with each of us individually and how we learn to accept ourselves and love ourselves and then share that in everything we do and connect to others in that way. So there's a lot of research and science and -- but it's -- ultimately, it's a personal journey that we each have to take to become loving people and to be aware that just because we say we're not racist doesn't mean we aren't racist. Or just because we say we are okay with people being gay doesn't mean we're actually okay with that. We have to show it and walk the talk and be that in our lives. Ultimately, that's all that really matters. Because when you die -- we're all going to die, and for or better or worse, I've seen a lot of death in my family, and what lasts? What lasts? It's that loving relationship that lasts and the ripples that we make in people's lives, positive or negative. LB: Mm-hmm. Is this a different kind of book than other things that you've written, or what were some of the other things you've written? MR: I've written a gardening book. I've written a book on women and pleasure. I've written a book called Organic Manifesto, which is about why we use chemicals and how that all happened. I've often gone through phases like, well, all my books are so different, what's the thread that connects them? And it's really all about learning how to make ourselves and the world better and showing all the connections between things of which when you can see the connections then you can see oh, oh, that's why it's important, and that's why it matters, so -- LB: Exactly -- MR: -- it's something. LB: -- it's that -- oh. It sounds like your earlier experiences, it has -- they have contributed to this trajectory in terms of how you've been working with this. You think that's true? MR: Totally, totally. Yeah. LB: Let's see. Let me see what these other questions are. Sometimes I hurry. So you were living here. Were you seeing with David's friends -- because other people were dying too. It's interesting that the other people that I've interviewed, they seem to be just a little bit after that really devastating early time. And that's not going to be true for everybody because this is, I think, the fifth interview I've done. But were people seeing in the Lehigh Valley this kind of rapid realization of the disease? Were other people that happening to, his friends or David's friends who were in the Lehigh Valley or other people that were around always (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible). Like David's death is such a shock to everybody because they didn't really expect this when it happened? What do you think about that? MR: Yeah. David had a lot of friends all over the place. Most of them are dead, most of them are dead. In the Lehigh Valley, I think there was... The big shock for my brother's death was as much the family business -- the heir, David Rodale of Rodale Press as it was the AIDS thing. Probably because I've been a single parent since I was twenty, I mean I don't hang out too much. (laughs) I don't have a social life, so I was really just kind of watching other people, and it's classic. There is the traditional Lehigh Valley people who do not have a lot of compassion, and they're more traditionalists I would say. And then there's a lot of wonderful people who were very warm and supportive and welcoming. I will say I didn't experience and I didn't see my mother experiencing, although she might have, a lot of hate or trolling. But this was before the internet, so I'm sure people kept that to themselves or kept it within their smaller groups. I don't remember seeing or hearing any of that, but I do remember feeling my parents' shame. Although they worked to overcome it. LB: Because of the whole thing? Because of (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible) or because he had AIDS? MR: Because he was gay, because AIDS was a sexually transmitted disease, because they failed keeping him safe -- all those things that parents feel. One of the most important things though for me personally is that his partner Mark is still alive and healthy and has been an incredibly important part of our whole family all these years. He worked for my mother, he worked for me, he continues to stay involved and we're -- we've been very connected with him. LB: Is he still in Lehigh Valley? MR: Yeah, he is. Mark Kintzel, he's a wedding planner, he does incredible weddings. LB: (laughter) So let's see. We talked about a lot of different things. Let's see. So you were saying this -- and I can really understand this -- that your mother was finding solace in the activism. And then I could see why you might not have wanted to step into that because she was doing that. Were you aware of pretty much all this stuff? I guess I asked you this already, but were you aware of what she was doing? Because she even -- I don't know if you were part of this, but she narrated a big concert for the Gay Men's Chorus at the church on Center Street. And it was a musical performance about a young man who killed himself actually, and she was the narrator for that. Were you aware -- MR: I wasn't aware that she did that, but I'm not surprised at all because that's the kind of thing she really loved to do. Yeah. Yeah. LB: I got the impression that she was really whipping up an enormous amount of financial support for FACT because there was -- they got an enormous amount of money coming in. And I know Billy Leh who were -- and he and other people that were part of the community where people could afford to make significant donations. And then I would guess that other people that she knew were losing sons as well. I've often said that you can get LGBT people to stick up for your rights, but when you get to the parents of LGBT people, that's a whole different thing. MR: Yeah. LB: Yeah. They're like lions with their kids and they can be -- yeah, they can be rejecting, but they can also be extraordinarily -- and families in general too. I think that these families speak out. MR: For the record, I have to express that one of the challenges with that is that the memory of David became more important to her than the living. And I think that's a wound that my siblings and I still carry is that we weren't enough to fill that hole. And that's our own personal work we had to do. Our own personal activism was how do we become whole, healthy, happy human beings knowing that that trauma happened to all of us, not just to her but to all of us. And we were kind of on our own to figure that out. LB: Mm-hmm. Yeah. What other siblings do you have? MR: I have my oldest sister Heather, then Heidi, and then David was next, and then between David and me, there were seven years, and then my younger brother Anthony, so three years younger than me. So there are four people left. LB: Yeah, sure, yeah. MR: Yeah, and none of us were as funny and charming and delightful as he was. (laughs) LB: Well... (laughter) MR: It's true. It's the truth. LB: Okay, but... MR: I miss him terribly. LB: Yeah, I can understand that but... I mean there's a lot of factors that make one say that, and it's not just because he wasn't that way but also because you were younger. You were influenced by losing him, and that is an influence of things too, so... MR: Mm-hmm. LB: And so many people who were lost in those circumstances left people behind that were in that -- in the same circumstance. It was such a shock. It's such a shock to you to lose someone who was young and seemingly so vital and healthy. That's the thing that is so, I think, devastating for people. MR: Yeah, I mean any death in a family is devastating. But that was like the beginning of just a whole societal death -- you know, the death of creativity, the death of fun. (laughs) LB: [What happened to that?] Say, explain what you mean by that because I don't think people always get what that means. MR: Well, in my research on my own history and social history, the sexual revolution happened in the sixties and the seventies. There were great things about it, and there were bad things about it for men and women, for gays and straight people. But the truth was it was kind of free for all, and you could make of it what you wanted, and a lot of people did. And then when AIDS came, it kind of [claps] put a clamp down on that. And, you know, there were the religious people who were saying that's God's punishment. There were all sorts of things happening. I'm not a person who judges, so I don't have a view on... To me, it's just all evolution. The AIDS moment was an evolution of how we think about sexuality, and probably a cycle from excess to conservatism. And I remember when I was working in Washington, I was working for a progressive political -- socially progressive PR company, so I was doing activism in my job actually. And it was the moral majority, Phyllis Schlafly, all those ministers who have now since been exposed as being (laughs) gay pedophiles themselves. (laughs) But I was also working on the Anti-Apartheid Movement and the anti-Contra thing, so I've always been a socially progressive, active person, but I think that was just a real shift. I was reading some of my writings from that time period, and I'd see a lot of parallels in what's happening today, you know. The whole evangelical backlash is extremely similar to what was happening in the nineteen-eighties and early nineties and... But if you think about what we've accomplished since then, it's enormous. One of my big philosophies that I'm writing about is like we -- and if you look at things in the moment, they seem like awful and terrible and the world is ending. But if you look at them in the context of the full history of the world, we've come so far, and we'll survive it. We might not all survive this, but people will survive this and will keep moving forward. LB: Yeah, I really agree with that. I think that people will often say -- it can be very privileged to say this is the worst moment. I mean, really? (laughter) (inaudible) McCarthyism, (inaudible), flu epidemic of 1918, come on, it's... I think that's true. How do you see this? I mean, you've been -- you lived through that epidemic, you're looking at this epidemic that's happening now. What do you think about the relationships of how people are dealing with it and stuff like that, and how you're dealing with it? What do you think about that? MR: Well, I think this one is both similar and incredibly different. So similar is the sense of like anxiety and dread. I mean just the shutting down of the whole global economy is very different. AIDS didn't do that. AIDS shut down a lot of things but not for everyone. I mean, of course again, applying that historical viewpoint, we'll get through this and we'll learn from it and we'll evolve, and it's kind of exposing. Just like AIDS, AIDS exposed a lot of things that were hidden. If you think about like a lot of the artists who nobody knew were gay, Freddie Mercury who like a lot of redneck kids, wow, that's awesome. Well, you know what, he was gay, so... I think that that's what's being exposed now in terms of racial discrimination, financial discrimination. You've got all the big companies that are siphoning off all this money and not paying people a living wage. So I do think there's connections, but this is probably more far reaching in its impact perhaps, I don't know, so... LB: Yes. MR: Who knows? I think it's going to get worse before it gets better also. I don't think we know the final outcome of this. And then you layer on climate change, environmental degradation, yeah. A lot of the work that I'm doing is around de-shaming sexuality. I've said in some of my talks that I've given, how we treat nature is how we treat women and how we treat women is how we treat nature and-- and that's what I want to get to the bottom of through all of this is having more openness about the whole discussion, less shame, more openness, but also reconnecting sexuality and pleasure with love. LB: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I think you saying how we treat nature is how we treat women, I need to hear more about that because I think that's so true that I want to scream it from the rooftop. So talk a little bit more about that. That's a brilliant thing to say. MR: It goes very deeply into our history, our religious history, but it's not just religion. It's just social history of male domination, patriarchy, which is not just the man thing, the patriarchy. In all my research, it's like women are just as complicit in patriarchy as men are. But it's the idea that nature and people are here for our -- to be used as opposed to being in a reciprocal relationship. I mean who doesn't want to be in an actual reciprocal relationship sexually, emotionally? That's where the pleasure is, right? That's where the love is when you feel seen and heard and understood and cared for, and everybody wants that no matter what your sexuality is or your gender. So what I'm trying to kind of untangle is how do we build a world based on that? And obviously, it starts in childhood, early, early in childhood, and it's a long-term plan. It's not an overnight thing. But I think all these, whether it's AIDS or COVID are all kind of messages from the universe saying, "Wake up, wake up, wake up." Let's see the world in a more full and rich way. And just dominating things are not going to solve our problem and control. Domination is the same as control, so... LB: So what is your relationship with the farm? MR: The Rodale Institute? LB: Yeah. MR: So when my father was alive, I was on the board of directors of the Rodale Institute with my father. When my father died, I shifted my focus over to the company, and my mother became more involved with the institute and my brother Anthony. And then in -- like around two-thousand eight, two-thousand nine, I came back on the board. I became the cochair of the board with our longtime legal counselor Paul McGinley. And as of today, I'm still on the board, but my daughter Maya is now the cochair of the board, so... So my activism has always been more on the quiet, unseen side of things. My job when I was cochair was like, okay, how do I untangle this organization, nonprofit from the company, how do I help it to become independent and stable and accountable, and I was able to accomplish that, so... And now, with the sale of the company, we sold the family business two years ago, and all the land now belongs to the Rodale Institute. They're in decent shape and we sold just in the nick of time because nobody should want to be in publishing right now in the world, (laughs) so... LB: That's for sure. (laughs) I just want to say, I'm just going to -- this doesn't belong in this, but I want to say I love the institute, and we got all our plants there for our garden. We have a big garden on the roof of our garages in our -- the city. We live in the city, so -- MR: Nice. LB: -- we get an enormous amount of food from our -- and we love getting the plants from Rodale, so, and nothing made us happier. I hadn't been out of the house for about thirty days, and when I went -- I was nervous when I went to pick up the plants. I had my mask on, and everybody was so great, and it was so safe, and everybody had their mask on, and I said, "Okay, these are my people." MR: Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean it is connected because a lot of my work with the Rodale Institute is what taught me about understanding nature and how people treat nature. And writing Organic Manifesto, I saw, oh, oh, well, we want to control nature by spraying it, killing things. It's the same as like wanting to eradicate races or sexualities, but nature is diverse. Nature is sexually diverse, (laughs) nature is racially species diverse, and the healthier and more productive the land is, the more diverse it is. So to me, there's lessons from nature that we can apply to all these issues that we're dealing with. It's all connected. LB: Yeah, it is. So are you familiar with PrEP? What do you think about PrEP? MR: What? LB: PrEP is the pill that people can take so that they won't contract HIV if they come in contact with it. And PrEP is -- MR: I think I've seen some commercials for it, which I've not done any research on. But if I would apply my gut knowledge of what I know about advertising and health, I think it's probably not the best thing. I mean probably the best thing is to just be cautious and careful, right? But I don't know. What do you think of it? LB: I think it is the answer to ending the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa. MR: In Africa? LB: Because people cannot always control what happens to their bodies, and that's an unfortunate reality. So that if people take PEP or PrEP, they won't get it, and that maybe the circumstance of women. I mean -- MR: Yeah, I mean -- LB: -- the idea of relying on one drug and hoping that that's going to solve all the problems. But on the other hand, I don't think there is any way to solve this problem without some kind of (inaudible) intervention. MR: Yeah. I would trust your view on that. I mean, I'm not anti-drug and I'm not anti-vaccine at all, all my kids are vaccinated, I hope we have a COVID vaccine. I think what's happening in Africa is as much a social, cultural... Again, it gets back to patriarchy and how women are treated, so... And if there's a pill to help them, great. But that's not -- LB: And that's -- MR: -- the long-term answer. LB: Yeah. Well, I guess that's true. I think that the long-- and certainly, there are people in the United States, and I don't disagree with them either, that say, well, it being careful includes... There's a lot of requirements to be careful when taking this drug because you have to be tested and you have to be aware and you have to acknowledge that you're at risk and stuff like that. So that actually puts people at a higher level of safety too. It's kind of the idea of getting a vaccination or the idea of wearing a mask and getting a vaccination, you can't just hope it's going to be okay. Especially because -- and I think you are talking about this too -- we don't know that much about COVID at all. COVID-19, we don't know what its -- where it's going to go. I agree that we will get through this, but we don't know what's going to happen. And that's the thing about -- we have the ability to figure it out but not really fast. MR: Well, and I'm grateful that there are drugs now that AIDS is not the death sentence that it was when my brother had it. I just remember that feeling like, this is it, there's no -- zero chance of survival. But now, it seems that a lot of people are surviving and doing well. So that's great. LB: There's also a drug called PEP that's -- it's also an emergency drug so that if people have a circumstance where they're highly at risk if they take it within seventy-two hours of that exposure, they won't. The chances are so high if they do it correctly that they won't get HIV. (inaudible) was saying, well, there's still chance if you do it right quickly so that, again, if people are at risk in a circumstance where they took a chance that was dangerous or also they were in a circumstance where they couldn't make the decision as to whether or not they were going to do something that was a high risk thing, they can protect themselves. That's another thing. This is something we know that can protect you, so it gives you the ability to take back the control of your own life. It's an important thing for people who might be under pressure to do something that they can't control. We're seeing in COVID-19 now that people who are poor are at much higher risk of dying. And part of that is something that we have to take -- we all have to take responsibility for, so... MR: Yeah. The corollary with AIDS is like you're -- you have risk factors that make you afraid that you're going to get AIDS. It's a much narrower risk factor than COVID. You know COVID is like everybody, anybody, but especially the poor people and people of color, which... But that seems to be changing too, so -- you know? LB: Well, it has to do with the level of contagiousness or the level of contagion, and (inaudible) HIV is hard to get. You have to do certain things to cause it to be at risk, compared to COVID, which we don't even know really -- MR: I know. LB: -- where it's coming from exactly. It's similar to other diseases that have happened in the past where people have no idea really where it was coming from. And there's lots of diseases that we live with every day that we really don't understand where they're coming from with them. At the time of HIV and AIDS and when David died particularly, there was a lot of government action that was very poor in response to -- I mean really no response. And that's something that you think you personally were aware of for -- or other people in your family were aware of as something that was very frustrating. So I've talked to other people who said that it was -- that was the most frustrating thing and there's -- MR: Oh yeah, I mean, it was Reagan, and Reagan and Trump were like cut from the same cloth in a lot of respects. (laughs) That's why it's -- it feels like this cyclical thing. I had the chance recently to meet Norman Lear. One of my theories is that, okay, what changed -- and he's not involved with this TV show. But meeting him and learning about him made me realize like, okay, televisions probably has more to do with changing outlooks than politics. So Will & ; Grace for example, [he wasn't?] involved with Will & ; Grace, but you watch Will & ; Grace, and all of a sudden, it's like it's normal for there to be gay people and to like them the way he did with All in the Family or the -- I think it was The Jeffersons or one of those shows. I watched a documentary about him that was really great. So I think that government is always the last to change because they're trying to follow their constituents who are made up of a diverse group -- some who want change, some who don't want change. So I do think the media can play -- has played a major role in change. And then once it gets normalized socially, then politicians feel more comfortable supporting things, which is great because it's -- television is -- movies are like a creative outlet, which -- LB: Yeah. I think that we certainly are in a situation where -- in the flu epidemic of nineteen-eighteen, which I talk about all the time, I talk about it with regard to art history and also because my grandmother died in this flu epidemic of nineteen-eighteen. She was young, she was thirty-two when she died, and mostly young people died in the flu because of a variety of factors that were really specific. There was no understanding of exactly what was happening there. And when it ended, it really ended for several reasons but one -- not the least of which was one of every three people in the world had it, herd immunity. And a hundred million people died but then, also, it just mutated and stopped and disappeared. And it was a shocking thing but -- and it had an enormous effect on the economy, and yet, nobody ever talks about that, talking about the economy. So it's interesting that when the economy bounces back, which it clearly did into the nineteen-twenties, people had no -- people don't talk about it. And that seems to be a big thing about what some people are talking about now. MR: Although in the nineteen-eighteens, nineteens, the global economy was not as developed. LB: True. MR: I think that's really, to me, the big differentiator. It's spread around the world and showed just how like dependent we've all become on each other. And now, everybody's shutting down, and it's going to be interesting to see what happens next . LB: That's a very good point. When you were talking about it -- I wrote a little note. When you were talking about David, was he -- what hospital was he at? MR: He was at Lehigh Valley Hospital. LB: Mm-hmm. And in general, I mean, were there doctors that understood what was happening, or what was that feeling like? MR: Well, like I said, his general practitioner was like, "Oh, you've got bronchitis." Again, I don't think he even thought to check him for AIDS. I don't remember. I wasn't... I don't remember any doctors or even any nurses, their faces because everybody's covered. I do remember that we got the test back and that he had it, so... And I can't really speak to the doctors. LB: Did he know that he had it? MR: Pardon? LB: He didn't know that he had it? MR: Oh, no, he knew. Once the results came back, he knew that he had it. LB: But I mean that was when he was in the hospital, wasn't it? MR: Yeah. LB: So he didn't know he had it until he was in the hospital. MR: I think he suspected that he had it. But like anybody, you don't want to think the worst. LB: Yeah, sure, of course. MR: So if the doctors tell you have bronchitis, it's like sure, I'd rather have that than AIDS, you know? (laughs) LB: Yeah, yeah, and at that time, if the doctor had told him differently, it probably wouldn't have made that much difference because there wasn't was -- there was very little that anybody had any sense. I don't think anybody that was a -- that was HIV positive and had AIDS in the early part of the eighties made it. There were unique circumstances, but it was pretty unlikely that people are going to be able to figure it out. And then some of the drugs actually killed people. MR: Right. LB: Some of the things that people... Even in the next two or three years or four years, the drug circumstances that kind of did stuff for people didn't really save their lives. So I guess the... It's interesting because there -- really I think of your family as being extraordinary leaders in making people -- and cutting edge on everything. I mean you're the leading edge on every single progressive thing that's happened in the Lehigh Valley. It's pretty impressive, like yay team. MR: Thank you. Thank you. LB: But also that you really introduced I mean in a very public way -- I'd like to think that your mother is -- was very much -- and your brother in ways of indicating that AIDS had come to town and people need to pay attention to it. Because it's not going to go away just because you don't want it to be here. And I thought that was a very outspoken, clear way, and you're talking about those kinds of things too. MR: Yeah. But definitely my mother that was her -- in many ways, the crowning glory of her life was the AIDS work that she did. And there was an organization she was involved in too, I think, called The Compassionate Friends where it wasn't just AIDS, any parent who lost their child and dealing with that, so that was her gift. LB: Yeah. But I guess it sounds like you -- if you would think about it if this hadn't happened, that your entire life or her entire life would have been vastly different. MR: Everybody's life would have been vastly different. I'm not saying it would be better or worse. It would have been more fun. (laughs) LB: Although, I don't know, who knows? Because sometimes, you read those kind of science fiction books where the person goes back in time. And when they come back, things have changed, and it turns out that they have led an incredibly dull life because they didn't have the adversity that they had to deal with. MR: Between my brother dying, my father dying, my mother having all her health issues, it's made me do a lot of spiritual work and searching. And if I think back to... I had lots of conversations with my brother where he was pretty sure he was going to die young. He's like, "Yeah, I can't just see myself being older," and I think a psychic had told him he would die a violent death. I've done a lot of research on that as well and talking with all different psychics, and my view is that we're all here to learn and grow, and death isn't the ending of the soul. We just have to keep on learning and growing and loving. Ultimately, what can you take with you? Your love and what you've learned, that's it. And if you don't take that with you, then it doesn't matter because you're dead. (laughter) LB: That's a good point. MR: It felt like hedging your bets. LB: Yeah. I think that's true. Hmm, I think that's an interesting point of view, and I think you're right. I do think you're right about that. Yeah, we've got a little bit more time left and so -- but thinking like when you talk about this and you want future -- when you're talking to future generations, because we are. I mean truthfully, there's no information from the flu epidemic of nineteen-eighteen, there's nobody who you could really... Because we're right in the middle of COVID so we have -- I mean somebody's going to read this twenty years from now and go, "This is what's going to happen!" MR: Yeah, yeah. LB: It's like watching World War II movies where they made the movie after World War II when we know we won or the movie during World War II where people have no idea whether we're really going to win or not or what's going to happen. And I think that we don't know what's going to happen with regard to COVID. We do kind of know what happens with regard to the AIDS epidemic, which was so frightening to people when people didn't know it was happening, and yet, it's not over. I mean there are people still -- literally millions of people who get AIDS and have to die from it, and people who are living with it have to still take enormous amounts of drugs, and it affects their health every day. So what do you want to say about that epidemic to people who are going to read -- watching this maybe thirty years from now when -- you'll be probably around, I probably won't (laughs) and (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible) -- MR: No guarantees to anything. LB: You never know. I think that's really what we all are learning from all of this. But as something to talk to people about saying you need to know this about that time. MR: About AIDS or COVID? LB: You can talk about AIDS, and when we talk about HIV/AIDS and the epidemic itself, which was nineteen-- the dangerous time of the epidemic was from nineteen eighty-five to nineteen ninety-three. And after ninety-three, people were able to get pretty effective drugs, but before that it was a death sentence for almost everybody particularly in the late eighties. So we can look back at that, and we can talk about what that was like so that people -- because we lived through it so that people thirty years from now can hear what that was like. We can also talk about COVID, and they know what's going to happen and we don't. Interesting to talk about either of those things. So go ahead and say whatever you want. I mean -- MR: Okay. So when it comes to the AIDS epidemic, I think what I would want people to understand was that it was both social and personal for so many people. And that it wasn't just a statistic but there were all loved, unique individuals. And in way that it was like a -- this might sound controversial, but it was like all those people made a sacrifice to our understanding of love, sexuality, gender, humanity. And it was a beautiful, terrible time and gift that they gave to us. I don't know if that's applicable now to what's happening in Africa because that's -- feels kind of different. But similarly what I've read in Africa, there's not a lot of freedom to love whether you're a woman or a man or whether you're straight or gay. A lot of what my daughter and I have done research on is the idea that love is dangerous to society. Gay love is dangerous but also like in Africa, a woman -- girls don't always have a choice of who they marry, men don't have a choice necessarily. It's economic choice. So I do think that it's like -- all of this part of like a revolution in love and how we need to learn as a species, as humanity how to value and respect the importance and power of love. And with COVID, I'd say it's similar. I mean, with COVID you have the health concern, you have the economic concern, and then you have the political concern, which is like what the hell is going to happen? Are we heading into a fascist dictatorship? And then the environmental thing, are we going to all die in environmental plots? I don't know. So what can you know? What you can know is that everything you do everyday matters. And all you can do is do what you can do every day to make the world a more loving, healthy, safer, kind, and compassionate place. And with social media, I think the other big difference between then and now is social media. And I know there's a lot of people who are like, "Oh, social media has ruined things." No, social media is like -- it's like Pandora's box that's opened up, you know. So we can now see what's really going on inside of so many people. It's ugly, and it's horrible but you know what, it's like that's the first step of healing is being to see what the issue is, and it's very educational. So I'm a big believer in using social media and learning from social media about what's happening but also not contributing to the negativity. To me, it's not a liberal or conservative. I see liberals being just as awful as conservatives. That kind of meanness, and it's not me it's you, it's you're the problem, I'm not the problem. I mean all that is like -- yeah. It's like how can we come together? And unfortunately, we don't have a leader who knows how to bring people together. But even Obama who knew how to bring people together for a lot of liberals didn't know how to bring them together for conservatives. So I think that's the challenge going forward is how do we create leadership and find people to lead who know how to unite and how to respect the differences that people feel. And there are strong differences. And they may not be legitimate differences. We might not like them or believe in them or even respect them, but they're real to those people, and they happen for a reason. That's why I think for me personally, and I do -- I wrote children's books on the side, and I launched a Children's Imprint at Rodale before we sold. I think if we can get to kids and teach them, it's going to be a lot easier than fixing grown-ups because you can't fix other people. LB: Yeah. It's an education issue. It's an information, education issue I think. MR: Yeah. And a lot of what conservatives have done really well is infiltrating the educational system and planting their seeds into textbooks. I mean that's a real thing. I had a friend whose son was going to Christian school, not Catholic school, Christian school in Florida, and I asked if I could see his textbook, which was all online. It was an iPad textbook. And what I was stunned to see is that the final paragraph in the religion course was the most important thing you can do to honor God and to be a follower of God is to resist abortion, to be against abortion. I was like, really? I didn't see that in the Bible. I've read the Bible ; that's not in there. (laughs) So there's all sorts of people putting their agendas into things, and can we create a better agenda? I mean we're creative people, we can, we must. LB: Yeah, amazing. MR: It's shocking. LB: Yeah. I mean when you read that kind of stuff and you think. I was watching a show out of the UK, and it was a -- this was a comedian. It was on a -- sort of a game show. It's called QI, and I really love it. And this young woman said that when she was -- she's a comedian, and she said when she was a kid, one of the questions they were asked, in a perfect world, what would you want to have your job be? And she said the boy -- little boy next to her had written down, in a perfect world, I would want my child to be a war correspondent. (laughter) Wait, a perfect world? (laughter) Yeah. You know so, I mean that's kind of the thing about pointing out the obvious to people and... MR: Well for men, I mean because men have been -- I've done a lot of research on men too because men have been repressed emotionally. War is one of the few places where they are safe to express their emotion. And the bonding, the male bonding that happens there is a great romance for a lot of men. Until we find an alternative for that, they're going to keep seeking that excitement and passion. LB: Yeah, yeah. MR: Weird. LB: It is weird. MR: People are weird. LB: It is, it's pretty weird, yeah, but we're still dealing with it anyway, you know? MR: Yeah. (laughs) We're here today. LB: Hmm? MR: We're here today. LB: We are, and I do think that we can get through these things, and tough, horrible things happen. I mean people got through plagues, and people got through all sorts of horrible war, and there is a human spirit that comes together and takes a step back and says, "Okay, now, we've got to do this thing." MR: Yeah. LB: But in the meanwhile -- I think that's one of the reasons that we're doing this project is to remind people about what's going on. Because you can say, Well everybody in those days fought this thing. That's true. There are people who had all sorts of different experiences. And I can also say that one of the things that's come out of the interviews that I've done that I've shared with a couple of people, there's one person who said, it was David Moyer, and he said he was a nurse with the Health Bureau and so he came in contact with literally dozens of people who died. And one of the things he said was that psychologically, people will tell you -- great counselors will tell you that if you -- if somebody close to you dies, it takes a couple of years, you get over that. And you don't really get over it, but the terrible quality that affects every moment of your life begins to dissipate after a few -- after several years. But during the AIDS epidemic, people were, and even in the Lehigh Valley, going to funerals every week with people. And then the devastation that caused that had such a profound effect on people that it's impossible to even understand what that could be like. And it happens in war too. We're seeing people die, it changes your entire ability to be able to cope with things and stuff like that. And so when we have a big epidemic, it's really scary because really psychologically, people can't really cope with that kind of devastation, so... MR: Yeah. And what's interesting about -- I remember with my brother's funeral, I think there was -- like a thousand people showed up. It was both awful and wonderful at the same time. Mostly awful, but it felt good to see all those people and to not feel quite so alone. But now with COVID, it's like you can't even have a funeral for people. I mean that's going to, I think, have lasting impacts. LB: It certainly has a lasting effect, and people don't understand that it's affecting love, drastically affecting love. MR: Right, yeah. LB: You can't hug people. MR: I mean even people who aren't dying of COVID. I just read in the paper that Dorothy Baker just died last week, and she was a longtime family friend and I -- LB: I didn't know that. I missed that because I -- MR: Yeah. I still read the Morning Call in print, so... (laughs) But, yeah, I mean, I would have definitely -- LB: For edification of people watching this, Dorothy Baker was the county executive of Lehigh County at one point, so right. That's who you're talking about, right? MR: She was the wife of Dexter Baker who's CEO of Air Products and Chemicals. But she was my parent's neighbor, a longtime family friend. Yeah, I mean she just died of old age, but -- LB: Well, we knew somebody who died, and he was one of the guys who's the president of Reading Pride, and we watched his funeral online. They had an online funeral thing, and it was hard. It wasn't really livestreaming. We didn't get to see it. It was sort of on, and it was hard. And Tricia, "You know this is very hard," and I said, "Well, yeah, but if it weren't for COVID, we would be there. We really know this guy and this -- we would have been there, so not only is it frustrating, but think about if we were there and whether that would have been better for us or --" you know? It's very hard to imagine. In a way, we're just kind of in limbo right now. I was feeling that we're just waiting for something to -- and we know what's happening because of social media. And that's what I was going to say about the flu of nineteen-eighteen, that in nineteen-eighteen, nobody really knew what was happening. That's why they called it the Spanish flu because the Spanish -- Spain was the only country that even was reporting on it because they weren't one of the countries in World War I. Everybody else wasn't allowed to talk about it, really. It was (inaudible) to talk about it, and you could have gone to prison for mentioning that people were dying in your town of it now. MR: Really? LB: Yeah. MR: Why? LB: Because during World War I, they had passed the sedition act where you weren't supposed to say negative things about your country. You're saying like, "Yeah, my brother was in German-- you know he was fighting in the Sorbonne" or whatever they say. "He was fighting in Belgium, and he died of the flu epidemic with a whole bunch of other guys in the big makeshift hospital," that would -- you could go to jail for saying that. And if you said that in Allentown, for example, thousands of people died, and if you said thousands of people are dying, that was saying negative stuff about the United States. You weren't supposed to do that. So it wasn't in the newspaper, it wasn't -- you'd think they'd say people died, but they wouldn't -- weren't talking about this, the flu epidemic, we're not handling this well. They couldn't say that. So that's why they called it Spanish flu because Spain was the only country that was in Europe or a western country that wasn't in the war. So they were talking about it in the newspaper, so it seemed like it was the only place where it was happening. And in reality, I don't like to call it the Spanish flu because it wasn't the only place it was happening. It was happening everywhere, and literally millions of people, everybody that was alive then had it. Pretty much, one out of three people had it, so everybody knew somebody that had it. And the contagion of that was enormous, plus it specifically struck young people, so, which had to do with the combination of other flus that had happened before and stuff, and the fact that there was no flu vaccine and stuff like that. But it literally at the end of fifteen months just disappeared and people stopped getting it. Obviously, it had mutated to something else, but -- MR: Well, that's a perfect example -- LB: -- you know MR: -- that's a perfect example of how we've evolved, but we don't really think about it because now anybody can say anything negative about the country. I mean you hear the remnants of that kind of anti-sedition thing with the way Trump is, and a lot of conservatives are like, "Don't say -- don't disrespect the flag," blah, blah, blah, but they'll disrespect Obama or Biden. (laughs) We've gotten -- LB: But we can also say one of the great things that's happening right now is -- I mean and this is great, and people are seeing how people are dealing with protestors unfairly, and you would see instances of inappropriate actions by the police. And then when it happens, it can be out to everybody, and you really can't deny it. MR: No, you can't deny it. LB: If Trump says something that doesn't make any sense or if anybody says something that doesn't make any sense. If the CDC says something that turns out not to be true, everybody knows about it pretty fast, and you do have to check to be sure. MR: Well, yeah. Everybody who's paying attention [and thinks?] about it. There's a lot of people who still don't want to pay attention or are still just looking at very narrow news sources. LB: And that's certainly an important thing to -- MR: But I'm a big fan of Twitter for example because you can follow so many different news sources. It's funny it's like you read five different versions or ten different versions from ten different countries and piece together a more realistic picture. But not everybody is doing that. LB: As opposed to not being able to have any information. So that we know very specifically what happened with the Supreme Court this morning, which was, yeah, this thing, and we knew about it the minute the stuff came out. And so while we can't get really active print media in the same way that we used to be able to, we had investigative reporters, those things were tainted too. So the best thing that we can do now is that if we want to know, we (inaudible) information, and we will find out about it. And I think that is a big plus because -- MR: It's huge. LB: -- years ago we did not have that opportunity to do that. MR: Yeah. LB: Positive, very positive thing. Well, I think we're at the end of this now. Oh, I'm supposed to say this, wait a minute, I've got some stuff. I have to say don't forget that -- so at the end of this time, what we do is we send this. The people that are doing this archiving take this from -- coming through Muhlenberg College and they send it to some interns that will transcribe it quite rapidly -- it's quite remarkable -- and then they will send that. We should get that within thirty days, and we'll send that to you and then you can look at it. You can think, oh, this is the wrong name of this person or something, or I shouldn't have said this or something, or you could say, yeah, this is fine, [I'm with that?]. Or you can say, no, I hate the whole thing. I hope you don't. But that does give everybody an opportunity to look. Trisha actually looked back at the one that she did. She did a different interview, and she said, "It wasn't as bad as I thought." (laughter) She saw the video, and she hated it, but when she read it, she thought, no, this is -- it's not that bad. So I think people -- MR: Well -- LB: Yeah? MR: -- I definitely enjoyed talking with you about all of this. LB: (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible) talking with you, and I'm going to turn off the video right now. But I just want to thank you again and then I'm going to turn it off because we're using up the [videos available?]. END OF AUDIO FILE Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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01:33:20
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Maria Rodale, June 29, 2020
Description
An account of the resource
Maria Rodale talks about the death of her brother David Rodale, which happened during the early days of the AIDS epidemic. She also speaks about her mother’s involvement in local AIDS activism and about the impact of the epidemic on society and culture. Her family owned Rodale Press and continues to be closely involved with Rodale Institute and organic farm.
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PH40_06
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AIDS (Disease)
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2020-06-29
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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https://lgbt.digitalarchives.muhlenberg.edu/files/original/5fcb7fa2df13fb6a1c80b28eff5fd051.png
d7c4039833ede0bc4a69f3c44cdebc3a
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community: HIV/AIDS
Description
An account of the resource
In the spring of 2020, the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive received a grant to collect oral histories and written stories for 40 Years of Public Health in the Lehigh Valley’s LGBT Community: Collecting and Curating Local LGBT Health Experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19.
The collection consists of oral histories from individuals who experienced the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as oral histories from members of the local community as they lived through 2020's summer of Covid-19. Running through both are the themes of dealing with the fear of an emerging health crisis, loneliness and isolation, and coming together as a community in support and activism.
The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Oral History
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Liz Bradbury
Interviewee
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William Aull
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=PH40_04.xml
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5.4 June 29, 2020 William Aull, June 29, 2020 PH40_04 01:29:29 LVLGBT40 40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg AIDS (Disease) Hospices (Terminal care) William Aull Liz Bradbury video/mpeg AullWilliam_20200629_video 1.0:|27(12)|56(2)|79(5)|96(4)|113(11)|140(11)|165(16)|186(14)|211(2)|230(10)|253(2)|274(9)|293(7)|312(13)|331(18)|348(2)|367(4)|384(7)|403(8)|422(6)|437(17)|458(6)|479(16)|502(5)|523(10)|538(8)|557(4)|574(2)|595(18)|616(5)|631(2)|656(8)|669(2)|696(4)|711(6)|728(15)|747(7)|768(2)|785(9)|808(14)|823(18)|844(12)|861(3)|878(16)|897(9)|916(11)|937(16)|958(13)|973(19)|992(4)|1009(9)|1028(5)|1049(5)|1070(10)|1091(2)|1112(6)|1131(4)|1148(16)|1169(3)|1184(9)|1203(6)|1220(11)|1243(3)|1260(17)|1281(11)|1304(11)|1323(13)|1340(3)|1361(2)|1378(7)|1397(2)|1418(13)|1441(3)|1458(6)|1477(5)|1498(12)|1519(3)|1534(3)|1545(16)|1560(14)|1577(6)|1594(12)|1615(8)|1642(2)|1657(8)|1688(11)|1713(9)|1734(17)|1759(10)|1780(5) 0 https://youtu.be/BFcTQtrG1UE YouTube video 0 Interview introductory material and consent 0 183 First awareness of the disease I do, it was actually nineteen eighty-seven. I was in a gay men’s leather club in Reading at the time and we had a meeting and we were getting notices that club members that we knew were in one of the local hospitals. 0 273 Caregiving and the beginning of Rainbow Home So in eighty-nine there was an article in the Reading Eagle and the Reading Times that a group of government officials from the commonwealth and several sisters from different women’s religious orders in the Catholic Church were going to establish a personal care home on the grounds of the Wernersville State Hospital because at that time they were starting to lose some people from the state hospital facility.
 ; Catholic Church ; Rainbow Home ; Reading PA ; The Reading Eagle ; The Reading Times ; Wernersville ; Wernersville State Hospital Nursing ; Rainbow Home ; Volunteering 0 638 Illness and death of a loved one My one and only love moved to Philadelphia. I was in nursing school at the time in seventy-two. And Eric and I said, “We’re going to stay in touch.” He moved to Philly for a better job. And then I didn’t hear from him and I’m like, “This is weird, because he’s usually pretty good about staying in touch.” 0 895 Joining the staff at Rainbow Home and redoing the hospital And the next day Sister Mary called me and said, “I want to put you on staff.” And I said, “Okay.” And so we painted and we redid -- because the wards in that building were god-awful colors, we’re talking like brown ceilings and yellow walls. So Sister Cecilia, who should have been a decorator if she wasn’t a nun, did an awesome job. I mean it was very homelike.
 ; 0 976 Life and activites at Rainbow Home And we had a lot of really great times in that building. I mean we had events. We took them on field trips. We took them to Knoebels if they were able to go. I took a couple of them shopping on their own. We celebrated all the holidays. So there was a lot of life and living in Rainbow Home. 0 1096 Religious services and memorials And then the last three years I was also in charge of the pastoral care department because our Episcopal deacon -- and then she became a priest -- got a parish. And so I worked with the clergy. And that was eye-opening, because I had a few that I wanted to say, “Well, I’m sorry you feel that way.” I would have clergy that would refuse to give them anointings on their deathbed. So I cheated. I did it. But I switched the formula that I read. I didn’t say, “I absolve you of all sins and censures.” I said, “May the Lord absolve you.” Depending on whatever their faith was. I was very ecumenical in that.
 ; 0 1164 Relationships and fun activites at Rainbow Home And a lot of the residents -- the residents became close to each other. It was like a family. And I think that Sister Mary said it best. It was the only place where the gay man could pass the mashed potatoes to the straight woman who would pass them to the drug user who would pass them to the whatever. 0 1386 Religious structure of Rainbow Home LB: So this was in a Catholic hospital?
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 ; WA: No. We were ecumenical.
 ; 
 ; LB: Oh, okay.
 ; 
 ; WA: We just had the sisters there to -- you know, they were the ones that really got it going. And back then a lot of the hospices were being run in Catholic hospitals. One of the big ones was Saint Vincent’s in the Village, in the West Village in New York. That was a very very big -- that was a whole floor of the hospital. Saint Clare’s had a unit. But again the staff obviously was very ecumenical. 0 1653 Funding and facilities for Rainbow Home / local community reception LB: But who was funding that? Was it coming from people’s --
 ; 
 ; WA: Donations. Of course I mean their insurance kicked in. And we had a lot of very generous benefactors. Al -- Mr. Boscov donated all new equipment for the kitchen. And we only had to pay the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania $1 a year for rent, and that was set up when Senator Mike O’Pake was in office. So we paid the state $1 a year rent.
 ; 0 1778 Introduction of AZT and its side effects / Health insurance & ; preexisting conditions LB: When you were talking about AZT, was that later? Because AZT had a lot of side effects and stuff. Were you seeing that as well? Talk a little bit about the AZT stuff.
 ; 
 ; WA: We weren’t seeing a lot of side effects with AZT. The drug that we saw the most side effects was Crixivan. And that came on later. And the reason that we were trying to figure this out was why are we suddenly -- what’s going on with this drug. 0 2040 St. Joseph's Hospital in Reading / doctors LB: Let’s see. When you were talking about Saint Joe’s, what’s Saint Joe’s? That’s a Catholic hospital?
 ; 
 ; WA: Saint Joseph’s was a Catholic hospital in Reading. And Dr. Woodward was on staff there. But the primary amount of our -- if they were local -- were being seen by Dr. DeBenedictis and Dr. Jones because Dr. D was one of the first infectious disease doctors to get into the field. Dr. Woodward came in later.
 ; 0 2312 Funeral services for Rainbow Home patients LB: It was. Let’s see. So were you having funerals there? Did you have anybody that would do the funerals for you or stuff like that?
 ; 
 ; WA: We did. We did. Jay Gilbert was one. Jay is very good. Anyone from the Lehigh Valley. Now as far as in Reading, I really don’t remember who they were, because I just remember Jay’s name floating around a lot. If they were from up this way. I’m sure there were one or two down in Reading that were really good about that. Because they knew who we were and what we were.
 ; 0 2388 The toll of working with dying patients LB: It must have been very hard to have people dying and knowing that that was going to happen to people for you. Did that take its toll? Well, apparently it did. But sounded like you did it for a long time. It was really wonderfully gracious of you.
 ; 
 ; WA: Yeah, I mean there were times when I would come home from work. And if we had someone who was actively dying -- and Brenda was on -- for the first two years Brenda was all alone, and then they put a second staff member on. So I had a pager at that point. 0 2663 The story of David Well, I think probably one of the toughest ones for me, and I had a few, was I went down to Jersey to do an assessment on a potential resident. And David was in a nursing home in Atlantic City, so you can picture a nursing home is already not a good sign. So I go in and here’s David, six-one, six-two. Dark brown hair, jet-blue eyes. Laying in a bed. 0 3217 Communicating with families of the deceased We only had one family that really didn’t want anything to do with their son. And I called them when he started actively dying and said, “Are you going to come visit?” “Well, of course we are.” I said, “Well, someone wrote on the admission paper.” And this was how it was worded. When he kicks the bucket don’t call us. 0 3299 The night three patients died WA: Because that was the night I had three deaths an hour apart.
 ; 
 ; LB: Oh gosh.
 ; 
 ; WA: He was number two. So I had three actively going at once. And my coworker, she was the best. Bev said, “You take care of the three, I’ll take care of the other nine.” 0 3359 Medications and nursing care LB: And what kind of meds were you giving people then? Was this in the eighties or was it mostly -- what kind of (inaudible).
 ; 
 ; WA: Primarily their HIV/AIDS but also some of them would have weight loss. There were two drugs. There was Marinol which was synthetic marijuana, but it did not give them a buzz or get them high, it only stimulated the part of the brain that said, “You need to eat.” 0 3475 Mental health for the caregivers And they had a therapist for us. Because once a month we would have a meeting to talk about how we felt in the midst of losing all these guys and gals. So that mentally we were okay. But I knew when Tommy died. I said, “Okay, that’s it.” 0 3557 National Catholic AIDS Network And I had joined -- they are no longer, but I had become a member of the National Catholic AIDS Network or NCAN and we would meet every summer in Chicago at Loyola University on the lake. And we would have workshops, we would have time to just share our stories. But what was really wonderful was the one year -- Cardinal Bernardin was in charge of the archdiocese at that time and very well known for being a compassionate cardinal. 0 3748 Reflecting on age and the passage of time LB: Yeah. How old were you in the eighties?
 ; 
 ; WA: Geez, well, I’m sixty-seven now, so I would say in my fifties, I had to be in my fifties. Late forties, early fifties, I -- at this point (inaudible) twenty-six, fifty-one, let’s see.
 ; 
 ; LB: It was thirty-five years ago, honey?
 ; 
 ; WA: Huh.
 ; 
 ; LB: It was thirty-five years ago.
 ; 
 ; WA: Yeah, what can I tell you? That’ll be an edit.
 ; 
 ; LB: It’s okay. I think one of the things is we forget when you’re a grown-up and you’re doing things like that we forget that it was a long time ago when we were kids in a lot of ways, we were in our (inaudible) thirties. What did you say, you’re sixty-seven now? You were born in nineteen --
 ; 0 3832 Starting the AIDS Walk in Reading WA: And Ozzie, who had one of the local bars, Ozzie and I were responsible for getting the first AIDS walk in Reading going. And we worked with -- oh, I can’t. Her son, what’s the name of the farm? Who did you --
 ; 
 ; LB: Rodale. Ardath Rodale.
 ; 
 ; WA: Yeah, we worked with -- yeah.
 ; 
 ; LB: Talking to Maria Rodale about Ardath Rodale.
 ; 
 ; WA: To do the first AIDS walk in Reading.
 ; 0 3908 Changes brought by better medications LB: In about nineteen ninety-three, which is about the middle of the time that you were at Rainbow House, medication really changed. And in ninety-three the worst part about the epidemic really started to fall back a little bit because there were actually drugs that could really prolong people’s lives, it wasn’t so much of a death sentence. Were you noticing a change then? What was it like?
 ; 
 ; WA: Yeah. Well, for us it was really great because we had them longer. And for the most part they were doing very well on them. And that was thanks to like ACT UP and other organizations that were really getting up in the face of these drug companies and saying, “Why are you putting these on hold forever?” 0 4043 Involvement (or lack thereof) of the Catholic Church / Priest as a patient t up to New York because I was doing my own stuff down here. The one year the bishop of the Catholic diocese had an anointing service at DeSales and he said, “It’s open to everyone.” So I took a couple of the guys up. And afterwards I said, “Um, how come you never visit?” Question mark. And he goes, “I don’t have time.” I said, “Oh. Really? Oh. Okay.” Because here’s the interesting thing. We had a priest in the house as a patient. And [Claude?], father, had surgery. And he got bad blood. This is before they were doing the big testing. And he was from the Diocese of Camden. So he came up, great guy, we all loved padre, and every morning I would get him up, we did his a.m. care, gave him his meds. And then he and I would go into our multipurpose room and he would do Mass.
 ; 0 4362 Relationship of HIV/AIDS and his experience to the COVID-19 pandemic LB: I wondered if you wanted to talk anything about how you see the relationship of HIV/AIDS and the epidemic then and what you were doing and its relationship to what’s happening now with COVID-19. What do you think about that?
 ; 
 ; WA: Well, I mean I think we need to be aware that this COVID-19 is very nasty. And we have to really look at our brothers and sisters that are HIV-positive and even with the meds they’re immunosuppressed as it is. And this could really knock the socks off of them. They could end up in the hospitals and in ICUs and on vents. 0 4529 Message for viewers in the future LB: Yeah. So we have about fourteen minutes left. But I would love for you to think about somebody’s going to see this thirty years, forty years from now. And you have an opportunity to talk to the future here. Go into the future and tell people what you think they really should know about the HIV/AIDS epidemic. And maybe even talk about -- some people -- and I think David talked about this, but other people that I’ve interviewed, because I think you’re the sixth interview I’ve done, they’re talking about the lack of recognition by elected officials about it for so many years that it was very painful. And you have any insight on that? And then also just to tell people what they should know about this time.
 ; 
 ; WA: Well, as far as the -- I think David covered it pretty good with the elected officials. That for so many years it was ignored. And it’s like it’s their disease, let them deal with it. Then when it started to hit everyone else okay, now we have to do something about it.
 ; 0 4644 Sharing memories of specific patients for future generations I’m going to share a couple of the guys as far as their names and what they did because I think for future generations the name and what they did is something that they need to know. And it’s first names. I mean it’s going to be first names.
 ; 
 ; Andy had a double doctorate in chemical physics. Brilliant mind. Larry was the chief tie department buyer for Lord & ; Taylor. Rich had his own fashionwear. It was called Poshwear. 
 ; 
 ; Jeff was a well known hairdresser in the Washington area. David was a top-notch chef. Leo was a member of the United States Navy with honorable discharge. So he served his country before Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
 ; 0 4761 Viewing the AIDS quilt If you get a chance, future generations, to see any part of the quilt, the quilt will tell the stories. You don’t have to know them. We had a quilt showing our fifth anniversary at Rainbow Home at Albright. And we took in an extremely high amount of new quilts. The guys from NAMES Project were like, “We’ve never had this many at such a small gathering.” Well, surprise. Because we were making them. We did a house quilt every year. 0 4902 Concluding remarks Because we would check in on each other constantly after a death. We had a quick staff meeting to make sure that everybody was doing okay. Because our counselor would say, “If you need to talk after a death you know where I am.” So I hope that they never have to face any kind of pandemic like this, this current -- or the pandemic of HIV/AIDS. But if they do, get involved. Don’t sit on the sidelines. That’s it.
 ; 0 MovingImage Bill Aull, for many years a caregiver at the Rainbow Home near Reading, PA, shares his experiences during the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s. He reflects on specific patients, the role of Catholic Church in AIDS care, and the operations and services of Rainbow Home. WILLIAM AULL . LIZ BRADBURY: There we go. Now we're recording. Oh, you look great, the light is terrific on you. I have to read you this thing. And it says, "With this project, Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College will collaborate on 40 years of public health experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community, collecting and curating local LGBT health experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19." My name is Liz Bradbury and I'm here with William Aull. Is that the way you pronounce it? WILLIAM AULL: Yes, ma'am. LB: To talk about his experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community during this time of COVID-19 pandemic as part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive. And let's see. We're meeting on Zoom on -- oh, I'm supposed to say the date. I haven't been saying the date of this. On June 29th, 2020. Forgot to say that on Maria's. So thank you very much, Bill, for your willingness to speak with us today. To start, can you please state your full name and spell it for me? WA: Okay, William Arthur Aull, W-I-L-L-I-A-M A-R-T-H-U-R A-U-L-L. LB: Okay. And will you please share your birth date? WA: September 26th, 1951. LB: Okay. Do you consent to this interview today? WA: I do. LB: Do you consent to having this interview being transcribed, digitized, and made publicly available online in searchable formats? WA: I do. LB: Do you consent to the LGBT Archive using your interview for educational purposes in other formats including films, archives, Web sites, presentations, and other formats? WA: I do. LB: Do you understand that you will have thirty days after the electronic delivery of the transcript to review your interview, identify any parts that you'd like to delete or withdraw from your interview from the project? WA: I do. LB: You could also decide to blow off the whole thing if you wanted. Although we hope you don't. Okay. So we're going to just start this out. And the very first question -- I sent these questions to you before -- but the very first thing to just get you going here is to say in the midst of this current health crisis that we're experiencing we want to take this opportunity to look back to those who lived through the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the nineteen-eighties and the nineteen-nineties. Do you remember the first time you became aware of the disease? WA: I do, it was actually nineteen eighty-seven. I was in a gay men's leather club in Reading at the time and we had a meeting and we were getting notices that club members that we knew were in one of the local hospitals. Reading Hospital & ; Medical Center. But we weren't getting the details of what. So I said, "Well, I'm going to go visit -- name -- and see what's going on." I get over there and they're like, "You have to put this on and this on." I mean I was in full surgical gear. I'm like, "I'm not going to the operating room." "Oh, no, no, they have this disease, we don't know what we're calling it yet, but you have to wear this to go in." "Okay then." Then it was GRID. Then it was this. And then finally everyone said, "Okay, it's autoimmune deficiency syndrome, aka AIDS." I'm like, "Oh, okay." And people were just dropping like flies. So in eighty-nine there was an article in the Reading Eagle and the Reading Times that a group of government officials from the commonwealth and several sisters from different women's religious orders in the Catholic Church were going to establish a personal care home on the grounds of the Wernersville State Hospital because at that time they were starting to lose some people from the state hospital facility. LB: Is that in Reading? WA: Yeah, it was in Wernersville. LB: Oh, Wernersville. WA: Wernersville which was right -- yeah, about fifteen minutes outside of Reading proper. LB: Okay, I'm sorry. WA: That's okay. So one Sunday one of the sisters came to our parish to talk about what Rainbow Home was going to be, what Rainbow Home was going to do. And they needed volunteers. And I thought you know, I could give them a couple hours a week to do whatever. So I talked to Sister [Carol Ann?], who was the volunteer coordinator, and I said, "I have an extensive background as a nursing assistant." Well. LB: Ah. WA: The next day I get a phone call from Sister Mary, who was going to be in charge of the caregiving. Like here it comes. "I'd like to interview you for a position. A paid staff member." "Okay." LB: Oh, okay, yeah. WA: Yeah. From volunteer to pay. So I was going down to visit a friend of mine, [Johnjohn?], who has since passed away. And his partner and he did not live together, but Johnjohn had a zero T cell count but you would have never known he was full-blown AIDS, I mean healthy as an ox, took his meds, rode his motorcycle, went water-skiing, [ski skiing?], the whole nine yards. But his partner couldn't give him his B12 shots. He was deathly afraid of needles. So I talked to Sister Mary before I left, and I said, "Could we just review this?" And she goes, "Yeah." So I would go down once a month and give him his B12s. So I did my interview and she said, "Well, I have to check out your references, etc." She said, "I'll get back to you in a couple days." "Great." So I go down. And at the time I was in the Roman Church. I was Roman Catholic. I'm now Episcopalian. So I stopped at the shrine and I said a prayer in front of a statue of the Blessed Mother and said, "Hey, if I'm going to take this ministry on, could I have a sign?" Johnjohn and I are having dinner. He goes, "You're going to take care of a lot of people with this disease so fasten the seatbelt." And I'm like, "Okay." It's that quick. Like God was not saying -- yeah, you're not waiting around, dude, I'm going to get you in now. So in nineteen-ninty on the Feast of All Souls, which was November seventh -- I'm sorry, November second -- we dedicated Rainbow Home. Now Rainbow Home was open to anyone. And the reason that it was named Rainbow Home was that we had a rabbi on the board, and they were trying to come up with a name, and he said, "Well, in the book of Genesis," and he proceeded to do his thing. And I'm like, "Well, that's kind of cool, I really like that." But we did fly a rainbow flag outside the building. LB: Great. WA: But we had to tell people that it was open to everyone. It was not just the LBGTQ community. In the beginning we would have maybe two or three, the first year, year and a half, two years. Then all of a sudden word got out because people were in the hospitals but they were sending them home and their parents were trying to take care of them. Well, as they progressed in the disease they needed twenty-fourhour care and you've got moms and dads that don't know the first thing about anything other than aspirin. But for the first three years we were just giving basically AZT because that was the drug at the time. And then more drugs would come in. We were a thirteen bed facility. And about three and a half years in we started to fill up. Then we had a waiting list to get in. We took care of anyone with HIV/AIDS but we also would accept cancer patients. So we wanted to make sure that people knew that if they had a loved one who was end-stage cancer that they were more than welcome. And we actually had a mom who had really bad breast cancer who came to spend her last days. And so the guys and the gals in the house referred to her as the housemother. LB: (inaudible). WA: Any medications that we gave were either oral or rectal by -- and that was the only way. If they needed any kind of shot the RNs would come in. We worked with visiting nurses, and they would come in and do them. My one and only love moved to Philadelphia. I was in nursing school at the time in seventy-two. And Eric and I said, "We're going to stay in touch." He moved to Philly for a better job. And then I didn't hear from him and I'm like, "This is weird, because he's usually pretty good about staying in touch." And his mom called me and said, "He's in Reading Hospital in the ER, he's got full-blown AIDS," and this was two years later. And he goes, "They have no beds, I don't know what to do." I said, "Let me -- how bad is it?" She goes, "It's bad." Said, "Well, let me call Dr. Woodward at Saint Joe's and see if maybe I can get him up there." Because I talked to Dr. [Dee?] and I said, "Listen. His mom can't take care of him. Rainbow Home isn't open yet, as you know, because you're one of our medical directors. So what are you going to do?" He says, "Yeah, go ahead, talk to Chris Woodward and see if Chris is willing to take him on." So I called Chris and I said, "Listen. Do you think you could do this for me?" He goes, "Yeah, I've got beds." He said, "I'll get him up here." I said, "Okay." So I called Eric's mom and I said, "They're going to move him to Saint Joe's. They've got beds. Call me when he gets there." Okay. So I went up and I said, "Listen. You've got your own room and you're stuck with me for whatever time is left. I'm going to be staying overnight with you. I clear it with everyone." All the nurses knew, the staff knew. And about the ninth day I'm like, "Okay, he's starting to do the slide." I could see that death was coming to the door and I had to prep his mom and say, "Listen. I can't say when, I don't know how. But he's starting. Okay? So I'm just trying to prep you." And on the eleventh day I was with him and he goes, "I'm ready to go." I said, "Okay. Remember the good times. Know that I will always love you. My love for you is not going to end the minute you leave this world." He goes, "I have a really stupid favor to ask." I said, "Please, there is no stupid favor." He goes, "Do you think they'd get pissed off if you crawl into bed with me?" I said, "Well, if I can get a watchdog at the door." So in walks Sister [Joseph Ellen?] who was one of my nursing instructors. And I said, "I'm going to ask you a favor. This is probably very off the chart. Do you think you could give us maybe fifteen minutes alone? He just wants me to crawl in bed with him and hold him. Okay?" And she goes, "I'll stand watch." She stood outside the door, wouldn't let anyone in. She did call Dr. Woodward, she was still a nursing sister, she called Dr. Woodward and said, "Listen. Eric is on his way. And Bill is in with him. So I'm giving them some private time." And he said, "Just know that I love you. I will always love you. Thank you for being here." I said, "Well, go ahead and take your nap. Okay?" I'm like, "This is not the nap. I get this." And so he just went very peacefully in my arms. And no pain. They kept him. He was high-flying (inaudible) [and?] morphine. They had a drip going. So that was it. I gave him his bath and got him all ready for his trip to wherever he was going. And called his mom and said, "You need to come in." And the next day Sister Mary called me and said, "I want to put you on staff." And I said, "Okay." And so we painted and we redid -- because the wards in that building were god-awful colors, we're talking like brown ceilings and yellow walls. So Sister Cecilia, who should have been a decorator if she wasn't a nun, did an awesome job. I mean it was very homelike. The only thing that was hospital-looking was the bed. But everything else, we had curtains, they had their own TV, they had closets for their clothes. And so we started taking people in. And the first three months, I was on night shift. And then Mary moved me over to days or evenings. And I learned so much about life and living but also a hell of a lot about death and dying. And how some of them would go very peacefully and some of them would fight to the end. And it all depended on their spirit and what was going on. And we had a lot of really great times in that building. I mean we had events. We took them on field trips. We took them to Knoebels if they were able to go. I took a couple of them shopping on their own. We celebrated all the holidays. So there was a lot of life and living in Rainbow Home. And then in ninety-seven after seven years I said, "Okay, I'm done, I can't do this anymore." Because in the beginning I didn't know a lot of the people, but the last three years, a lot of my friends were coming in. And I had to be both a professional health caregiver but I had to cross the bridge and be the friend when the time came. And there were a couple that just got into a spot in my heart that -- forget it. LB: Was this set up as a hospice kind of thing? WA: It was under hospice guidelines. So yeah. It was under hospice guidelines. But it was more a personal care home. But we did fall under hospice. And that's why I was able to assist with medications. And that's what made it really unique. And we had a corps of volunteers that were just absolutely awesome. And a lot of them were parents of guys and gals that were there. And so we told them they had to wait a year, and then they could come back and volunteer. And a lot of them would do that. And then the last three years I was also in charge of the pastoral care department because our Episcopal deacon -- and then she became a priest -- got a parish. And so I worked with the clergy. And that was eye-opening, because I had a few that I wanted to say, "Well, I'm sorry you feel that way." I would have clergy that would refuse to give them anointings on their deathbed. So I cheated. I did it. But I switched the formula that I read. I didn't say, "I absolve you of all sins and censures." I said, "May the Lord absolve you." Depending on whatever their faith was. I was very ecumenical in that. And we would do a monthly memorial service and then we would do a yearly. And that was open to everyone. And a lot of the residents -- the residents became close to each other. It was like a family. And I think that Sister Mary said it best. It was the only place where the gay man could pass the mashed potatoes to the straight woman who would pass them to the drug user who would pass them to the whatever. And some of the stories that they would tell me when I was still working in the kitchen. I would just stand there and I would laugh. I'm like, "I could never share these outside of these walls." Because they were quite colorful. And I do mean colorful. Like I don't think I could put these in a book. No. Not really. LB: Because they were wild stories? WA: Oh, very wild, very wild. But the kind that gave me a better idea what to say and what to use for the memorial service. Because I could write those in the pastoral care part of the chart. And that's what made it such a unique place was that in the beginning a lot of people were like, "Well, I don't want to go there." And then they would be there for a while and they'd be like, "Wow." We had water. Especially in the summer the guys would get their water guns and they'd be outside. Like I'd walk in ready to go to work and I'd be in my scrubs. And everyone's like, "Oh, you got recepted, didn't you [hear?]?" My scrub top looked like I took it right out of the washer and didn't put it in the dryer because Bobby Gordon would like hhhh with the squirt gun. I'm like, "Robert, I'm going to get you for this tonight, trust me. Beware." "You wouldn't do anything." "Oh, wouldn't I? Beware." And that was a great thing. The staff had such a good relationship with the residents. And the residents had a good relationship with the staff. They all respected the sisters that were there. And if we had anyone who was using drugs and they would go out for a day pass, if we suspected that they might have relapsed, we had a protocol where we would just pull a drug test. We didn't pull randoms. They had to really demonstrate. And there were only maybe two or three that fell off. But they had meetings. They had AA meetings, NA meetings that they had to go to. And that was part of the agreement to be (inaudible) into the building. LB: Oh, I'm losing your voice. WA: Am I back? LB: Yeah, now you're back, yeah. WA: Okay. LB: So you were saying they had AA meetings and NA meetings and what else did you say? WA: That was it. NA and AA. LB: So this was in a Catholic hospital? WA: No. We were ecumenical. LB: Oh, okay. WA: We just had the sisters there to -- you know, they were the ones that really got it going. And back then a lot of the hospices were being run in Catholic hospitals. One of the big ones was Saint Vincent's in the Village, in the West Village in New York. That was a very very big -- that was a whole floor of the hospital. Saint Clare's had a unit. But again the staff obviously was very ecumenical. It wasn't all -- Brenda was a staff member, Bev was a staff member, and I was a staff member. So we were the three lay staff members. Brenda worked nights, Bev and I did evenings or days. LB: So these were nuns though that started -- WA: Yes. LB: They started it out of their convent or out of their sisterhood or how did that work? WA: Well, what happened was Sister Mary had her master's and she taught nursing and she worked at the White House down in Washington, which was a big -- it was attached with -- I forget who they were attached with. It was some big organization in DC. But she would do home visits to the guys in Georgetown, mostly Georgetown, I think it was under Whitman-Walker down there. So yeah. And she was on sabbatical. And then Sister Carol Ann was a teacher. She retired. Sister Mary Therese was a teacher and she retired. And forgot. Carol Ann. Sister [Fabian?] was actually the sister that got this started. She's at the Precious Blood Convent in Shillington. And people were asking her about a place, because she was getting phone calls, because she was also a nursing sister. And then Sister [Mary Cecilia?] was a practical nurse. So they all had nursing backgrounds. And back then a lot of the nursing orders were the nuns and the three orders of Catholic brothers that had nursing brothers were the ones that were opening the hospices in their hospitals or their facilities. And everyone just loved them because they were free spirits. They gave of their time and their talent. And we were a big family there. And then when I left and I was the last of the original staff, and all the nuns had left except for one, and she only stayed another year because she noticed it was becoming more of a business than it was what the original meaning and the beginning of Rainbow Home was. Because our mission statement started, "Believing in the worth and dignity of each person as a child of God." That was the beginning of our mission statement. And in the entryway we had this beautiful rainbow with the mission statement printed on it. And then the quote from the book of Genesis was included in that. LB: But who was funding that? Was it coming from people's -- WA: Donations. Of course I mean their insurance kicked in. And we had a lot of very generous benefactors. Al -- Mr. Boscov donated all new equipment for the kitchen. And we only had to pay the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania $1 a year for rent, and that was set up when Senator Mike O'Pake was in office. So we paid the state $1 a year rent. LB: (inaudible) state hospital. WA: Right. LB: Oh, I see, okay, I see. WA: Yeah, it was on the grounds of the state hospital. And we only used the first floor. It was a two-floor, but we only used the first. But yeah, it was -- good times. If you could say good times. I mean a lot of laughter. I mean if I ever write a book people will laugh on one page and cry on the next. And a lot of times I still see two or three families that live in the area. Like we'll just randomly run into each other. And they'll always bring up how grateful they were that they had a place for their son to die with dignity. When churches were saying, "This is God's wrath and all this." And I'm like, "Yeah yeah yeah, okay, bye-bye, you haven't lived it until you see what we do. And that certainly is not the man's wrath." LB: When you were talking about AZT, was that later? Because AZT had a lot of side effects and stuff. Were you seeing that as well? Talk a little bit about the AZT stuff. WA: We weren't seeing a lot of side effects with AZT. The drug that we saw the most side effects was Crixivan. And that came on later. And the reason that we were trying to figure this out was why are we suddenly -- what's going on with this drug. And so I asked Dr. Woodward. I said, "When you're signing death certificates," they always, both of them, he and Bob, Dr. Jones, always put HIV/AIDS as the third. They never put it as the primary. Never. They were putting on a cardiac problem for a lot of them. And it was because Crixivan was causing heart tissue to be eaten. So they put it as primary cause of death [cardiomyelogamies?]. Second was tertiary was always HIV/AIDS. So the parents never had to worry, if they had insurance policies, that it would be refused. And that was a good thing about our docs. And our docs were very good. I mean I'm not a registered nurse but I could do rounds with him. He would give me orders over the phone. I'd write them in. And there was never a problem. LB: Was insurance denying HIV/AIDS care in those days? Talk about that a little bit. Was that something that would happen? WA: What's that? LB: Insurance denial of care. WA: Yeah. Yeah, there were certain companies that flat out would say -- it's like if you see the ads they have now when they say there's no medical questions. Like if you're looking at life insurance. Every one that I've got, the first question is have you been diagnosed with HIV slash AIDS. It's the first question. It's a medical question. So really? I mean no medical question? Do you smoke, do you drink? They're all medical questions. Come on, insurance company. Really? It's a medical question. And I wonder what would happen if someone would check yes. You know what I'm saying? That could be a bit of a -- oh, well, no, we're not allowing you to -- excuse me one second. My doctor. Hello. Yes. All right, thank you. Bye-bye. Okay. LB: I guess what happens is that insurance companies won't insure you for a preexisting condition except for that now you can't do that under the American Care Act as long as we continue to have that act. WA: Right. LB: Yeah. But that wasn't in place in those days. And people need (inaudible). WA: No. LB: Because whoever is seeing this video, hopefully people will look at this. But 30 years from now when both you and I are long gone, or 40 years or 50 years, people are going to look at this and see what we're saying about that time. And they may not understand that people weren't covered under insurance for preexisting conditions. WA: That's right. LB: Let's see. When you were talking about Saint Joe's, what's Saint Joe's? That's a Catholic hospital? WA: Saint Joseph's was a Catholic hospital in Reading. And Dr. Woodward was on staff there. But the primary amount of our -- if they were local -- were being seen by Dr. Benedictis and Dr. Jones because Dr. D was one of the first infectious disease doctors to get into the field. Dr. Woodward came in later. But the majority of them ended up at Reading for some odd reason. And Saint Joseph's would never refuse. The good sisters would be like, "No. We're not going to play the refuse game." I mean I have to say that Eric got excellent care at Saint Joe's. I was very pleased with his care. And sadly, when Leo who was one of the guys, ended up in Reading with Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia I don't know what the problem was but the nurses were just kind of like, "He's in that room. If you need anything just let us know. We'll hand it to you." Because I stayed. I did an overnight with him. I worked three to eleven and then I went to the hospital. Because his partner was a good friend of mine. I knew JR for a while. And JR was out West. And I said, "You need to come home because something's up with Leo and I don't know what, I don't know when, I don't know how, but he's in Reading right now." So I stayed overnight. And I must have changed his bedsheets, I'm going to guesstimate, five or six times during the night from the sweats from the meds they were giving him. And he said, "I want to come home. I want to come home. I don't want to die here." And I thought okay, how am I going to handle this, because I don't know what to say to him. And I said, "Let me work on that." That was my out. Because I figured. So I went to work the next day and I said to Sister Mary, "Have you heard from Dr. Benedictis at all about what's going on with Leo?" She said, "Yeah. They got him cleared up." Like two days later he was back with us. But his stay was shortened. So JR had gone on a business trip and I said, "You need to come back." I said, "He's on his way. He's transitioning. And I need you to get here because he's asking for you." LB: He got some kind of infection or something? Was that it? WA: Just residual of the pneumonia. But not as bad. I mean they didn't have to tube him when he was in the hospital, thank God, he wasn't on a vent. Because one of the things that was automatically declared when you entered Rainbow Home was you were a do not resuscitate/do not intubate. They already had to sign DNR/DNI. LB: So most people who went to Rainbow Home were pretty much at the end of their lives then. WA: Yeah. We had a few that even after they closed there, there are two that are still floating around in the area that are doing quite well. And that's when all these wonder drugs came out in the late '90s. But before that it was a mess. LB: It was. Let's see. So were you having funerals there? Did you have anybody that would do the funerals for you or stuff like that? WA: We did. We did. Jay Gilbert was one. Jay is very good. Anyone from the Lehigh Valley. Now as far as in Reading I really don't remember who they were, because I just remember Jay's name floating around a lot. If they were from up this way. I'm sure there were one or two down in Reading that were really good about that. Because they knew who we were and what we were. LB: Yeah. People have told me that I should try to talk to Jay Gilbert. And I haven't had a chance to contact him yet. But apparently he did loads of funerals for people and he was very generous too and didn't charge people or didn't charge people much. WA: Yeah. LB: Must have been hard. It must have been very hard to have people dying and knowing that that was going to happen to people for you. Did that take its toll? Well, apparently it did. But sounded like you did it for a long time. It was really wonderfully gracious of you. WA: Yeah, I mean there were times when I would come home from work. And if we had someone who was actively dying -- and Brenda was on -- for the first two years Brenda was all alone, and then they put a second staff member on. So I had a pager at that point. And I'm like, "Just page me if it gets too crazy." And it only happened two or three times. But I always share this one -- and it is funny. Two of the guys wanted to go to Washington. And two of us were Roman and one was Episcopalian. Dale was the Episcopalian. Tommy and I were the Romans. Well, we went to the basilica shrine for Mass. And it was the high Mass. So you've got the full procession with the incense and everything, right? And Dale being ever Dale, as the thurible bearer was coming by swinging the incense, he looked and he goes, "Mary, I love your dress but your purse is on fire." Not loud. Not loud. Just loud enough for the thurible bearer to hear this. And I'm like, "Oh." And there's this big mosaic of Jesus with his hands up with this angry look. And I'm like, "Oh God, this is it, here comes the lightning bolt." And Tommy looked at him and he goes, "What did you just say?" I'm like, "Don't ask." So when we got back everyone's like, "How was it?" And I'm like, "Ah, it was interesting." So I pulled Sister Mary aside and I said, "Oh by the way, if you get a call from the basilica this (inaudible)." And she just swore and she goes, "Oh God." I'm like, "That's about what I was saying under my breath." Bill had a lot of anger when he first came. And I said, "What can I do to help you get rid of your anger?" And he said, "Just get me out of here for a day." Well, he was still able to walk. So I said, "Okay. How about we go to the mall?" So I drove him down to King of Prussia from Reading and it was close to Mother's Day and I said, "Mother's Day is coming up, how about we get your mom a card and a gift?" Because they would hold funds for them in case they wanted to do something like that. He goes, "Okay." So we got him a card. And his mom loved Oscar de la Renta, the fragrance. So we got her a small bottle of Oscar. And they wrapped it. And then we had the Mother's Day party. And his mother looked at me and she goes, "It's been eighteen years since I've gotten a card, let alone a gift, from my son. What did you do to him?" I said, "We went for a ride. And I endured an hour and a half of rock music." I wanted to take the radio out of the car and just throw it. Because I'm like, "Okay. If I hear one more screaming in my ear I'm going to scream." If I ever do write a book, it's going to be the fun stories. With a little of the sadness in, just to make people realize we are human. LB: Well, feel free to tell me some of the fun stories, because I'd love to hear those now. That's a great one, that's a wonderful one. WA: Well, I think probably one of the toughest ones for me, and I had a few, was I went down to Jersey to do an assessment on a potential resident. And David was in a nursing home in Atlantic City, so you can picture a nursing home is already not a good sign. So I go in and here's David, six-one, six-two. Dark brown hair, jet-blue eyes. Laying in a bed. And I'm like, "What's up with this?" I said, "Do they get you out of bed?" "No." "Do they give you a shower at all?" "When they feel like it." I said, "Are you getting your meds?" "Sometimes." "On time?" "No." "Okay." Now I have to remember I am not a professional nurse. So I can't go out and raise holy you-know-what because that's not going to sit well. All right. So I get the chart. I get the information I need. I get in the car. I get on my phone. I talk to the social worker first. I say, "Get Sister Mary on the phone." And I said, "Mary, we've got to get him up there. Okay. We have got to get him up there." Well, he had been in bed so long that he couldn't walk. They weren't doing any PT or anything. So when the visiting nurse came out I said, "Can I do some range of motion with him just like abduction, adduction, move up, move down, move sidewards?" She goes, "Oh yeah." I said, "Okay." Said, "David, what is one of your goals?" And we always asked them what goals they had because we wanted it to be very integral. Not this is what we're going to do, deal with it. And he goes, "I want to get to church, I want to be able to stand and get in a car even if it's from a wheelchair. I don't care." I said, "Okay, bro, fasten your seatbelts, because I'm your primary care provider. So guess what we're going to be doing." So after his shower we get back in bed, after he was dried off and dressed, and we would do PT. And then I would get a walker and we didn't go long distances but just enough to -- so the Christmas party was coming up. And I said, "What are you going to do for your mom and dad?" He said, "Well, I have a card and a gift." He says, "But I want to walk in the room even if it's with a walker." I said, "Okay, you've got a goal. And we've got time. So let's see if we can make this happen." All right. Christmas party comes. Sure as gunfires, he goes, "Okay." I said, "I'll take you to the door. And you walk in. And I have a chair right next to your mom and dad." And I said reserved. I put a little reserved sign. "So that way you can sit with them for the Christmas party." He goes, "Okay." So the door was closed. And I opened the door. And I said, "Okay. I'm not taking the chair in unless you feel you need it. And you're technically right inside the door like 10 steps." He gets up. He holds on. I said, "Remember. Look up, don't look down. You want central force." Walks in. And his mom and dad are talking and other people are chatting with them. And all of a sudden his mom looks up and she goes, "Uh, he's walking." And his dad looked. He said, "What do you mean he's walking?" "He's walking." And I'm like, "Bye, Merry Christmas. Surprise." She goes, "What did you do?" I said, "What did we do. I just gave him the incentive." New Year's Eve I was going out with my family for New Year's Eve, but I wanted to stop over and wish all the guys and gals a happy New Year. And I was dressed to the nines. I was in black full dress, tails, I was like, "Okay, I'm going out." His aunt, who was a nursing supervisor at Saint Joseph's, and three of his nieces -- I graduated from high school with two of them -- they were sitting in there and were having this cheese tray with [baked champagne?] and they walk in there like oh my God, what are you doing here. I said, "I work here." And David goes, "He's the one that got me to walk and he's the one that bathed me and he's the one that you know," and they're like, "Oh my God." I said, "Welcome, small world, isn't it, gang?" It was a Sunday morning and David always rang to get up about 7:30. I'm like, "Okay, he's not ringing." I'm like, "Well, it's Sunday, let him sleep in." And something in my inside was going like, "Mm, no. Something's not right here." I said, "Are you okay, Dave?" He goes, "I don't feel good." And something told me to lift the sheets and look at his feet. They were as purple as could be. I'm like, "Oh. Okay. I'll be back." I went, I said to Bev, "Uh, Dave is starting the (inaudible) process. So I'm getting the morphine ready if we need it. I'm going to call his parents and say, 'Take your time, it's not imminent, but get the family together because we've started the journey.'" And I went back in. I said, "Are you having any pain?" He goes, "No." Said, "Okay." So every two hours I would just go in and say, "Everything fine?" He said, "I'm really not feeling good now." I said, "Okay. I'm going to start the morphine." And we put it right in the buccal cavity. It was with dropper. It was liquid. So it wasn't intravenously. And he's like, "Can you do me one little favor?" I said, "David, if I can make it happen I got you covered." "I don't want to die laying down." And I'm thinking okay, how else are we -- and I thought okay. I said, "Well, let me see what I can come up with to make that happen." I'm like, "Think quick, Bill. Because we're getting there." So he goes, "You know what song I want you to play while you and I are sitting here having our last whatever time together." And I'm like, "Really? Madonna doing 'Don't Cry for Me Argentine (sic)?'" He goes, "Yes." I'm like, "Okay." So I get the portable tape player and I get the disc and I put it in. And he goes, "I'm ready." I said, "Okay." Gave him a kiss and said, "It's been a fun experience. I'll remember you for as long as I live." And he goes, "Can you just like kind of put me on your right shoulder?" I'm like, "Sure." I'm not going to kill him for God's sake. So I just scooped him up and looked over and said, "Enjoy the ride. Is the morphine working?" "Yes." Went to sleep. That was it. So for six months after no one was allowed to hug me on the right side. I said, "I'm sorry, that's reserved for David." LB: Sweet. WA: You know. And his parents, his dad had just retired the year before from the marine corps as a lieutenant colonel. And I thought Dad is going to be a toughie. And Dad was just the opposite. We only had one family that really didn't want anything to do with their son. And I called them when he started actively dying and said, "Are you going to come visit?" "Well, of course we are." I said, "Well, someone wrote on the admission paper." And this was how it was worded. When he kicks the bucket don't call us. And I said, "He has two brothers, right?" They're like, "Yeah." I said, "Well, where's the other one?" "We don't know." And he was the one that wrote it. But I decided I was going to call the family anyway. Because I was thinking legally if I didn't it could really have turned into a mess. So yeah. LB: So they were okay? They came. WA: Oh yeah. They were fine. They were fine. In fact they were very thankful that I did that, because they were able to get him. They made him physically come. They called him. Because he lived locally. And the dad is like, "You get over here or I'm going to come get you." And I said, "Please. The house is very upset. Because that was the night I had three deaths an hour apart. LB: Oh gosh. WA: He was number two. So I had three actively going at once. And my coworker, she was the best. Bev said, "You take care of the three, I'll take care of the other nine." Because three of them that lived on the other side of our meeting room, party room, whatever, they had to be able to come over, get their meds, take their meds, etc. The guys on our side and our gals were more acute. They were more independent. They did their own laundry, made their own beds, got their own meds. We would give them to them out. But they had to remember to come get them. LB: And what kind of meds were you giving people then? Was this in the eighties or was it mostly -- what kind of (inaudible). WA: Primarily their HIV/AIDS but also some of them would have weight loss. There were two drugs. There was Marinol which was synthetic marijuana, but it did not give them a buzz or get them high, it only stimulated the part of the brain that said, "You need to eat." So there were no side effects. They didn't get high or get a buzz. But they did get the munchies, which was okay. The other one was Megace acetate, which was a liquid, and that was to help with -- morphine for pain. Their antiretrovirals for their HIV/AIDS. And weight gain if they needed it. And there weren't too many. The good news is that we never really lost a lot of them in a very cachexic state. They weren't skin and bones. So we were lucky in that because our docs were really on top of that kind of stuff. And the visiting nurses that came out were absolutely -- we had the same nurse. But if she was off they had backup. But the night that I had the three going, I had three nurses, because one nurse couldn't handle three situations. And they were like, "How are you?" I said, "Oh, I'm just jim-freaking-dandy. I'm going home tonight and I'm having a very stiff drink, maybe two." And they had a therapist for us. Because once a month we would have a meeting to talk about how we felt in the midst of losing all these guys and gals. So that mentally we were okay. But I knew when Tommy died. I said, "Okay, that's it." And not that we counted intentionally, but when I left the administrator said -- usually -- I was told -- because I was going to work at Saint Vincent's in New York. And the sister in charge of the floor said, "After five years you have to go out for a year. You can't stay in here all the time. It's a five-year term and then you have to go somewhere in the hospital for a year and then you can come back." Well, I did it for seven. But I just said, "I can't do this anymore." It started to get to me psychologically and physically. LB: (inaudible) the administrator was going to give you a number? WA: I took care of two hundred sixty-seven. And if (inaudible). LB: (inaudible). WA: Yeah, it was, it was rough. And I had joined -- they are no longer, but I had become a member of the National Catholic AIDS Network or NCAN and we would meet every summer in Chicago at Loyola University on the lake. And we would have workshops, we would have time to just share our stories. But what was really wonderful was the one year -- Cardinal Bernardin was in charge of the archdiocese at that time and very well known for being a compassionate cardinal. Really made other people within the Roman rite look kind of like why aren't you doing this. So he just showed up in regular clerics with his secretary and he went table to table and said, "What do you do? Where do you do it? How are you doing? What can I do for you?" I mean this is a man that could have been the next pope. And that was the night of our memorial service. So that year they asked us to bring a photo if we wanted to of someone that we lost and we loved. And they did a foot washing in the chapel. And ironically the name of the chapel in Latin is La Madonna della Strada, Our Lady of the Streets. And all the music was Taize. So the deal was the person to your right was the person that you would do foot washing with so you would wash each other's feet. Well, the chair was blank. I'm like, "Okay, someone didn't come." All of a sudden who comes over and sits down but the cardinal? So the cardinal and I. And that was the year that Jeffrey passed away, my best friend. He was a hairdresser. He had a very good business in Washington, DC. So Jeff's black-and-white photo went with me. Somewhere on my wall -- no. It's on my other wall right above me. I have a collage of four of the guys that I took care of that really taught me a lot. So once in a while I'll just look up and say, "You guys okay up there?" So far I'm not hearing any bad things. So yeah. LB: Yeah. How old were you in the eighties? WA: Geez, well, I'm sixty-seven now, so I would say in my fifties, I had to be in my fifties. Late forties, early fifties, I -- at this point (inaudible) twenty-six, fifty-one, let's see. LB: It was thirty-five years ago, honey? WA: Huh. LB: It was thirty-five years ago. WA: Yeah, what can I tell you? That'll be an edit. LB: It's okay. I think one of the things is we forget when you're a grown-up and you're doing things like that we forget that it was a long time ago when we were kids in a lot of ways, we were in our (inaudible) thirties. What did you say, you're sixty-seven now? You were born in nineteen -- WA: I was born in fifty-one. Rainbow Home opened in nineteen-ninety and it closed in -- LB: So you were forty, yeah. Would have been thirty-nine when it opened and (inaudible). WA: And Ozzie, who had one of the local bars, Ozzie and I were responsible for getting the first AIDS walk in Reading going. And we worked with -- oh, I can't. Her son, what's the name of the farm? Who did you -- LB: Rodale. Ardath Rodale. WA: Yeah, we worked with -- yeah. LB: Talking to Maria Rodale about Ardath Rodale. WA: To do the first AIDS walk in Reading. LB: (inaudible) oh yeah, okay, yeah. Yeah, because the farm is in Berks County after all. So yeah. WA: Yeah, because back then it was Berks AIDS Network and they were there first and then Rainbow Home came in. Yeah. LB: Yeah, it's all related. Everybody's sort of interrelated within that. Because everybody was aware of what was happening to each other and stuff. WA: Right. LB: In about nineteen ninety-three, which is about the middle of the time that you were at Rainbow House, medication really changed. And in ninety-three the worst part about the epidemic really started to fall back a little bit because there were actually drugs that could really prolong people's lives, it wasn't so much of a death sentence. Were you noticing a change then? What was it like? WA: Yeah. Well, for us it was really great because we had them longer. And for the most part they were doing very well on them. And that was thanks to like ACT UP and other organizations that were really getting up in the face of these drug companies and saying, "Why are you putting these on hold forever?" And then finally when they started to come out we noticed that our guys were doing a whole lot better. They were gaining weight. Mentally they were in much better shape. I mean there were a few that we had to give antidepressants to because it was just -- the docs wanted them on something light. I mean it was Ativan, it wasn't anything major, like a lot of antipsychotics, but we noticed that -- and their thriveto survive was -- they didn't look at it as -- they would say, "I'm going to beat this. I'm going to beat this because now we've got the drugs." But it took them forever to get those drugs out. It was only when people started acting up in the streets and saying, "Hey, listen, we've got friends and lovers and family members dying like no tomorrow, what are you going to do about it?" LB: Yeah. Did you ever go to any of those ACT UP things in New York? WA: I did not. I didn't get up to New York because I was doing my own stuff down here. The one year the bishop of the Catholic diocese had an anointing service at DeSales and he said, "It's open to everyone." So I took a couple of the guys up. And afterwards I said, "Um, how come you never visit?" Question mark. And he goes, "I don't have time." I said, "Oh. Really? Oh. Okay." Because here's the interesting thing. We had a priest in the house as a patient. And [Claude?], father, had surgery. And he got bad blood. This is before they were doing the big testing. And he was from the Diocese of Camden. So he came up, great guy, we all loved padre, and every morning I would get him up, we did his a.m. care, gave him his meds. And then he and I would go into our multipurpose room and he would do Mass. LB: So he was a priest that was at Rainbow House. WA: Uh-huh. But when I needed someone anointed [they don't bother?]. I had his oils. And I said -- LB: Wow. WA: Can you do a quick anointing? He goes, "Yeah." So when he was actively dying he went to Saint Joseph's Hospital. Because Dr. [Crisp?] was following him. And when I went up and I said to one of the nurses, "Has he received anointing yet?" They're like, "No." I said, "Well, can we get a priest to do this?" I said, "He is a priest, I'd really like another priest to give him anointing at least." "I can't get anyone. We've tried several parishes." I said, "Really? Okay." So I called my priest at Holy Rosary. And that was monsignor. And I said, "Listen, here's the situation." It wasn't late at night. He goes, "I'm on my way." And he came up and he gave him sacraments. And I said, "Thank you." So his funeral was in Jersey, so Sister Carol Ann and I decided that we were going to be the militant Catholics at his funeral. So we go, we have our little Rainbow Home pins on. And we always pinned our guys when they left us on their [paths?]. And we would say to the undertaker, "If the family wants it, great, or if you're going to bury him with it, great, but please make sure it doesn't get tossed." Well, I put it far enough down on the side where I didn't think anyone would see it. Well, the bishop did and he said to his secretary, "This is not part of the liturgical vestment." And I just happened to be in ear range. And I said, "Would you please leave that there?" He goes, "Well, that's a rainbow." I said, "Look at it from the biblical end of it." And he left it. So afterwards Sister Carol Ann went up and she said, "You never came to visit him. Why?" "Well, we don't have time to do stuff like that." She goes, "No, but there could be you and twenty-three priests on the altar for his burial." "Well, I could have the local bishop close you down because of the way you're talking to me." She goes, "Oh, please go for it." Nothing ever happened. LB: Wow, I'm sure not. WA: I looked at him and I said, "And this is how you teach compassion (inaudible) bishop." And off we went. I said, "Well, we're probably going to get a phone call." Nothing ever happened. Because years later when you looked at what happened with the pedophilia and they all knew about it it was like oh, look at the names of the -- mm-hmm. Years later. Even though it wasn't HIV/AIDS-related. LB: Yeah, I don't think everybody understands that there's five lobbyists for the Catholic Church in Harrisburg that keep LGBT-inclusive laws or other kinds of inclusive things happening. The Catholic Church pays them to keep those -- to lobby for the lack of inclusion of equal rights laws and stuff. And it's a shame. It's a shame (inaudible) happening. But so we're not running out of time, we still got plenty of time, but I wondered if you wanted to talk anything about how you see the relationship of HIV/AIDS and the epidemic then and what you were doing and its relationship to what's happening now with COVID-19. What do you think about that? WA: Well, I mean I think we need to be aware that this COVID-19 is very nasty. And we have to really look at our brothers and sisters that are HIV-positive and even with the meds they're immunosuppressed as it is. And this could really knock the socks off of them. They could end up in the hospitals and in ICUs and on vents. So it's best for anyone that's immunosuppressed to just stay bunkered down until this is all dealt with in a fashion where if there's a vaccine that the vaccine can be given. But make sure when they do the trials on this that it's not going to really hurt anyone that's immunosuppressed whether it's with HIV/AIDS, cancer, or anything else. And those of us that are healthy really need to check in if we know someone and say, "Do you have enough food? Do you have enough water? Are you okay on your medications?" And David, who's my best friend, David and I are both on the board of FACT. So we're very mindful of that. But I think that's what we need to do. I think we really need to just look out for each other and make sure that our brothers and sisters that are immunosuppressed have everything that they need and that they're not forgotten. LB: Yeah. Definitely true. WA: I think that's very very important. And we as a community need to stand strong. This is the first year we haven't had a Pride celebration. LB: Well, they're going to do it virtually, aren't they? WA: Yeah. So virtual is virtual. Next year we'll be in full swing. LB: Yeah. So we have about fourteen minutes left. But I would love for you to think about somebody's going to see this thirty years, forty years from now. And you have an opportunity to talk to the future here. Go into the future and tell people what you think they really should know about the HIV/AIDS epidemic. And maybe even talk about -- some people -- and I think David talked about this, but other people that I've interviewed, because I think you're the sixth interview I've done, they're talking about the lack of recognition by elected officials about it for so many years that it was very painful. And you have any insight on that? And then also just to tell people what they should know about this time. WA: Well, as far as the -- I think David covered it pretty good with the elected officials. That for so many years it was ignored. And it's like it's their disease, let them deal with it. Then when it started to hit everyone else okay, now we have to do something about it. I would say to the future generations look back at what everyone went through regardless of gender, gender identification, status, etc. How we as a community taught others that if you all work for the common good something good will come out of an absolutely horrific pandemic, where we were losing brilliant minds. I'm going to share a couple of the guys as far as their names and what they did because I think for future generations the name and what they did is something that they need to know. And it's first names. I mean it's going to be first names. Andy had a double doctorate in chemical physics. Brilliant mind. Larry was the chief tie department buyer for Lord & ; Taylor. Rich had his own fashionwear. It was called Poshwear. Jeff was a well known hairdresser in the Washington area. David was a top-notch chef. Leo was a member of the United States Navy with honorable discharge. So he served his country before Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Let me see who else. Danny had a business, was an Irish tenor, so at his funeral I had a friend of mine who's an Irish tenor come in and do "Danny Boy." These are the people that really had great lives ahead of them and sadly we lost them too young and at a fast rate. If you get a chance, future generations, to see any part of the quilt, the quilt will tell the stories. You don't have to know them. We had a quilt showing our fifth anniversary at Rainbow Home at Albright. And we took in an extremely high amount of new quilts. The guys from NAMES Project were like, "We've never had this many at such a small gathering." Well, surprise. Because we were making them. We did a house quilt every year. And the last official quilt showing, several of us from both Berks AIDS Network and Rainbow Home went to Washington and we were quilt monitors. And then myself and two others also did grief counseling. So that was really a fulfilling moment because we had four blocks that we were covering for grief counseling. And if I would see a family sitting there just kind of like not saying anything, very quiet, I would just gently lean down usually to the mom and say, "Do you mind if I just sit here a minute with you in silence? And then if you want, tell me a story about your loved one, tell me. Is it your son? Who was it?" And even through the tears they would come out of tears and they would just like go into this wonderful story about their son or their daughter. And that would give us a chance to get to know them other than what was on the quilt. And making those quilts for us as staff members and volunteers was a way for us to move on so that psychologically and physically we could keep doing the work that we were doing. Because we would check in on each other constantly after a death. We had a quick staff meeting to make sure that everybody was doing okay. Because our counselor would say, "If you need to talk after a death you know where I am." So I hope that they never have to face any kind of pandemic like this, this current -- or the pandemic of HIV/AIDS. But if they do, get involved. Don't sit on the sidelines. That's it. LB: This has really been terrific, Bill. I bet you have a million more stories to tell. And I hope you do write a book about this, because I think you're brilliant as far as that goes. WA: I hope to do that. I hope to do that. Sometime if I can find someone who's willing to -- I know that Kelly is working on seeing if there's someone at Muhlenberg that might want to take that on. LB: To write a book about it? WA: Kelly is a friend of ours. He's a professor. LB: Yeah, Kelly Cannon, yeah. WA: You know Kelly? LB: Yeah. I know. Sure. You mean to write a book about it. WA: To see if someone would be interested in sitting down and working with me on getting the book written. LB: Great idea. This interview will be archived at Muhlenberg, and Muhlenberg has a lot of our -- all the artifacts and stuff. Because we kept all of the stuff when we produced the Valley Gay Press and when we produced -- at all the Pride festivals and a lot of the early Reading Pride festival stuff. Because I had all that stuff. So that's all in the archives at Muhlenberg now. If you have anything like that that you want to go into those archives that's like paper stuff or things that you don't know who would take care of later in life, that Muhlenberg archives will take that stuff. WA: Well, that's good to know. One quick note. I wrote an article about my journey with David. And it got into the NAMES Project when they used to send out the letter, the little -- and then about two years after that, the one doctor that would write back about my journey asked me if he could put that in a book that he and another doctor were writing. So I signed all the documents yes, you have my okay to do this. And then he sent me a copy and he signed it. And there was the little Post-it note. See page six. LB: Oh, great. WA: So that's where the article was. LB: It's great. WA: And somehow in one of my moves I can't find the book and I'm going crazy because I've got to find it. But I still have the story. So if it's okay I'll make a copy. LB: Sure. WA: And get it to you. LB: Great. You can get it to me. I'll send you the information. But you can send it to me right at the LGBT Community Center. They'll put it on my desk when it comes in. We're not really open right now. But I'll send you the contact information. And then I can get it over. Actually right now lots of people are cleaning up because they're stuck at home. So they're finding boxes and boxes of stuff that they want. And we're amassing a lot of those things in the vestibule, in the foyer, of our community center. Stacks of boxes there. And we found two more boxes of things. So it's all stuff that needs to go to -- because we don't want people to forget this, and one of the things they do at Muhlenberg is that they digitally make it so that people can find it online. They don't have to go through every single piece of paper or something. And it's all cross-referenced. It's really brilliant. It's going to be taking a long time for them to do this but it's wonderful that they're doing it, so it's a big deal. WA: Cool. LB: Yeah, it is. So (inaudible) you have anything else you want to say that you think oh, I should have added this in or -- WA: No, but thank you for the opportunity to share my story and my journey through the pandemic and this current -- and I hope that people will listen to the stories that have been told and really think about what's the right thing to do for anything that will come down the road. And if they know someone that is HIV-positive that they will keep them as friends and not treat them as an outcast. We're all God's children. We all deserve to be loved. Whether we're male, female, nonbinary, whatever you want to go by. Accept them for who they are and love them for who they are. Because love should be unconditional. Not if you're this I don't want anything to do with you. LB: Well, this has just been wonderful, Bill. I'm so glad I got to talk to you. I'm so glad David told me to get in touch with you. This is really a wonderful set of stories and very upbeat and very inspirational. So thank you so much. And thank you so much for all the work you did in taking care of all those people that really needed somebody. They needed a friend and they needed somebody who cared and you were there for them. How terrific of you. It's a really good karma. WA: Thank you. And thank you for taking the time to do this. I look forward to hearing feedback from others when this is all done (inaudible) you in person at some time somewhere. LB: I've been at every Reading Pride festival. So I'm always there and will be online watching it this year. But I've also been at every Pride festival at Lehigh Valley as well. So it's part of my thing to have a booth at those. What will happen now is that once this is done and I've uploaded it, they send the transcripts to a program at another college where they have interns who will transcribe it into writing. And then (inaudible) to see it and you can read through it. And you can see the video too. But that takes about 30 days because it takes them a while to do this. And then you can read through it and decide if there is anything that you want to change or strike or rearrange or something. But I have to say that this has just been extraordinarily terrific. So thank you so much for this. And I'm sure everyone will feel this way. So thank you. WA: Thank you. LB: Thanks a lot. And take care, okay? Don't go outside. WA: You too. LB: Bye-bye. WA: Bye-bye. END OF AUDIO FILE Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source.
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01:29:29
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William Aull, June 29, 2020
Description
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Bill Aull, for many years a caregiver at the Rainbow Home near Reading, PA, shares his experiences during the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s. He reflects on specific patients, the role of Catholic Church in AIDS care, and the operations and services of Rainbow Home.
Identifier
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PH40_04
Subject
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AIDS (Disease)
Date
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2020-06-29
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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https://lgbt.digitalarchives.muhlenberg.edu/files/original/190c8206af022590cc8f9355790d2228.png
13a78b06c8db517be14a0c5ca617d243
Dublin Core
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40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community: HIV/AIDS
Description
An account of the resource
In the spring of 2020, the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive received a grant to collect oral histories and written stories for 40 Years of Public Health in the Lehigh Valley’s LGBT Community: Collecting and Curating Local LGBT Health Experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19.
The collection consists of oral histories from individuals who experienced the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as oral histories from members of the local community as they lived through 2020's summer of Covid-19. Running through both are the themes of dealing with the fear of an emerging health crisis, loneliness and isolation, and coming together as a community in support and activism.
The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Liz Bradbury
Interviewee
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David Moyer
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=PH40_16.xml
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5.4 June 18, 2020 David Moyer, June 18, 2020 PH40_16 01:28:18 LVLGBT40 40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg AIDS (Disease) David Moyer Liz Bradbury video/mpeg DaveMoyer_20200618_video.mp4 1.0:|19(11)|44(2)|69(10)|90(8)|109(12)|124(12)|145(4)|170(2)|187(5)|202(3)|223(7)|242(15)|263(7)|276(16)|305(4)|316(4)|337(2)|362(9)|379(6)|406(2)|433(2)|458(4)|477(11)|504(12)|529(3)|548(10)|571(6)|592(10)|615(4)|632(10)|663(3)|688(4)|705(4)|726(17)|751(7)|776(11)|799(5)|820(12)|835(16)|856(8)|871(4)|888(15)|909(3)|926(16)|955(2)|990(4)|1013(12)|1034(8)|1049(16)|1070(2)|1087(17)|1106(2)|1123(16)|1144(13)|1167(7)|1182(14)|1209(6)|1242(10)|1267(5)|1286(4)|1299(15)|1320(15)|1345(6)|1362(16)|1381(2)|1408(8)|1427(2)|1446(12)|1461(6)|1484(4)|1503(12)|1530(9)|1551(6)|1578(5)|1605(16)|1626(12)|1659(6)|1692(2)|1717(17)|1738(7)|1771(3)|1798(7)|1815(7)|1842(11)|1865(10)|1900(4)|1925(6)|1968(4)|1979(5) 0 https://youtu.be/Hc7bXI-EczI YouTube video English 3 Interview Introduction LIZ BRADBURY: So, I am going to read through this stuff and start out with this and then we’ll go along with this. With this project, the Bradbury Sullivan LGBT Community Center and Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College, we’ll collaborate on 40 years of public health experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community, collecting and curating local LGBT health experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19. My name is Liz Bradbury and I’m here with David Moyer to talk about his experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community during the time, during now the time of the COVID pandemic, as a part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive. We’re meeting on Zoom and today is June 18th, 2020. Thank you very much, David, for your willingness to speak with us today. Can I first have your full name and for you to spell it for me? 0 174 First becoming aware of HIV/AIDS as a corpsman in the Navy LB: Great, okay! So, let’s talk! Oh, let me say, let me just start it off by this first question. But you can say anything you want, we can go on as long as you want. In the midst of the current health, public health crisis we’re experiencing, we want to take this opportunity to look back and through the worst and capture the stories of those who lived through the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and the ’90s. So, we start out with asking people when you remember the first time that you sort of became aware of the disease. But, you know, start telling me about it and go ahead and do that. If you need [to pause?] or something, we’ll stop.
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 ; DM: Yeah, I would say articles, on television, and I think -- well, articles on television’s news reports on television and a few things that I had read. But I think my first inclination of it was when I was still in the naval reserve in the military. 0 476 Being a gay man in the Navy in the 1980s DM: And, you know, even though, you know, I’m a gay man, I wasn’t out-out with my battalion. There were people in my unit that knew I was gay and were cool with it. And, in fact, I think my commanding officer knew that I was gay but as long as I did my job, he didn’t care, you know? My sexual orientation was my own because you still could be discharged, you know, for being gay. Course and that all changed when President Clinton came in and did that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” thing. And, you know, we would get reports about how many cases were in each of the branches of the service and, you know, I think the Army was number one with number of cases. 0 588 Formation of FACT in 1986 / First encounter with somebody who was HIV positive DM: And we had the bars going on and nothing happened until, I’m going to say, ’86 is when FACT was formed.
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 ; LB: Right.
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 ; DM: And that’s Fighting AIDS Continuously Together and they’ve been in existence since then.
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 ; LB: Yeah.
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 ; DM: And my first encounter with somebody who was HIV positive was a gentleman by the name of Chuck [Shook?], who has passed on. And I knew him from the old Le Hi Kai days, when Le Hi Kai was going, and that was a bar on Hamilton Street between 9th and 10th, 8th and 9th, somewhere in that area. And we ran into him in Atlantic City and there was a bar in Atlantic City on New York Avenue called the Rendezvous. 0 852 Job Interview at the Allentown Health Bureau DM: And Rose knew that I was looking for a job and she knew my background, you know, as a nurse. And said there was a job that was open at the Allentown Health Bureau that she thought I would be good at. So, she gave me the information and I went in and, you know, to make a long story short, I had about a three hour interview with [Anne Taylor?], who was the director of the department at that time. I don’t know if you remember Anne or not. Wonderful, wonderful woman. And the job started at, like, nine dollars an hour. And when I’d left Allwyn, I was making $17 an hour, so it was kind of a, yeah, pay cut. 0 1014 CDC training and counseling in administering HIV/AIDS tests / Testing at the Lehigh County prison DM: I had some training from Jose Cruz, who is the medical person for Bethlehem Health Bureau.
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 ; LB: Yeah, yeah.
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 ; DM: And then, Linda, was Linda [Kenna?], who was my office mate and she was from Panama. So, again, she was fluent in Spanish. But the two of us actually went to the CDC in Atlanta, Georgia for counseling and training how to, you know, how to actually test for somebody, you know, sit down and counsel somebody, which was a great experience. And then, from there, it just blossomed out into, you know, what I did for 21 years at the health department. 0 1344 Testing thousands of individuals and delivering positive tests / Testing local high school and college students / Contact Tracing LB: Yeah. When you were seeing those people and testing them, were you seeing a lot of people that were testing positive?
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 ; DM: Yes, yeah. I have, in the 20 years that I worked in the health department, I would say, wow, I’ve tested thousands of individuals. I know that I have delivered more than 400 positive tests over that timeframe. And I have lost more than 400 friends to this disease.
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 ; LB: My gosh.
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 ; DM: So, it was very, very important for me, because one of the things that I, you know, I had vowed to myself is that, you know, I will never forget this important work and I will continue to do whatever I can. And that’s why I’m still on the board of FACT, even though I’m retired. I will still go out and do programs if I need to. 0 1696 Having friends who tested positive DM: Yeah. That didn’t happen a lot but it did. So, I had the luxury of spending as much time with that individual -- you know, we talked, we would cry. I would cry with them, you know, just each one for me was personal. And I still have friends who I know are positive. And I know what it’s going to be like when they pass. I mean, they’re doing good but, still, you know, they’re good friends of mine for years, you know? So, I was thankful for that, that I was able to have as much time with that individual. And, you know, people would come back for testing and would want to see me because they knew how I was, you know? 0 1944 AIDS Services Center / Finding doctors who would take care of positive HIV/AIDS patients / Comfort of having an advocate in the health department DM: But I do know that there was a time -- it wasn’t so much finding a doctor because now we had that going on, we had the AIDS Service Center, where people were going to St. Luke’s at that point. And that was with, you know, with Dixie White and Rose Craig starting that. And then, we had Linda Gallagher with the AIDS outreach for the Buddy Program to do things. But one of the things that sticks in my mind is one of the things that was really hard to find was a dentist who would take care of HIV/AIDS patients. So, there were several doctors, dentists in the area that would do that. They would see patients. But there was one dentist who absolutely refused to see patients. And I had reported that individual to the ADA. And I don’t think they pulled that person’s, you know -- 0 2274 The beginning of FACT / Joining the board of FACT and becoming the education chair / Lehigh Valley hospital taking over the AIDS Activities Office LB: Talk a little bit about how FACT started up and what that was like for you in the beginning.
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 ; DM: Yeah, well, I had heard about FACT. Occasionally, Will and I would go out to the bars. Not often, but we would go to Candida’s and there was talk about an event, money -- you know, a fundraising event that was going to be held out at this gay resort in Stroudsburg, Rainbow Mountain and should we go? And first, we thought -- and, again, this is before I came to the health department. So, well, I don’t know that many people yet that have this disease or have died from it. And it was up in the Poconos and, oh, do I want to drive there? 0 2782 Stigma associated with testing positive / Discussing the diagnosis of HIV/AIDS being a death sentence early in the epidemic / How education and medications factor into having HIV/AIDS now LB: Did people used to talk about stigma in terms of if they tested positive and what they -- the kinds of potential discrimination they would face or that people had had to face?
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 ; DM: Yeah. A lot of different things there. So, if they were in a relationship, if you test positive, you have to tell your partner. “Well, I can’t do that. I can’t do that.” I would say, “Bring your partner in” or, “I -- again, come to where you live. We can sit and talk about this if you want to.” There was all kinds of reactions. I mean, that’s one. Some people contemplated suicide. And that’s another whole set of issues if you have somebody suicidal. So now, I need to refer this person to the suicide prevention group. And one person I know actually did commit suicide. They jumped off the Americus Hotel building. 0 3247 AZT and its side effects LB: Could you just say a little bit more about AZT? Because I don’t think people -- I mean, the whole thing about AZT and how significant it was with regard to making people feel better for a while but really -- what do you think about that?
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 ; DM: Yeah, well, AZT came out because of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, kind of like what’s going on now with things but not with the medication. And normally, it takes about 10 years for a medication to be approved by the FDA. And people were dying. People were dying at large rates. And they said something needs to be done, so they got this medication, they push and I think it took, like, 18 months for it to be approved. 0 3533 FACT assistance with funerals / FACT raising money through fundraisers LB: Yeah, yeah. Some people have told me about -- and I moved here in 1987 but I didn’t know as many people in the community until I started to be involved with the Pride festival, which wasn’t until nineteen ninety-three and four. Then I was, Trish and I, were beginning to be involved. But in the eighties, there were a lot of funerals and I think FACT [reported?] people with regard to those funerals. Is that something that you were involved with or was it later?
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 ; DM: Yeah, well, I came onto the board in, I want to say, nineteen ninety-two . And I guess I was the education chair, that person. I can’t think who the person was that was the contingency person, chairperson. And what the contingencies are are applications that case managers in the hospitals who had HIV/AIDS clinics would apply to FACT for some kind of assistance. And we had different categories and we still have different categories, rental assistance, auto repair or help with their insurance, medications back then, dental, certain types of med-surg procedures, utilities, heating, air conditioning, things like that. 0 3820 Comparisons between HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 DM: So, this is giving us the time to sit back and kind of look at things differently. We, you know, we know that there are -- I mean, anybody can get this, whether it’s the COVID-19 or HIV. Well, with HIV, there are specific ways that you’re going to get it. But with this COVID, there can be a myriad of ways because we just can talk to each other and one of you can have it and not know it. And when you’re looking at signs and symptoms, it’s pretty much the same with HIV. You get infected with HIV and it can take up to six months before you can test positive for it, be as little as -- it can show up as early, HIV can show up as early as two weeks after exposure but it usually takes three to six months. With COVID, it can be a couple weeks to a couple months, again, with symptoms, from what I understand. So, they are similar and I think education is important. It infuriates me, it really infuriated me yesterday when I hear that the Pennsylvania state Republican group wants to impeach Governor Wolf. Ah! What are you thinking? And all the derogatory stuff they say about Dr. Levine. What are you people thinking? 0 3953 Other organizations FACT works with / BINGO fundraising at Pride / Testing at Pride LB: Well, talk about some of the organizations in the Lehigh Valley that FACT has worked with and that you’ve worked with. I mean, you mentioned doing presentations for the youth group that we have through our community center. But you’ve been doing that all along for the last 30, 35 years, 40 years.
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 ; DM: Yeah, yeah, we did a program with the NAACP a few years ago. Hollis Perry was instrumental in getting us to do that. And we’re looking at doing something again when we can. I’d done a program for -- I can’t think of her last name. She’s the high school teacher, chemistry teacher, Rachel -- 0 4415 PrEP and PEP LB: Yeah, yeah. What do you think about PrEP and PEP?
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 ; DM: I think it’s needed. I’m okay with it. I think it needs to be pushed a little more. And as long as they’re getting the information out about both of them, I think that’s what’s important. And then, to be -- the people who really want it, you know, then taking it, yeah.
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 ; LB: Yeah, yeah. I just read a thing that said that in other countries, a year’s course of PEP or PrEP costs about twenty-two dollars and in the United States, costs two-thousand dollars. 0 4693 Reflections on death, dying, and the grieving process / Difference dealing with death during COVID-19 LB: Let’s see, I think we’ve got about ten minutes left, so, in our ninety-minute interview. So, is there anything you really want to be sure that people understand about this time, that time, and the impact that it had on you? In some ways, it kind of shaped your life.
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 ; DM: Yeah, I think, excuse me, (clears throat) one thing that I remember and one of the -- and I took as much training as I was able to when I was working for the health department. And I think the major thing for me was all of the death and dying. And I was in a training in Philadelphia and one of the instructors was a doctor in psychology. 0 5091 Doing education trainings at local high schools LB: I think we’re just about to the end and I just wanted to say one thing in case it wasn’t clear when you were talking about it but Rachel Zane is the facilitator and advisor for the Gay-Straight Alliance at the high school, at --
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 ; DM: [Cool?].
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 ; LB: -- Allen, just so that that’s on --
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 ; DM: Okay.
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 ; LB: -- [information?], so that people can understand that you’ve been going into public schools to do some really significant programs. And she’s a great resource to hook people up. I think the work that you’ve been doing, yeah, now you’ve had a lifetime of work helping people in this community. It’s really been a significant thing --
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 ; DM: Yeah.
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 ; LB: (inaudible) [lives?]. It’s a big deal.
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 ; DM: I, yeah --
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 ; LB: Yeah.
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 ; DM: -- I really enjoyed my twenty, twenty-one, twenty-plus years at the Allentown Health Bureau because I’ve met some wonderful people. 0 MovingImage David Moyer talks about the AIDS epidemic in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. He focuses on his work as a nurse in the Allentown Health Department ; shares about local AIDS education, testing, and the experience of notifying people of positive tests ; the formation of Fighting AIDS Continuously Together (FACT) ; and how HIV/AIDS compares to COVID-19. DAVE MOYER LIZ BRADBURY: So, I am going to read through this stuff and start out with this and then we'll go along with this. With this project, the Bradbury Sullivan LGBT Community Center and Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College, we'll collaborate on 40 years of public health experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community, collecting and curating local LGBT health experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19. My name is Liz Bradbury and I'm here with David Moyer to talk about his experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community during the time, during now the time of the COVID pandemic, as a part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive. We're meeting on Zoom and today is June 18th, 2020. Thank you very much, David, for your willingness to speak with us today. Can I first have your full name and for you to spell it for me? DAVID MOYER: Sure, and thank you for having me involved in this. It's very important. David Kenneth Moyer. D-A-V-I-D K-E-N-N-E-T-H M-O-Y-E-R. LB: Good. And can you please share your birth date? DM: Of course. (laughs) April 23rd, 1943. LB: Okay. DM: I'm very old. LB: Now, now, you are not. (laughter) This is the consent part of the interview. So, I have to ask you these questions. So, do you consent to this interview today? DM: Yes. LB: Do you consent to having this interview being transcribed, digitized, and made publicly available online in searchable formats? DM: Yes. LB: Do you consent to the LGBT Archive using your interview for educational purposes in other formats, including films, articles, websites, presentations, and other formats? DM: Yes. LB: Do you understand that you will have 30 days after the electronic delivery of the transcript to review your interview and identify any parts you'd like to delete and/or withdraw in your interview from the project? DM: Yes. LB: Great, okay! So, let's talk! Oh, let me say, let me just start it off by this first question. But you can say anything you want, we can go on as long as you want. In the midst of the current health, public health crisis we're experiencing, we want to take this opportunity to look back and through the worst and capture the stories of those who lived through the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and the '90s. So, we start out with asking people when you remember the first time that you sort of became aware of the disease. But, you know, start telling me about it and go ahead and do that. If you need [to pause?] or something, we'll stop. DM: Yeah, I would say articles, on television, and I think -- well, articles on television's news reports on television and a few things that I had read. But I think my first inclination of it was when I was still in the naval reserve in the military. I am a retired senior chief hospital corpsman at 30 years in with the Navy. And being medical, we would get reports about what was going on, especially from the CDC. LB: Right. DM: We weren't doing any testing at that point but they weren't sure what was going on. And then, again, the reports that were coming out initially were, you know, it was this was in gay men, it was in intravenous drug users. They weren't exactly sure how it was being transmitted, things like that, you know? The old school stuff. So, I really wasn't involved in with the gay community at the time. I knew that things were going on but I wasn't part of any organization. I had met my late husband, William, in 1981, and that's when the first cases were put out, I think was June 5th, 1981. But, you know, I guess we really didn't think of it or, you know, I guess I can say I wasn't concerned at the time, you know? I'm in a relationship now and, you know, this really isn't going to affect me. That was the mindset back then. Of course, then, over the years, once the cases were increasing and now there was testing, the military started testing. And that was one of the things that I had to do. And I guess fortunately at that time, we would test everybody in my unit and in my battalion and we had nobody that had tested positive. But there were reports of people, you know, testing positive that were in the military, active duty military. And back then, if you were in the military and you tested positive, you were discharged right away. And then, they kind of changed the policy a little bit. It said that, okay, if you test positive, you'd go to -- there were several hospitals, military hospitals in the United States where you could go for treatment if you wanted to. And then, they changed the policy again that says you can stay in the military, you can finish your term in the military, but when it was over you were not able to reenlist. You had to get out. And then they changed it again, that said if you were in the military and you tested positive while you were in, you could stay in but you could not deploy outside of the United States. You had to stay in country. So, that's how the military handled it at that time. I don't know how it is now [because?] I -- LB: That was in the '80s? That was -- DM: What was that? LB: -- in the '80s? DM: Yeah, that was, yeah, I would say the late '80s, around 1888 [sic], '89, when they started testing. And, like I said, you know, we -- there was nobody in my unit that had tested positive. And, you know, even though, you know, I'm a gay man, I wasn't out-out with my battalion. There were people in my unit that knew I was gay and were cool with it. And, in fact, I think my commanding officer knew that I was gay but as long as I did my job, he didn't care, you know? My sexual orientation was my own because you still could be discharged, you know, for being gay. Course and that all changed when President Clinton came in and did that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" thing. And, you know, we would get reports about how many cases were in each of the branches of the service and, you know, I think the Army was number one with number of cases. Navy was number two. Marine Corps was three, and Air Force was fourth with number of cases. And Coast Guard was there but they were very low. So, that really was my first exposure, you know, to all this. And I was working at [Allwyn?] Corporation at the time because I am a nurse by trade. But I was working for Allwyn Corporation at that time and because there was nothing going on there, so -- and, again, I wasn't involved with any organizations, any LGBT organizations back then. And we had the bars going on and nothing happened until, I'm going to say, '86 is when FACT was formed. LB: Right. DM: And that's Fighting AIDS Continuously Together and they've been in existence since then. LB: Yeah. DM: And my first encounter with somebody who was HIV positive was a gentleman by the name of Chuck [Shook?], who has passed on. And I knew him from the old Le-Hi Kai days, when Le-Hi Kai was going, and that was a bar on Hamilton Street between 9th and 10th, 8th and 9th, somewhere in that area. And we ran into him in Atlantic City and there was a bar in Atlantic City on New York Avenue called the Rendezvous. And he was coming out of the bar and we were going in, my late husband, Will, and I. And he looked really -- he had all these black and blue marks all over him, which was Kaposi sarcoma and I didn't know that at the time. I didn't know what that was. And he said, oh, you know, he's [doing okay?]. The doctor says that he really needs to be in the sun because the doctor thinks that the exposure to the sunlight would be good for this condition that he had. And that was the last that I'd seen of him. And then, he -- there was a bar called the Lark Inn, which was right on New York Avenue. It was the first bar if you were coming off the boardwalk on New York Avenue. And I would say maybe six months later, they were doing a fundraiser for him to help with the medical bills for him. So, we went down to that. So, he really was the first person that I knew that had AIDS and had succumbed to the disease. LB: Can I just ask you, when [they?] said that -- his doctor thought that sunlight -- did he really think that sunlight was good or was Chuck just saying that because he didn't know what else to say? DM: I really have no idea. I would think he didn't know what to say because maybe he was embarrassed. Yeah, you don't know.. But Chuck was a wild child when I met him. And I had seen him several times over, you know, over the years. I mean, I knew him before I had met Will. So, we had gone out several times and were, you know, we were intimate. But that was then the last time that I had seen him, was down in Atlantic City. And then, I think it was a year afterwards is when he had passed. And then, I had lost -- not just me but everybody had lost their job at Allwyn Corporation. And that was in 1988. So, I lost my full-time job and my part-time job the same day. Same day, (laughs) you know? How does that happen? And the part-time job that I had was I was an aerobic instructor. And one of my students at The Body Factory, which, again, is no longer, that was in Whitehall, was -- I don't know if you know here, Rosa Saltern. LB: I remember that name, yeah. DM: Yeah, she's a member of the community. LB: Yeah. DM: But she was a reporter. She was the reporter for the health department before [Ann Boleyzwak?] had taken over. LB: Right. DM: And Rose knew that I was looking for a job and she knew my background, you know, as a nurse. And said there was a job that was open at the Allentown Health Bureau that she thought I would be good at. So, she gave me the information and I went in and, you know, to make a long story short, I had about a three hour interview with [Anne Taylor?], who was the director of the department at that time. I don't know if you remember Anne or not. Wonderful, wonderful woman. And the job started at, like, nine dollars an hour. And when I'd left Allwyn, I was making $17 an hour, so it was kind of a, yeah, pay cut. But I needed a job because, also at the time, I was married to a woman and we had a baby, okay? So, I needed, you know, I needed a job. So, that was in, I believe, late October of 1987, '88, '88. And in January of 1989, I was hired, I was offered the position. So, it went from nine dollars an hour to, like, $12 an hour for it because it was a grant-funded position. And I really didn't know a whole lot about HIV/AIDS. I mean, I knew medical things. I could draw blood. That was one of the major things that -- why they hired me, because I could draw blood. The only downfall I had was that I was not bilingual. And there were two of us that were up for the position. One person was a Hispanic man who was bilingual but didn't know how to draw blood and they needed somebody to draw blood. And then, we had another woman who was bilingual but didn't draw blood. So, I would do (inaudible) and if I needed her to translate, she would translate for me but with counseling -- so that I had the training. I had some basic training there. I had some training from Jose Cruz, who is the medical person for Bethlehem Health Bureau. LB: Yeah, yeah. DM: And then, Linda, was Linda [Kenna?], who was my office mate and she was from Panama. So, again, she was fluent in Spanish. But the two of us actually went to the CDC in Atlanta, Georgia for counseling and training how to, you know, how to actually test for somebody, you know, sit down and counsel somebody, which was a great experience. And then, from there, it just blossomed out into, you know, what I did for 21 years at the health department. LB: Yeah, yeah. DM: Counseling to testing. LB: Was that the only place they were doing testing? DM: Yes. At the time, it was the Allentown Health Bureau, the Bethlehem Health Bureau. We were the two major ones. And then, we kind of branched out. I can't speak for the Bethlehem health department but at least for the Allentown health department, we got -- it took us almost five years to be able to do testing and counseling in Lehigh County prison. And we tested there for, well, for the whole time that I was there then and I think for a year or a year and a half after I left, then the testing went by the wayside because they lost the funding for that. We did all of the testing for the in-house drug and alcohol agencies, Treatment Trends, Halfway House, Blue Mountain House of Hope. There were several others. Livengrin, all of those. So, we would do all of the education and testing for those agencies. We would do in-home testing. Like, if you didn't want to come into the health bureau, if you were going into the health -- the premise back then was if you're going into the health bureau, A, you're either poor or you've got something wrong with you. So, we were kind of looked at as the health police back then, and especially with the gay community. So, if, you know, if you did not -- you wanted to be tested but if you didn't want to be tested in the health bureau, you could call us and I would come to your home or apartment -- LB: Really? DM: -- and do that, yes. And I think they still do that. Not as much as we did back then but I think you can still have that done. LB: Wow. DM: So, they were branching out. Like, you know, I know they testing at your center but most of the agencies that we had been doing testing in, they no longer do testing. I know there's still testing at Treatment Trends. And Treatment Trends and Halfway House really were owned by the same corporation. But they really incorporated everything into one building now, so everything is down at Treatment Trends there on -- right behind you, right next to you, actually. LB: [That's?] right, right. DM: Right next to you. And I guess that they no longer do the testing in the prison but the prison will do testing. And also, back then, too, you know, if somebody did test positive, the prison didn't know what to do. So, they had had a contract with the AIDS Activities Office from Lehigh Valley Hospital. LB: Right. DM: And think it was Dr. [Hoffman-Terry?] would come in, I think, once a month or twice a month and, you know, sit down with inmates who were positive and order blood work and then medication if that was needed. And this was all free because -- nothing's free at the prison, (laughs) but because it's a state-run program that's really funded by the feds, I think part of that was the Ryan White monies, the inmates could get the testing and treatment for free. LB: Yeah. DM: And then, somewhere along the line, something happened and Lehigh Valley Hospital could no longer go into the prison. Again, because Lehigh County prison is supposedly a short-term facility -- you're not supposed to be there more than two years. LB: Right. DM: But, you know, but that's not true with some people. So, if they knew, they could do some treatment there. And if they knew that the inmate was getting out and going home, then they would hook them up with Lehigh Valley Hospital, the AIDS Activities Office. You know, if they were going to another facility, then we have no idea what happened to them at another facility, if it was another state facility or federal facility. So, we don't know. LB: Yeah. When you were seeing those people and testing them, were you seeing a lot of people that were testing positive? DM: Yes, yeah. I have, in the 20 years that I worked in the health department, I would say, wow, I've tested thousands of individuals. I know that I have delivered more than 400 positive tests over that timeframe. And I have lost more than 400 friends to this disease. LB: My gosh. DM: So, it was very, very important for me, because one of the things that I, you know, I had vowed to myself is that, you know, I will never forget this important work and I will continue to do whatever I can. And that's why I'm still on the board of FACT, even though I'm retired. I will still go out and do programs if I need to. LB: Yeah. DM: I do keep up somewhat with some of the things from the CDC but not as much now as, you know, as I was doing when I was doing it then. In fact, one of the, I guess, I don't know if you called it a funny story or just a, you know, a whatever story but we used to do a lot of street outreach. And that's where I got a lot of my starts, was with some of the people who had graduated from Hogar Crea who got into the business. And, again, the majority of people that we were seeing positive back then were in the Hispanic, you know, population. But, like I said, we would do a lot of street outreach and one of the ones that I wanted to do was to do a street outreach with the kids at Central Catholic. And we were going to stand across the street with information and condoms if they wanted it. And the director back then was [Barbara Stater?] and Barbara was a staunch Catholic and her neck veins came out (laughter) when she heard that we were going to -- she said, "You are not going down there!" So, we couldn't do that outreach. But, you know, they knew, the kids knew where they could come to for testing if they wanted to. So, you know, we would test a lot of the kids from the high schools -- LB: Yeah. DM: -- back then. And, I mean, fortunately, if my memory is still somewhat intact, I don't think I had any teenagers from Central Catholic that tested positive or even at the high schools, William Allen or Dieruff. We did have -- we were testing, also, at Cedar Crest College and Muhlenberg College. And we did have several people from Muhlenberg College that had tested positive who were students, so it was a wide variety. LB: And what was the procedure? If somebody tested positive, you know, what was just, anecdotally, what was the procedure of that? DM: Yeah, well, first, you come in for the test. And what we do was, what I did, I mean, all of the counselors and the nurses that were able to do testing had their own way of doing things. But for me, I was preparing everyone for a positive test. I prepared them all for, yeah, because one of the things I'd say to them is that, you know, if this test comes back positive, you know, how were you going to handle that? And if you do, these are some of the things that we need to discuss. And one of those, one of the things is contact tracing. LB: Right. DM: You know, who have you been with? How did you put yourself at risk? And, you know, we need to talk about people or individuals. And I really emphasized the fact that your name will not be used. Your name does not come up. They may know who it is, you know, if I do contact that person. And I say, "Your name was given to me by the state." So, it was a little white lie but I'm keeping that confidentiality (inaudible) because that was my big, big thing, is confidentiality. I mean, there are names of people that are going to go to my grave with me that you may even know, you know? But that was a very big thing for me, was confidentiality. And so, you know, I would prepare, you know, the individual so that when they didn't come back and if it was positive, one of the luxuries that we had -- in fact, then there was only two of us that were able to do positive test results. It was me and Linda at the time when -- that she was with us. So, one of the luxuries that I had was that I can spend as much time with that person that I needed to, if I needed to. And they always came back in the clinic setting. So, you know, the clinic ran from one to four. So, if somebody came in at one o'clock and was positive, I could still be there at five o'clock because the staff knew what I was up against. LB: Yeah. DM: Yeah. That didn't happen a lot but it did. So, I had the luxury of spending as much time with that individual -- you know, we talked, we would cry. I would cry with them, you know, just each one for me was personal. And I still have friends who I know are positive. And I know what it's going to be like when they pass. I mean, they're doing good but, still, you know, they're good friends of mine for years, you know? So, I was thankful for that, that I was able to have as much time with that individual. And, you know, people would come back for testing and would want to see me because they knew how I was, you know? You've been negative all these years and now you're positive, okay? Well, you know the routine, that this is what we're going to do. And they were grateful. I know that I had, that there was -- two brothers. There were twin brothers, Hispanic. And both of them were kind of bad seeds. Did not want to use condoms, you know? They're Hispanic and they're Catholic, so, you know, that's a no-no. But the one brother -- and they would come back, regular. Both of them were negative and, to my knowledge, still are negative. I haven't seen [them, you know?], in years. But I would always talk, more so with the guys, about using condoms, you know? And this is how using condom -- this is when you should use the condom. You know, if you don't know how to use a condom, the best thing for you as a male is to masturbate with it. LB: Yeah. DM: I mean, it's one of the things, you know? That way, you can get used to using it when you have to use it if you want to use it. And the one brother I don't think I ever got through to. I mean, I may have, but the other one started using condoms and he really thanked me. And he liked the work that I did and he went into nursing himself. So, yeah. So, a success story, you know? LB: Yeah. DM: I mean, I've had a lot of success stories but that's one that will always stick with me. LB: Yeah. DM: [You know, with that?]. LB: In the nineteen-eighties, when you were doing this -- and you start to do this at the end of the eighties? So -- DM: Nineteen eighty-nine, officially. LB: And that was still at a time when, you know, the prognosis wasn't very good for somebody if they were positive. What was it like in terms of the medical resources through the hospitals and stuff? I mean, were there doctors that were doing a really great job with dealing with that stuff? Or were there people who were just, like, "I went to this doctor and he wouldn't even let me in the office" or something? What was that -- DM: Yeah, well, when I started at -- I don't know anything prior to me starting at the health department. And at that time, the AIDS activities office had -- really was just up and running for, like, maybe -- I want to say they form in either '87 or '88, I'm not exactly sure. Andrea Geshen, who I gave you the name, really is a great resource because her and Dr. Rhodes are the ones that really started that for people. So, as far as resources back then, I have no idea until I came in. But I do know that there was a time -- it wasn't so much finding a doctor because now we had that going on, we had the AIDS Service Center, where people were going to St. Luke's at that point. And that was with, you know, with Dixie White and Rose Craig starting that. And then, we had Linda Gallagher with the AIDS outreach for the Buddy Program to do things. But one of the things that sticks in my mind is one of the things that was really hard to find was a dentist who would take care of HIV/AIDS patients. So, there were several doctors, dentists in the area that would do that. They would see patients. But there was one dentist who absolutely refused to see patients. And I had reported that individual to the ADA. And I don't think they pulled that person's, you know -- LB: License. DM: -- license. LB: Yeah. DM: But the practice wasn't that great after that because the word got out that, you know, they were not willing to see -- and I think for me, personally, when I see a doctor -- and still, to this day, if I'm seeing a new doctor or if I have to see a specialist, that's one of the questions that I will ask is do you see patients who are HIV-positive or have AIDS? If they say yes, then, good. LB: Yeah. DM: Good. But if you say no, then I'm not going to come back to you because that's just not right. That's downright discrimination, so -- LB: When you had that kind of situation -- and, I mean, you knew a lot of people in the community through the LGBT community in general. You just knew folks and -- were people sharing information about, you know, where to get tested or who to -- what doctors to see? Where they sharing it with each other on a sort of social way? You know, like, did you ever [get?] -- DM: You know, that's hard to answer because, again, I didn't -- you know, up until the time when I was, you know, when I was hired there, like I had mentioned earlier, you know, at least in the LGBT community, we were perceived as the health police. You know, if you're going to go to the health bureau and you test positive, look out, they're going to do this stuff, they're going to do this stuff. But we don't do that stuff, you know? We're not -- that's not what we're about. And I think one thing that helped in the LGBT community was that I'm a gay man and I'm doing this work. LB: Yeah, yeah. DM: And that's why I think a lot of -- you know, the word got out that way. Hey, we have an advocate in the health department. If you want testing, you can go see him. These are the times. That's how it got out. Or if you don't want to go in, call and he'll come to your house or apartment. LB: Yeah. DM: And I would do that. So, I think, to answer your question, that's really how it got -- and then, people were coming in for testing and I didn't see every LGBT person that came in. I can't do that. LB: Yeah. DM: So, I said, okay, "See Linda" or "see Sherry now" or whoever. And you know some of these people. They're good people. They're honest people and they're there for a reason. We need to put a halt to this disease. We need to bring these numbers down. And I think we've done, at least the Allentown Health Bureau has done a good job, as has the Bethlehem Health Bureau. You know, I can't say anything bad about the Bethlehem Health Bureau. I can't say anything bad about any of the organizations. We here in the Lehigh Valley have been blessed to have what we have and how well all these organizations work together. You know, you see St. Luke's Hospital and you see Lehigh Valley Hospital are always at odds with each other. We have to have a bigger hospital, we have to have -- it's all that power struggle. You don't see that in the HIV/AIDS community of workers, that we work together. And that's one of the things that I've always said in my speeches, that I have been proud to work with these individuals and I will continue to say that because it's true. It's true. LB: That's interesting. DM: Yeah. LB: Talk a little bit about how FACT started up and what that was like for you in the beginning. DM: Yeah, well, I had heard about FACT. Occasionally, Will and I would go out to the bars. Not often, but we would go to Candida's and there was talk about an event, money -- you know, a fundraising event that was going to be held out at this gay resort in Stroudsburg, Rainbow Mountain and should we go? And first, we thought -- and, again, this is before I came to the health department. So, well, I don't know that many people yet that have this disease or have died from it. And it was up in the Poconos and, oh, do I want to drive there? LB: Yeah. DM: So, we didn't. We didn't go. We would donate money but we just didn't go to the event. And it wasn't until, well, and nineteen-eighty-five is when FACT was started. And, again, it was started by a group of bar owners and local merchants and people who were -- wanted to do something because their friends were dying. And nothing was being done, really, at that initial point, then, because I don't think the AIDS Activities Office had started yet, any things -- and doctors, again, didn't know, really, still didn't know what was going on. But so, they held an event up at Rainbow Mountain called the FACT Summer Games that was in -- I think it was always held the Sunday after Labor Day in September. So, we didn't go. My first inclination -- my first exposure to that was, again, when I was at the health bureau. And we were invited to go up to do education, the first year. First year. And that would have been in nineteen I want to say nineteen-ninety. Was either ninety or ninety-one when we were invited to have a table up there. Education, that stuff. So, I went up the first year by myself and it was overwhelming. I mean, we had -- there must have been a thousand people there, if not more, back then, in those days. And then, I was invited to join the board of FACT, which I did. And I had taken over for a gentleman by the name of Tom Martin. Was a black man who worked for Morning Call who succumbed to AIDS and he was the education chair. So, because that's what I do, I educate about this, I was asked to take over for Tom, which is what I did. And then, I said maybe we should offer testing up there. So, I think it was nineteen-ninety-two is the first year I went out and offered testing and I was overwhelmed. I mean, I had to turn people away. I was busy from the time we had set up to -- and then, when I came back and I said this is something that we really need to be involved with, with testing -- so, then we were in touch with the previous owners. And I can't remember who they were at that time. It wasn't Walter and [Georgeann?] because they had sold the place by then. But they gave us rooms in the inn to set up for testing and blood drawing and that stuff. And it was non-stop from the time the games started until the games ended, we were testing people. And we had gotten a lot of positives from up there. And, of course, back then -- well, and still, to this day, you still have to come back for your test results, to the health bureau. And I would say, out of all the years that we were testing, we had one person that was positive that did not come back. And they were from New Jersey and, of course, if you have an out of state person that tests, you have to go to the state, our state health department, and they have to send that information to the state health department in Jersey for contact tracing. And whether they found that person, I don't know, to this day. And then, it just got to the point where, really, we were not supposed to be doing testing up there because we are a city health department and it really has to be a county that does it. And when [Rowe?] County was not doing any HIV testing at that point -- I think they are now -- and that's when we have Valley Hospital took over AIDS Activities Office. They decided they [would come up?] and they would do the testing. So, they were still testing until we -- twenty-fifth anniversary, which is our last time up there. LB: Yeah. DM: And then, we went to The Woods for five years and Lehigh Valley Hospital was doing testing there. The health bureau was doing testing but not for HIV. We were doing other STD testing there. So, they were there for five years doing that. And then, of course, we left there after five years. And then, just [held games?], different areas, but we no longer did testing [at any of these sites?], so, yeah. LB: Is that because more places were doing testing? Okay. DM: Yeah. LB: Yeah. DM: Yeah. LB: Testing's faster and easier and -- DM: Yeah, results come back faster now. LB: -- [it's really the?] immediate testing, yeah, (inaudible) DM: Yeah, 20 minutes, you know your results, you know? LB: How long was it before? When you first started, how long would it take? DM: Was two weeks. LB: My gosh. DM: You had to wait two weeks. And let me tell you, that was a killer, even for us, because for me, as a healthcare provider and knowing that I'm safe, I still would get tested on a regular basis. And I'll tell you, it was hell waiting those two weeks. I knew I was okay but you didn't know. LB: Right. DM: But now it's, like I said, now, twenty minutes. Bingo, you know. LB: Yeah. DM: Of course, with the twenty minute test, that's really part of the antibody test. So, if you test positive, [then they?] really need to have the full blood work done and that could take up to two weeks, because you really need that -- it's called a PCR, polymers chain reaction test, to confirm that that first part is positive. So, I still think it's two weeks but I don't know, I would have to check because I don't test anymore. LB: Yeah, yeah. DM: Yeah. LB: Did people used to talk about stigma in terms of if they tested positive and what they -- the kinds of potential discrimination they would face or that people had had to face? DM: Yeah. A lot of different things there. So, if they were in a relationship, if you test positive, you have to tell your partner. "Well, I can't do that. I can't do that." I would say, "Bring your partner in" or, "I -- again, come to where you live. We can sit and talk about this if you want to." There was all kinds of reactions. I mean, that's one. Some people contemplated suicide. And that's another whole set of issues if you have somebody suicidal. So now, I need to refer this person to the suicide prevention group. And one person I know actually did commit suicide. They jumped off the Americus Hotel building. LB: Gosh, really? DM: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they were living there at the time. And, you know, you can't get to everyone. LB: Right. DM: But, yeah, "Let's talk about this. We need to put an end to this." And there were people who were in a relationship where their partner was positive and they actually looked forward to being positive because now they have a bond with that individual. And I remember, with a heterosexual group, there was a woman who was a teacher and she was having an affair with a man who was married. He was positive, the wife was positive, and now she's positive. And she felt we now have something in common. And then, there were people who said, "I know who did this to me and I'm going to go home and I'm going to kill the bastard." LB: Yeah. DM: It runs the gamut with -- it just runs the gamut, you know? And again, I think I attribute my patience to the training that I've had over the years, the people that I've met over the years on how to handle or defuse situations, so -- LB: Well, one of the things that is terrific about these archives is that it's really possible that somebody will be reading the transcript or watching you speak about this 30 years from now. And they may not understand why somebody's reaction to having HIV would cause them to kill themselves because, I mean, even today, there's strong, strong issues. But certainly, in the eighties and early ninties -- could you just explain that for future generations as to why that was such a big deal? DM: Yeah, well, I think early on in the epidemic, it really was a death sentence. You know, from time of diagnosis, you could be dead in six months. And then, with the advent of AZT, which was the first HIV/AIDS med that was out there, people were living longer, not a great length of time, but they were living longer. And then, of course, the side effect from that medication was horrendous. So, like, do I want to go through this or just let me die? But people back then, it was -- death sentence. No way of putting it in any other words. It was death sentence. And I think we've done a pretty good job of educating people. I mean, numbers are down but there are people still getting infected. LB: Sure. DM: And we know that. And I think the mindset for some people is that it still is a death sentence, even though there are people who are 15, 20 years into this disease and they're still alive. And I have two friends of mine that live out of state who have been positive since, I'm going to say, the mid-ninties. Doing fine. LB: Yeah, yeah. DM: You know? There are people that are still -- and I think it's really the education factor and that we have all these medication-- we have more medications for this disease than we have for any other disease. And, yeah, and I think part of that is because when you look at this disease and how it affects immune system, everybody's immune system is different. So, what's going to work for me, may not work for you or may work for somebody else, and it may not work for me. So, we have all these combinations. And now, we have PrEP. You can take something that hopefully will prevent you from getting infected if something happens, that you weren't using protection or the protection you may have used may have failed. And, like I said, there are so many medications but I think the downfall is, and I think we still need to do a better job at educating, is, especially with the younger generation, they say, "Yeah, okay, we have all these meds out here, so I can just take a pill and I'll be fine," you know? Well, and that may be true. But what if you do get infected and what if you get infected with a super strain? Nothing's going to work on you and you will be dead in six months. LB: Yeah, yeah. DM: So, we still need to do -- the education needs to continue. We need to keep educating. And that's why it's important we go to different folks. You know, what I, I've done a presentation for your Silk group with the kids and those kids are just phenomenal. They are phenomenal, phenomenal kids. And they get it. LB: Yeah. DM: You know, they get it. LB: Could you just say a little bit more about AZT? Because I don't think people -- I mean, the whole thing about AZT and how significant it was with regard to making people feel better for a while but really -- what do you think about that? DM: Yeah, well, AZT came out because of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, kind of like what's going on now with things but not with the medication. And normally, it takes about 10 years for a medication to be approved by the FDA. And people were dying. People were dying at large rates. And they said something needs to be done, so they got this medication, they push and I think it took, like, 18 months for it to be approved. I think that was the timeframe. So, people were taking it and it was working but it had some horrible side effects, you know, nausea, diarrhea. You had to take the medication, like, every two hours. But it was the start of something. That was the pebble in the snow that got the snowball rolling where we are now. But I think it gave people some sense of hopefulness that, well, okay, I may feel good today because I'm on the medication. But, again, I have this -- whatever the condition is that's going to be associated with HIV. Because HIV is the infection and AIDS is a disease process and that could be one of 32 different case definitions. So, the AZT may work for some of the conditions but it may not work for all of them. LB: Yeah, yeah. DM: And then, slowly but surely, we got more medications out there. So many that aren't even used anymore, some that are still being used, and some that are being used in combination. LB: Right. DM: And we had a friend, and you know Bobby Burton, who passed away. LB: Yeah. DM: He was, this guy, you wanted to take with you when you were doing your presentation because he would come with a suitcase and he would open up that suitcase and it was full of medications that he was taking on a daily basis. And that was a real eye opener for people because -- and some of the medications you had to take every two hours. Some medications you had to take only in the morning. Some you only had to take at night. Some you had to take with food. Some you had to take on an empty stomach. Some you had to take -- you couldn't take together. Maddening! It was absolutely maddening to see that, so -- and now we've come a long way. No longer are people going around with suitcases full of medications. LB: And some of those medications had extraordinary side effects, like would make -- DM: Yeah, you -- LB: (inaudible) DM: -- wanted to die. LB: -- big or -- DM: Yeah. LB: -- the shoulders be a strange shape or something like that. DM: Yeah, you get the humpback in the back, yeah. You would get ulcers, stomach ulcers. Some people had to be put on ostomy bags because you couldn't have a bottle because of what it was doing to the intestines. Yeah, it was just absolutely -- you really were better off dying back then. Yeah, I mean, I hate saying it that way but -- LB: Well -- DM: -- you know, it is what it is. It was what it was. LB: -- yeah. DM: But, again, we're fortunate now that the side effects on the newer medications are much, much less than they were back then because you didn't have the clinical trials like you have now. So, we know what's going to work. And there still is, in the pipeline, new medications coming down. We have injectable medications, we have sublingual medications, we have things you can drink. LB: Yeah, yeah. Some people have told me about -- and I moved here in 1987 but I didn't know as many people in the community until I started to be involved with the Pride festival, which wasn't until nineteen ninety-three and four. Then I was, Trish and I, were beginning to be involved. But in the eighties, there were a lot of funerals and I think FACT [reported?] people with regard to those funerals. Is that something that you were involved with or was it later? DM: Yeah, well, I came onto the board in, I want to say, nineteen ninety-two . And I guess I was the education chair, that person. I can't think who the person was that was the contingency person, chairperson. And what the contingencies are are applications that case managers in the hospitals who had HIV/AIDS clinics would apply to FACT for some kind of assistance. And we had different categories and we still have different categories, rental assistance, auto repair or help with their insurance, medications back then, dental, certain types of med-surg procedures, utilities, heating, air conditioning, things like that. We had, like, a miscellaneous category, like if a person was moving into, (coughs) excuse me, if a person was moving into an apartment and they needed a bed or they needed an air conditioner or they needed a stove, we would help with that. And then, of course, the funerals. And funerals were very -- it was one of the larger categories back then. And I can honestly say they have not really decreased. This year, so far, up until March, before we got hit with this quarantine and this pandemic, we had supported six funerals. LB: Really? DM: Yeah, six funerals. So, that still is our big -- LB: Yeah. DM: -- yeah, so they were -- you know, like I said, I've lost, at least locally -- that I know more than 400 friends -- to this disease. And some of them you know, because they were on the board of FACT or were heavily involved with FACT. It's still there. There still is a need. And, unfortunately, with the way that things are going, FACT has not been able to hold any fundraisers -- LB: Right. DM: -- because that's how we raise our monies, is through fundraisers. And we just had, we actually had a meeting on -- this past Monday, our first actual meeting in the office. I mean, we had masks and we were social distancing. But we're talking about possible events that we want to hold somewhere down the line. But again, this is all dependent on where we are six months from now and are we going to be back in the second phase of this epidemic, this pandemic? We don't know. We don't know because -- LB: How do you, because you guys at the FACT meeting may have been talking about this, how do you see this in contrast or in similarity to the COVID-19? Because there's some very significant similarities. There's some very significant differences. So, how do you see that? DM: Well, a person can have both. We have suspended all contingency requests at this point. And part of it is because the agencies, AIDS Activities Office, AIDS service center, is not seeing clients on a regular basis. LB: Yeah. DM: So, this is giving us the time to sit back and kind of look at things differently. We, you know, we know that there are -- I mean, anybody can get this, whether it's the COVID-19 or HIV. Well, with HIV, there are specific ways that you're going to get it. But with this COVID, there can be a myriad of ways because we just can talk to each other and one of you can have it and not know it. And when you're looking at signs and symptoms, it's pretty much the same with HIV. You get infected with HIV and it can take up to six months before you can test positive for it, be as little as -- it can show up as early, HIV can show up as early as two weeks after exposure but it usually takes three to six months. With COVID, it can be a couple weeks to a couple months, again, with symptoms, from what I understand. So, they are similar and I think education is important. It infuriates me, it really infuriated me yesterday when I hear that the Pennsylvania state Republican group wants to impeach Governor Wolf. Ah! What are you thinking? And all the derogatory stuff they say about Dr. Levine. What are you people thinking? LB: Yeah, yeah. DM: You know? Don't even get me started on that, Liz. (laughter) LB: Yeah. DM: No. LB: Well -- DM: No. LB: -- you're preaching to the choir, Dave. (laughter) Definitely the case. DM: Yeah. LB: Well, talk about some of the organizations in the Lehigh Valley that FACT has worked with and that you've worked with. I mean, you mentioned doing presentations for the youth group that we have through our community center. But you've been doing that all along for the last 30, 35 years, 40 years. DM: Yeah, yeah, we did a program with the NAACP a few years ago. Hollis Perry was instrumental in getting us to do that. And we're looking at doing something again when we can. I'd done a program for -- I can't think of her last name. She's the high school teacher, chemistry teacher, Rachel -- LB: Zane. DM: Yeah, done programs for her. I have worked -- I did training, I did the HIV training for AIDS Outreach when that organization was still viable, for Linda Gallagher. We have done, we worked in the beginning, in coordination with the Bethlehem Health Bureau. We would do intercity health fairs, like, in the projects in Bethlehem and in Easton -- and in Allentown. LB: How were those things received, when you're going into sort of - it sounded like like it's almost like a cold call. So, you're going into -- talking to people. What do you think, the response? DM: We have always been received very well. Like I said, we have bilingual people on our staff and they have [that?] on their staff, so -- and we offer testing in all these things that we used to go into. So, they were received very well. And then, of course, a lot of these events were grant funded. And then, money started to dry up, so we were no longer able to do that but we, you know, still be able to get the word out. We did, well, we were involved with Pride. FACT is involved with Pride, because we do the bingo, up until last year. (laughs) We can't do bingo this year. And I've done, well, not just me, people on the board of FACT, we are involved with Pete Schweyer and Mike Schlossberg., when they do their senior fest. LB: State representatives, yeah. DM: The state representatives, yeah. Very well received. And some of the older people, one says, "Well" -- and we have condoms out -- you know, "Well, I don't need these but can I take some for my grandson or my granddaughter?" I said, (laughter) "Take all you want," yeah. Yeah, we had been -- I think that FACT has been received very well in the community. I know when I go out to, I usually go to Palm Springs in the fall, (clears throat) excuse me, and I'll be going out, hopefully, again in November. But the organization out there is Desert AIDS Project. I don't know if you ever heard of them. I think I'd given Adrian some information on them. That is an unbelievable organization. It's like a city in itself. They took over, [was?] quite a few years ago, they took over the old VA hospital. And this place is like a compound. They have their own medical department in there, they can do testing there, they can do educational things. They have their own pharmacy. They have an area that's behind the major building that are apartment houses, complexes, just for HIV people, HIV/AIDS people. And they can live there, stay there until they pass. And I go out and I take information out about FACT and things and then they give me stuff. So, every year I go out, I try to pay a visit and say, hey, how's it going? LB: Great. DM: But, yeah, and like I said early on in the conversation, we're fortunate that we have what we have in the Lehigh Valley for people with HIV and AIDS. There are areas that have nothing. LB: Right, right. DM: I mean, you go [out?] to Carbon County, you go to Monroe County, they don't have that stuff there like we have here. LB: Yeah, imagine what that would have been like in the '80s and '90s, too. I mean, it wasn't just -- it was adversarial in -- DM: Yeah. LB: -- so, I think we have been lucky here. And a lot of that has to do with the kind of organization that you were doing and FACT was doing and the information shared (inaudible) doing. Did you used to go to the Pride festival and set up and do testing there or through the health department? Or how did that -- DM: No, no, we were not -- initially, we were not welcomed, initially. For some reason, we were not welcome. Again, the health police. And I think it was when -- I don't know who the original organizers were. That I don't know. But I think it was when Shawn and Rob Hopkins were part of that board, when they took over, and that's when we were invited to come and do testing. And that's when we were on the other side of Cedar Beach Lake there, on Linden Street. LB: Yeah, that was in two-thousand, when that began to change. I mean, it was sort of the whole organization changed over to a different model, -- DM: Yeah, but -- LB: -- [started?] -- DM: -- we did quite well, you know, lot of testing, lot of information, lot of condoms, you know? LB: Yeah, yeah, yeah. DM: But, yeah. LB: Yeah. DM: And then, so we've been involved ever since. And then, of course, the health bureau will still do some testing. They don't do the HIV tests, they don't do the STD testing. And then, Lehigh Valley will do the HIV testing and that, so we've got the bases covered. It would be nice to get the Bethlehem Health Bureau involved somehow. LB: Yeah, yeah. What do you think about PrEP and PEP? DM: I think it's needed. I'm okay with it. I think it needs to be pushed a little more. And as long as they're getting the information out about both of them, I think that's what's important. And then, to be -- the people who really want it, you know, then taking it, yeah. LB: Yeah, yeah. I just read a thing that said that in other countries, a year's course of PEP or PrEP costs about twenty-two dollars and in the United States, costs two-thousand dollars. DM: That's insane. But, yeah, [it does?] -- LB: And then, about a million people really need a prescription in the United States. And if that happened, it would be a significant end to the spreading of -- I mean, it could stop AIDS. It could really stop HIV -- DM: Yeah. LB: -- for people with -- and I think that's a historical thing. I hope that thirty years from now, people are, like, whoa, what do you mean? You can get over a counter, you know? DM: Oh, yeah. Yeah, one of the things that ticks me off is this statement that Trump is saying that, "Oh, now we have a vaccine, we're going to clear this," yeah. LB: And mention that for history. DM: Yeah. LB: Please just talk about that for one minute, to say what the current president said about that and what that meant. DM: Yeah, but, you know, what I've read is that -- well, he had made a statement months ago that he was going to have a cure for AIDS during his presidency. And then, just the other day, he made the statement that there's a vast amount of scientists who are extremely knowledgeable and that they have developed a vaccine that will cure AIDS and that there will be more information about this to follow. And I have heard nothing, I have seen nothing, it's a pipe dream from him. I mean, I wish it was true. I mean -- LB: Sure. DM: -- I really do wish it was true but -- and we know about Donald Trump, you know? Enough said about him. (laughs) LB: I want people in the future to know our concerns today about that and it certainly has an impact on COVID-19 -- DM: Yeah. LB: -- [and how through all?] -- I mean, everybody that I'm interviewing right now who is talking about their experiences with HIV in the nineteen-eighties and nineties is my age or older. You know, we're not too -- well, maybe Nan's a little bit younger. But, I mean, it's all people in their sixties or older and yeah, we were in our twenties and thirties when this stuff was first happening. DM: Yeah, yeah, we were, yeah. LB: Well, you know. DM: And I'm in my seventies. (laughs) LB: [Sure?], and Trish is too. So, all of our circumstances now, based on COVID, is we're really at risk. Just because we're over 60, we're really at risk. So, it's interesting that the folks that we know, I think, have been so careful about it because, as we #NotOurFirstVirus -- DM: Yeah. LB: -- we're just not really interested in taking the kinds of chances that people who haven't seen a devastating virus -- DM: Yeah. LB: -- would take. We know what it could do and [I interviewed?] somebody recently who said, "My biggest fear is that I would get this and give it to someone else." DM: Yeah, same here. LB: And they had the same fear about HIV, that they would give it to someone else, that they would give it to a group of people. And so, they -- that was the thing that they thought they could live with the least, yeah. DM: Yeah. LB: I'm sure you came across people that, the way that you were describing, telling people's partners and stuff like that, it's that kind of (inaudible) DM: Yeah. LB: Yeah. DM: Yeah. LB: Let's see, I think we've got about ten minutes left, so, in our ninety-minute interview. So, is there anything you really want to be sure that people understand about this time, that time, and the impact that it had on you? In some ways, it kind of shaped your life. DM: Yeah, I think, excuse me, (clears throat) one thing that I remember and one of the -- and I took as much training as I was able to when I was working for the health department. And I think the major thing for me was all of the death and dying. And I was in a training in Philadelphia and one of the instructors was a doctor in psychology. And he had said back then that, with the grieving process and the death processes that, at that time, and it may have changed -- is that it takes approximately two years for the average person to get over a death. And we were losing people on a daily basis that -- and especially people that we knew. LB: Yeah. DM: So, you know, I'm still grieving for some people. LB: Right. DM: And I think that was when -- and then, he died and that was really, you know, little difficult for me, too. LB: Will. You mean Will? DM: No, no, no, no, the teacher -- LB: Oh, I see. DM: -- who said that, yeah, the professor. Yeah, and I'm just dealing with HIV -- LB: (inaudible) DM: -- with that, yeah. LB: Sorry, I misunderstood. But what you're talking about is that the teacher was saying everybody was seeing deaths every day and -- DM: Yeah. LB: -- grieving process takes two years. I see, I understand, yeah. DM: Yeah, yeah. So, you may get over one person but now there's somebody else in line. And, again, and it's just with that. And then, you have people that didn't have HIV and AIDS, family members or friends that died from something else, whether it was a car accident or cancer or whatever. You add that to the mix. LB: Right. DM: You know? And then, for me, it still is difficult today and it'll be six years in September that Will has passed. LB: Six years. DM: It's still difficult for me. LB: Course. DM: You know? And I think with what we're looking at now, and I think it's really significantly different with death now, with this, is that people could not say goodbye to -- there could not be a proper service or burial. And that's what is just so horrendous about this disease. LB: Yeah. DM: You know? How do you get over that? You don't. LB: Right. DM: I mean, personally, I don't know anybody that has died from COVID-19. But you're seeing it. I mean, those initial pictures of them putting bodies in refrigerated trucks was, like, oh, my God! Those poor people! And then, hearing stories from people that couldn't say goodbye to their loved ones. And they still can't do anything, for the most part, that that's just -- I think the death of it all is really what's the important part. And then, I think the knowledge and the training that still needs to continue to happen, you know? AIDS hasn't gone away like this COVID-19 hasn't gone away. People are still getting infected, people are still dying with both. And we just need to be vigil-- we need to be aware. We need to keep practicing safe whatever it is, safe sex, safe businessing, safe whatever, and educating one another. LB: Right. DM: And trying to educate those individuals who are defiant. "Well, why the hell do I need to wear a mask, what I'm doing?" Or "why do I need to wash my hands?" But, well, I've been in healthcare since I'm fifteen years old. Like I said, I'm seventy-seven years old now. I still wash my hands, you know? Yeah, I'm not crazy about wearing a mask but I do. LB: Right. DM: I'm following the protocols. At least I'm trying to. So, I think just the educational component is still the major goal, is we need to keep educating, we need to keep educating, we need to bring people to the realization that this is real. LB: Right. DM: This isn't a fairy tale that we're going to wake up tomorrow morning and it's all going to be peaches and cream, because it's not. And I said earlier that I made a vow to my friends that I will never give up. And I won't. I end my presentations, I've always ended my presentations or talks with the last line from the movie Longtime Companion, where Will is walking on the beach in Fire Island and he says, "All I want is a cure and my friends back." LB: Yeah. DM: I can't end any better than that. LB: Yeah. Yeah, that's significant. DM: Yeah. LB: I think we're just about to the end and I just wanted to say one thing in case it wasn't clear when you were talking about it but Rachel Zane is the facilitator and advisor for the Gay-Straight Alliance at the high school, at -- DM: [Cool?]. LB: -- Allen, just so that that's on -- DM: Okay. LB: -- [information?], so that people can understand that you've been going into public schools to do some really significant programs. And she's a great resource to hook people up. I think the work that you've been doing, yeah, now you've had a lifetime of work helping people in this community. It's really been a significant thing -- DM: Yeah. LB: (inaudible) [lives?]. It's a big deal. DM: I, yeah -- LB: Yeah. DM: -- I really enjoyed my twenty, twenty-one, twenty-plus years at the Allentown Health Bureau because I've met some wonderful people. I love working with the incarcerated population. I loved working with the people in recovery and treatment. I loved working with the LGBT community. I loved working with high school, middle school, and grade school kids, especially the grade school kids, because you have to be careful what you're saying. LB: Yeah. DM: So, I learned in one of my trainings, for me, when I'm dealing with HIV and AIDS -- is to -- I would go into the classroom and I would put a big circle on the chalkboard and then a smaller circle in the middle of that, almost like a bullseye. And in the middle of that smaller circle, I would write the word AIDS. So, what I do then is I look at the class, to the kids, and I say, "When you look at the word AIDS, what does that mean to you?" So, they would throw back things to me and I would put it in the bigger part of the circle. And that's what I could talk about because they're the ones -- LB: [They were asking, right?]. DM: -- that were asking me. LB: Yeah. DM: It isn't a program that I need to take and say, okay, this is what we're going to do, this is what -- I mean, the teacher was aware of what I was going to do, so I was able to do that. LB: Yeah, yeah. DM: Yeah, and that was significant for the kids and they loved it. The kids loved it. LB: Yeah, yeah. Well, before we are done with this, we've got a couple minutes, want you to show your little FACT pin really good to the lens. There we go. I love that. I have one of those, too. DM: Yeah, that's the original one. LB: Yeah, yeah. And your t-shirt [is a?] -- there you go, there you go. I think that FACT logo is great. It'll live on through history -- DM: Yeah. LB: -- and through this video, among other things. DM: Yeah. (laughs) LB: Thanks so much. I'm going to turn the -- thank you so much for doing this, Dave, you've been terrific. DM: Thank you for asking me. LB: I'm going to turn off the recorder and just want to tell you a couple of things after we're done. But I just want to remind you again that when you get the transcript of this, you'll be able to change things. If you think, oh, that's not that person's name, you can change or delete it or whatever you want to do. This has been terrific. I really, really appreciate it and the whole community does. So, I'm going to turn off the recording now. END OF AUDIO FILE Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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01:28:17
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David Moyer, June 18, 2020
Description
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David Moyer talks about the AIDS epidemic in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. He focuses on his work as a nurse in the Allentown Health Department; shares about local AIDS education, testing, and the experience of notifying people of positive tests; the formation of Fighting AIDS Continuously Together (FACT); and how HIV/AIDS compares to COVID-19.
Identifier
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PH40_16
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AIDS (Disease)
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2020-06-18
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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https://lgbt.digitalarchives.muhlenberg.edu/files/original/4b5ee30f5f2b167362fc6f290c5046e8.png
115da40609f2094f07ad42c7e31740bd
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community: HIV/AIDS
Description
An account of the resource
In the spring of 2020, the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive received a grant to collect oral histories and written stories for 40 Years of Public Health in the Lehigh Valley’s LGBT Community: Collecting and Curating Local LGBT Health Experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19.
The collection consists of oral histories from individuals who experienced the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as oral histories from members of the local community as they lived through 2020's summer of Covid-19. Running through both are the themes of dealing with the fear of an emerging health crisis, loneliness and isolation, and coming together as a community in support and activism.
The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Liz Bradbury
Interviewee
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Larry Kleppinger
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=PH40_02.xml
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5.4 June 18, 2020 Larry Kleppinger, June 18, 2020 PH40_02 01:30:55 LVLGBT40 40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg AIDS (Disease) Larry Kleppinger Liz Bradbury video/mpeg LarryKleppinger_20200618_video.mp4 1.0:|25(5)|58(2)|93(2)|120(2)|145(5)|170(7)|199(16)|232(9)|269(13)|296(9)|333(2)|356(15)|385(7)|422(14)|451(13)|482(6)|513(4)|534(15)|567(3)|602(3)|627(11)|660(4)|687(8)|726(12)|759(8)|800(8)|835(8)|866(5)|899(6)|914(17)|941(4)|968(8)|997(15)|1018(6)|1041(13)|1078(3)|1113(3)|1138(15)|1163(15)|1204(12)|1229(3)|1256(12)|1285(3)|1306(8)|1343(5)|1366(14)|1391(5)|1418(14)|1445(11)|1476(10)|1499(14)|1528(9)|1559(12)|1588(5)|1613(3)|1636(6)|1659(5)|1696(9)|1725(5)|1754(5)|1787(3)|1812(12)|1849(2)|1880(10)|1907(3)|1926(4)|1949(4)|1978(3)|1999(4)|2022(5)|2055(13)|2092(13)|2129(7)|2164(5)|2197(12)|2222(3)|2247(2)|2272(18)|2297(3)|2324(13)|2351(7)|2380(12)|2409(10)|2446(3)|2469(7)|2496(16)|2535(4)|2562(12)|2595(7)|2628(7)|2663(5) 0 https://youtu.be/Lp28TrvOJX0 YouTube video 0 Interview Introduction LIZ BRADBURY: So, there we go, and then I’m going to do that. Good. So, I need to say with this project, Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College, will collaborate on 40 years of public health experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community, collecting and curating local LGBT health experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19. 0 133 First time becoming aware of HIV/AIDS LB: Okay! So, we’re all ready to go. The very first thing I always -- supposed to say, in the midst of this current public health crisis we’re experiencing, we want to take this opportunity to look back and reflect, to capture the stories of those who lived through the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the nineteen eighties and the nineteen nineties. This starts out with a question that says, “Do you remember the first time you became aware of the disease?” So, I’m going to tell you that and then you’re going to just say -- go ahead and go. Say whatever you want.
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 ; LK: Are you ready? (laughs) 0 207 People disappearing and speculation about who was ill LK: And once it did, then it just took off. I mean, there was a lot of fear, there was a lot of stigma. And I never really saw any of the ostracization that took place, which -- there was plenty of that later on, especially. But I noticed that people disappeared on us. They would just vanish. And people would be talking to one another and saying, “What happened to” so-and-so, you know? “Do you think they have the gay cancer?” And there was just rumor and speculation. So, that’s basically what transpired at the very beginning of that, yeah. 0 342 Fear turning into anger/ ACT UP forming LK: I remember there’s -- a lot of that fear turned into anger because, basically, there was nothing being stated by our government on any level, really, about AIDS at the time. I mean, we were on our own. And I know that we looked to ACT UP in New York, which was formed later on in the eighties. And they were quite instrumental in giving everybody a voice and setting the tone and making inroads in all kinds of ways. And so, all the cities in the country, I guess, picked up on that and there was this movement, basically. And so, that was inspiring. 0 391 Bar wars between Candida's and the Stonewall becoming a sporting event to benefit AIDS LK: I didn’t really participate in the activism. What we did in Allentown at a certain point, there was a stupid, silly bar wars thing going on between Candida’s and the Stonewall at the time and we were just doing silly things back and forth, just as we were trying to have some fun with life. And so, at a certain point, we decided that we would turn this into a sporting event to finish this off so we wouldn’t have to keep doing this back and forth thing. (laughter) And we decided to do an AIDS benefit. And that was nineteen eighty-five that took place. 0 467 Giving money from the Bar Olympics to the AIDS Services Center in Allentown LK: And then, we had to decide what we wanted to do with that, you know? Who we going to give this to? And we had come to discover that the AIDS Services Center at the time was serving a client roster -- I believe in nineteen eighty-five, there were fifty-three cases that they were serving.
 ; 0 518 Starting FACT, an organization to fund HIV/AIDS patient needs LK: And he also did theater productions and all -- he was involved in all kinds of things in life. What a spirit he was. He came to us and said, “You know, you guys did a really good thing here. You should create an organization to do fundraising.” And I was, like, “We don’t know anything about organizations for fundraising.” And he said, “Don’t worry, you’ll learn.” And he was right. So, he actually helped to spearhead that effort. We arranged to have meetings every week with a group of people and we pulled more people in. There were people like Micky Katz from the 13th Street Pub, Candida from Candida’s, Marky Cummings, Billy Leh from the Leh department store fortune, Larry Roth, Georgeann and Laura, Matthew [Stitzer?], Robin [Cook?]. I’m probably missing many other names at this point because it’s been thirty-five years now. 0 686 Saying goodbye to friends with AIDS LK: And the hardest part was when we had to say goodbye because I got the call and -- saying, “You should come over and say goodbye.” And I hadn’t done this before. And I walked into his bedroom and I sat down and I’m thinking to myself: what am I going to say? What do I say to him? And he couldn’t speak, he couldn’t move, and he was definitely -- he had the wasting and he was so thin. 
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 ; LB: Yeah. 0 849 Bars becoming the community's family / People rallying to help LB: When people -- you know, I was talking to a couple of other people because really, in those days, bars were so essential because there wasn’t much else and -- because Le-Hi-Ho had become AIDS Services Center, so it was really not a social place anymore. And in the bars, I think, in some ways, because of ostracization of family, they were replacing people’s families.
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 ; LK: Oh, yeah, definitely. Most definitely. 0 1133 Anger at federal government for lack of investment LK: Until we had more information. I was personally quite upset with the federal government, especially Ronald Reagan at that time, because he didn’t mention anything for at least the first six or seven years of his term. I think it was nineteen eighty-seven when he finally actually mentioned the word AIDS. So, that, there was a lot of anger at the time for that. And so, we just used all that fear and all that anger and channeled that into: let’s just take care of people. Let’s do what we can do for people. Let’s do what we do best: throw some parties and make some money for people.
 ; 0 1164 People investing their time in volunteering to help LB: Yeah. Did you know people that were -- I mean, I would guess that people were coming in and saying, “What can we do?” I mean, [I was?] doing that in nineteen ninety-two or ninety-one, saying, [you know?], “What can we do?” and that kind of stuff.
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 ; LK: There were some key players in that. I mean, the board members, of course, really were invested as far as utilizing every contact that they had to pull in. And if they heard of anybody -- say, “What can I do?” they would immediately pull them in and say, “Hey, you can be on this committee, you can help us set up for this event, you could sell tickets for this.” 0 1304 Events at the Summer Games LB: -- at Rainbow Mountain when they had the Rainbow Mountain stuff? What did you do there, what were you involved in?
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 ; LK: No, I didn’t work at Rainbow Mountain, I worked at the Stonewall. But --
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 ; LB: No, I mean --
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 ; LK: -- at Rainbow --
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 ; LB: -- for the Summer Games.
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 ; LK: Oh, (laughs) well, it was actually quite a large set of -- we needed all those volunteers for that because the -- I remember Larry Roth had gotten a band shell for the opening and closing ceremonies and we had to set up the different areas for the games. 0 1553 The Stonewall as community gathering space LB: Who owned the Stonewall then?
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 ; LK: Back then, it was David Bischoff. And, yeah, he was the sole owner at that time. And he was right behind us, which was -- he was actually a very supportive owner and I liked that about him because we actually had a victory party at the Stonewall when we won and we invited the other bars to come and we would buy cocktails for the other bar reps and things like that. So, he was definitely onboard with all of that, which was great. Good man. 0 1690 AIDS Services Center LB: Who was the person who was running AIDS Services Center then? Who was the first -- was that Dixie White that was the first person that was the leadership at -- was she the first AIDS Services person?
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 ; LK: I don’t recall her. I do know Ed Verba was there at the time that we had -- [was from?] --
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 ; LB: [Ed Verba?]? Oh, okay, yeah.
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 ; LK: Yeah. Is he still around?
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 ; LB: Yeah, he is, yeah. He’s on Facebook, so I see him now and then, sure. 0 1747 Side effects from medications LB: Were you aware of things that were happening with -- we’re talking to some people about medications that people had to take and how that influenced their lives and that they (inaudible) were aware of it and stuff.
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 ; LK: I heard a lot about side effects, whether it was diarrhea, constantly being tired. Like I said, most of the people that actually did admit to having AIDS were -- they put on one of their best faces. They were strong people. They were the fighters. The ones that disappeared, that’s not to say that they weren’t strong, they just disappeared. 0 1850 Having conversations about safe sex and putting out condoms LB: It’s true. In terms of, you know, encouraging people, what kind of stuff did the bar do to encourage people to have safe sex? I mean, was there anything that -- I mean, I know that that happened because I was around. But I think there was a lot of (inaudible) information through (inaudible) people couldn’t get any [of the pamphlets?].
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 ; LK: There was definitely -- I know there was conversations about using condoms. Some bars would put out condoms and eventually that became a mainstay, actually, you know? Condoms were there, period. 0 1944 Feeling energized to fight and be involved LB: So, talk about, like, how -- I mean, I would guess that things would -- like, how that was nuanced, the nuances of how that changed your life, I mean, just sort of the awareness of it and stuff --
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 ; LK: What? The awareness of what?
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 ; LB: Just that this was happening and people you knew might have gotten it or things like that. I mean, how did that -- just sort of an open-ended question to let you talk about anything you want.
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 ; LK: Well, it pretty much galvanized me and many others, many others, to do something about it and to be useful in this fight because no one was doing it for us, like I said. And I just -- it energized me. It gave me the energy that -- and, like I said, we used that fear and anger to fuel that so that we actually could spend that second job doing this benefit experience to pull it through. 0 2222 FACT emergency contingency fund / Where funding was going to benefit patients LB: So, when people were concerned about healthcare and circumstances like that, because I know that that must have been -- I had friends that couldn’t get healthcare because they were HIV-positive. Like, a doctor wouldn’t see them. Was FACT doing any kind of thing like that where they [would?] (inaudible) [for people?] or hooking up doctors? I mean, some of the doctors were really involved.
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 ; LK: We were helping to pay for doctor’s visits but we didn’t know anything about getting hooked up with doctors and things like that. That may have come later on, as well. Like I said, the first two years were pretty much the set-up years as far as getting the events in place and adding to that one single event the first year, then we had three events the next year, and the next year was that many more. So, that’s where the focus was in the very beginning. 0 2410 Celebrities coming out with their positive HIV status / Celebrity support LB: Well, so, let me think now. Oh, so, I was going to say -- so, I asked about that kind of stuff. So, when you were hearing about HIV and AIDS [and how?] -- before, I mean, people didn’t know anything about it. Then, you started to hear about the gay cancer thing, because I certainly remembered that. Did you start to hear about, you know, famous people talking about it or, you know, the sort of breakthroughs, when Reagan finally said something about it, was that something that people were sharing and people talking about that? What do you think about that?
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 ; LK: Wow. I don’t recall any famous people back at that time, back in the early to mid eighties or even beyond that that were coming out. I don’t recall that there were any because that would have been a career destroyer for them, let alone being gay. I mean, you saw what happened when Magic Johnson made his admission. I think that was in the nineties. 0 2523 Parallels between HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 LB: How do you see this, when you think about this stuff, it’s really hard not to think about this in relation to what’s happening now with the pandemic. And some of the things are very, very similar and some of the things are totally different, you know? Completely different. Do you have any insights on that? Have you thought about that and how that has a relationship and stuff?
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 ; LK: I would agree there’s, like, a parallel there. And unfortunately, it seems that this administration doesn’t seem to be taking this pandemic quite seriously enough. And yet, it’s not as deadly as AIDS was. I mean, with AIDS, it was pretty much a death sentence at that time, before they came up with cocktail therapy. 0 2714 Stigma of being gay LB: Did you have other people in your family around you that were, you know, straight people, whether they were family or other people that you knew that just, like, that were becoming aware of AIDS and you were educating them or you would talk to them about it or something like that, like (inaudible)
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 ; LK: Well, actually, no. At that time, I -- because there was the other stigma of just being gay, itself. And some families just didn’t react well with that. And that’s not to say that my family disowned me or anything. But some were religious, so I knew where they stood. And so, there was not a close bond there at that time. I stayed away because I knew that they were not really all that accepting. And it’s funny because over time, you see various things that do change. 0 2851 Le-Hi-Ho Newsletters LB: Yeah, it’s interesting. So, when Le-Hi-Ho was producing this newspaper and had information in it, you were talking about reading that stuff, were they talking about HIV during that time in that newspaper or --
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 ; LK: There were articles on it, yes, and then there was also -- I mean, it was pretty much a lot of different things. They also would report on the Summer Games, you know, how much money was brought in, the events and all that. There were all the bar advertisements in there, of course. There was a gossip column, which was run by Rob St. Mary, another character (laughter) who also we lost -- yes, we lost him, as well, I think in the nineties. 0 3070 The Stonewall as a safe space LK: But, yeah, I know at the Stonewall, I remember there were some straight people coming in and we put up with nothing. (laughs) It’s, like, you will come in here and you will behave properly, you will not insult anybody, you will not bring up anything as far as, you know, AIDS and -- there were two guys, actually, they called us butt pirates, which was an odd phrase. And they were basically ejected from the club, you know? We didn’t put up with -- we brooked no disrespect whatsoever from anybody. That was our safe place. This is our last safe place. You’re not going to take that from us. 0 3469 Comparisons of COVID-19 to HIV/AIDS LB: So, in terms of seeing sort of parallels to the -- I mean, one of the things about COVID, the big difference about COVID-19 compared to HIV/AIDS is that, although lots of people had HIV and lots of people were getting it, particularly when people didn’t know how you got it, COVID is -- you know, you can just walk by somebody and get it, so it’s a totally different circumstance and situation. And I think that the other big glaring difference is what you were saying about, you know, the president not saying anything about it for seven years, whereas because this is affecting straight people, COVID’s --
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 ; LK: Yes. 0 3781 Going to funerals LK: No, it was different places, it was different towns. But, yeah, lot of funerals. In fact, there were two on the same day and I was, like, oh, my God, how am I going to make both? They were both at the same time, too, so it was, like, impossible to make both, which was really bad, you know? And I worked with both guys but their families had set things up and we tried to, like, tell them, “Look, we want to be there for both of them,” you know? So, how horrible it is to have to make a choice, you know? It’s, like, jeez all mighty! Not only did we lose them, now we can’t get together for the funeral. Or one of them. That was a mess. 0 3851 Who volunteered to help with FACT LB: Yeah. Did you see, through FACT, family members that were coming forward to help with FACT?
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 ; LK: No, not in the beginning. That, I think that was an eventuality. There was definitely -- I think there was more of that, but not in the beginning, no. That was more just people that we knew and people that volunteered from the bars, friends of people that worked in the bars, friends of people that were helping us. It was a whole community effort on that. But, no, it wasn’t -- I didn’t see a lot of family members reaching out. I think eventually they did. 0 3929 Stigma around those with AIDS/ Being there for friends with AIDS LK: And people didn’t want to touch them. So, I don’t know how people do that.
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 ; LB: Yeah. Had you actually found information that it was okay? I mean, was it pretty clear to everybody that it was okay to touch people and be around people and, you know, stuff--
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 ; LK: Yeah, I think so. But at, you know, with Joe, I didn’t care. I didn’t care. I loved him and I didn’t want him to feel like he was being shunned. And I know that some people were shunning him. And I didn’t want him to have any more of that than he had to, you know? 
 ; 0 4099 Going to see the AIDS Memorial Quilt in Washington, DC LB: Yeah. Life was rough.
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 ; LK: [Yeah, I?] -- (laughter) it was, truly, you know? And so, I can only imagine how all those -- the persons with AIDS felt at that time. I can only imagine how difficult a time that was for them to -- I mean, we were stressing out, to have no idea about resources and to have to actually talk to strangers to get information and reveal yourself. I mean, I -- Joe was pretty good-natured about it, though. He was a tough cookie. (laughs) Later on, when I was at Woody’s -- (laughs) I lost about five or six people there while I was there but they’d already lost, like, nineteen people. We’d gone to see the AIDS quilt in Washington for the last time, when it was on full display. 0 4354 Discussing current HIV/AIDS medication, PrEP LB: Yeah. Are you familiar with -- I was talking to somebody else about PrEP. Are you familiar with PrEP? You know?
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 ; LK: Crap?
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 ; LB: PrEP. PrEP (inaudible) (laughter) 
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 ; LK: Okay.
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 ; LB: (inaudible)
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 ; LK: I have a hearing aid, too. (laughter) 
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 ; LB: No, I was talking about -- I was talking to Dave Moyer about PrEP and [said?] (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible) ask him what he thought about how that was going to help people, the [pill?] -- 0 4480 Educational campaigns regarding medications LK: Something like that. So, you hear about that and then they’re -- they’ve developed other drugs for it, so there’s other PrEP drugs, so that’s great. But I still think there needs -- there’s no real education about that. If this government was truly serious about eradicating AIDs like President Trump has said he wants to do --
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 ; LB: Yeah.
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 ; LK: -- well, then you would have this massive educational campaign and stop being such prudes in high school because, to me, knowledge is power. That gives you the power to make the great decisions in your life -- and actually good decisions so that you can live. I’m appalled that we don’t have more of an effort in that direction as far as prevention. 0 4676 Violence against the gay community LB: Well, we’re coming to the -- almost to the end but we still have some -- several minutes and the concept of this archived thing is [support?] people to ultimately look back at this -- you know, twenty, thirty years from now, people can look at this and say, you know, some of [the things you’re?] saying, people will never imagine that that was the way things were. And so, I was wondering if you had any other things that you might want to be sure that are covered that you sort of think, like, people wouldn’t believe that this actually happened or that this is still happening. But then, things happened that -- you look back and you think I can’t believe that happened.
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 ; LK: The thing that immediately comes to mind is just the violence against gays and whether that was because they were afraid of AIDS or they were afraid of us or they -- which, a lot of that is fear but also, I think, closet cases will act out in anger because they feel something inside and then -- but society’s saying that’s not okay. 0 4859 FACT as an active organization at a time when there few LB: (inaudible) [off of this?]. And I love that we’re talking about the work that FACT did because what an organization to rise to the occasion. Because a lot of places didn’t [have that. I mean?], we can look around at other towns around the Lehigh Valley and they didn’t do that. There wasn’t any organization like that in Reading, there wasn’t organizations like that in Scranton. So, you know, and those are big cities, good size cities, too. So, it really happened, I think, in the Lehigh Valley. 0 5008 Recounting of pranks between Candida's and the Stonewall / Stealing of the bar mascots LB: What were some other things that were happening between the bars?
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 ; LK: Oh, my God. Well --
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 ; LB: The silly things?
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 ; LK: -- for example, one night, the Candida’s crew raided the Stonewall. The front doors burst open and I was behind the bar and Rob St. Mary was there. And he’s looking at me and all of a sudden, [yeah?], boom-boom-boom-boom-boom, all these water balloons. 0 5195 Stealing the "Candida" record from Candida's LB: I think I remember Dina saying something about people stealing the “Candida” record out of the jukebox.
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 ; LK: Yes! We tied up her bartender and we actually left her tied up, with the business open. I mean, we did things that I can’t believe -- to say that we did, you know? But we tied her up, we made her give us the key to the jukebox, we stole -- and I had gone to all the stores in the Lehigh Valley and bought out every copy of “Candida.” (laughter) Little did I know that Candida was an egomaniac and she had twenty copies upstairs. (laughter) 0 MovingImage Larry Kleppinger talks about the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. He focuses on working at Allentown's Stonewall Bar ; the formation of Fighting AIDS Continuously Together (FACT) and his participation as the president of FACT ; the FACT Summer Games ; and people working together to create support and funding during years of government inaction. LARRY KLEPPINGER LIZ BRADBURY: So, there we go, and then I'm going to do that. Good. So, I need to say with this project, Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College, will collaborate on 40 years of public health experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community, collecting and curating local LGBT health experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19. My name is Liz Bradbury and I'm here with Larry Kleppinger to talk about his experiences in the Lehigh Valley community during this time of COVID epidemic as part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive. We're meeting on Zoom and today is June eighteenth, right? June eighteenth, twenty-twenty. LARRY KLEPPINGER: Yep. LB: So, I need to -- let's see. Thank you so much for being willing to share and speak with us today. I need to ask you to state your full name and to spell it for me. LK: My name is Larry Kleppinger. It's L-A-R-R-Y and it's K-L-E-P-P-I-N-G-E-R. LB: Okay. And will you please share your birth date? LK: Yes, June fifth, nineteen fifty-nine. LB: Okay. So, now, this is the consent part. So, I just have to ask you these questions. Do you consent to this interview today? LK: I do. LB: Okay. Do you consent to having this interview being transcribed, digitalized, and made publicly available online in searchable formats? LK: I do. LB: Do you consent to the LGBT archive using your interview for educational purposes in other formats including films, archives, articles, websites, presentations, and other formats? LK: I absolutely do. LB: (laughs) Great! Do you understand that you will thirty days after the electronic delivery of the transcript to review your interview and identify any parts you'd like to delete and/or withdraw from your interview from the project? LK: Yes. LB: Okay! So, we're all ready to go. The very first thing I always -- supposed to say, in the midst of this current public health crisis we're experiencing, we want to take this opportunity to look back and reflect, to capture the stories of those who lived through the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the nineteen eighties and the nineteen nineties. This starts out with a question that says, "Do you remember the first time you became aware of the disease?" So, I'm going to tell you that and then you're going to just say -- go ahead and go. Say whatever you want. LK: Are you ready? (laughs) LB: Great (inaudible) yeah, yeah. LK: The first time that I heard of AIDS was back, I believe, in nineteen eighty-one and it was through The New York Times. They had published a small article about the gay cancer. LB: [I know?]. LK: And I saw that and I was, like, wow, what's that? I didn't know why they were calling it a gay cancer. I was, like, why is it gay? And coming to find out that basically gay people were affected by it at that time, I guess. So, people started to talk about it. I worked in the Stonewall nightclub in Allentown at the time. And people were concerned but it wasn't, like, it wasn't a big thing until it actually did become a big thing. LB: Yeah. LK: And once it did, then it just took off. I mean, there was a lot of fear, there was a lot of stigma. And I never really saw any of the ostracization that took place, which -- there was plenty of that later on, especially. But I noticed that people disappeared on us. They would just vanish. And people would be talking to one another and saying, "What happened to" so-and-so, you know? "Do you think they have the gay cancer?" And there was just rumor and speculation. So, that's basically what transpired at the very beginning of that, yeah. LB: When that happened and people were disappearing, did you figure out later what had happened? Were they just afraid or were they dying or sick or what do you think? LK: I think that because of the symptoms that came along with developing AIDS, they didn't want to show themselves in public, whether it was Kaposi sarcoma, the wasting syndrome, all of that. It didn't really show up in Allentown at the Stonewall until probably around nineteen eighty-five or so. There were some people -- actually were brave enough to admit that they had it and -- but even then, people were still, like, a little antsy because nobody really knew how this was, still, contracted at the time and they weren't sure. So, people were, like, mm, you know? In the gay community, it was definitely much more accepting, of course. But, yeah. LB: Yeah. You think that -- were you surrounded by -- I mean, like, did anybody you know have it or [some?] -- LK: Yes, yes. And after a while, it became quite a few that we knew because at a certain point, people were definitely much more willing to admit it. In the very beginning, it was a secret because people would disappear. They'd -- or either ostracized by their families we later found out or they couldn't work for jobs anymore, that type of thing. There were some good friends, I guess, of some of them that took care of them. But it was definitely a difficult time at that time. LB: Yeah. LK: I remember there's -- a lot of that fear turned into anger because, basically, there was nothing being stated by our government on any level, really, about AIDS at the time. I mean, we were on our own. And I know that we looked to ACT UP in New York, which was formed later on in the eighties. And they were quite instrumental in giving everybody a voice and setting the tone and making inroads in all kinds of ways. And so, all the cities in the country, I guess, picked up on that and there was this movement, basically. And so, that was inspiring. LB: Did you go to New York? Did you go to any of the ACT UP things? LK: No, I actually never went to the ACT UP things. I had seen things on the news about them but I never went to them. LB: Yeah. LK: I didn't really participate in the activism. What we did in Allentown at a certain point, there was a stupid, silly bar wars thing going on between Candida's and the Stonewall at the time and we were just doing silly things back and forth, just as we were trying to have some fun with life. And so, at a certain point, we decided that we would turn this into a sporting event to finish this off so we wouldn't have to keep doing this back and forth thing. (laughter) And we decided to do an AIDS benefit. And that was nineteen eighty-five that took place. We called it the Bar Olympics and it was crazy events that were -- and Laura and Georgeann, who owned Rainbow Mountain Resort in the Poconos, the gay resort, allowed us to be on their premises for that event and they put a buffet together. They didn't realize, though, the scope that we were thinking of as far as doing this. LB: Yeah. LK: And so, we promoted this only in-house, basically, in Stonewall and Candida's. We sold over four hundred tickets at ten dollars apiece and then we had raffle tickets and we had businesses donate things for a raffle, that kind of thing. We sold t-shirts. So, there was this whole, like, collaborative effort between the two bars to put this together. That first event raised over six thousand dollars, I believe. LB: Yeah. LK: And then, we had to decide what we wanted to do with that, you know? Who we going to give this to? And we had come to discover that the AIDS services center at the time was serving a client roster -- I believe in nineteen eighty-five, there were fifty-three cases that they were serving. LB: Wow. LK: Persons with AIDS at the time, in Allentown. And so, we decided to give them the money. And their annual budget at the time was ten-thousand dollars. So, the six-thousand dollars went quite a long way for them. So, that was really amazing. LB: That was a separate organization, right? It wasn't -- because, [the ultimate?] -- LK: It was separate. LB: (inaudible) [hospital?] but, yeah, right. LK: Yeah, it was definitely separate. It was run by Ed Verba at the time, and I think he was pretty grateful for that. And then, one of the community elders came to us, Larry Roth of Lawrence Roth's -- he had a hair salon. LB: Yeah. LK: And he also did theater productions and all -- he was involved in all kinds of things in life. What a spirit he was. He came to us and said, "You know, you guys did a really good thing here. You should create an organization to do fundraising." And I was, like, "We don't know anything about organizations for fundraising." And he said, "Don't worry, you'll learn." And he was right. So, he actually helped to spearhead that effort. We arranged to have meetings every week with a group of people and we pulled more people in. There were people like [Micki?] Katz from the 13th Street Pub, Candida from Candida's, [Markie Cummings?], Billy Leh from the Leh department store fortune, Larry Roth, Georgeann and Laura, Matthew [Stitzer?], Robin [Cook?]. I'm probably missing many other names at this point because it's been thirty-five years now. (laughter) And so, we actually formed this organization, which was an empowering event for us. I mean, it felt so good to be doing something for people. And one of the biggest, I think, achievements of that organization was not just the growth through the years but the fact that we decided that fifty percent of our money that we brought in was going to be given to an emergency contingency fund that the board would vote on every week for people requesting money for rent, for food, for utilities, because they had no jobs, they couldn't work, they couldn't get up to work. LB: Yeah. LK: So, we thought that that was a real important part of the work. LB: Did you have people coming in and sort of outlining what their situations were or did they just -- did somebody bring, like, someone on the board bring it to you or -- LK: Somebody on the board would bring it to us. I think a lot of things came through the AIDS Services Center if I remember correctly, so -- and that was funneled through us, right straight through to us and we were -- and we bought air conditioners, things like that, things that people needed because they just didn't have any money. LB: Yeah, yeah. LK: Yeah. LB: So, did you have specific instances where you were talking to people that, like, you had to help them take care of somebody or you knew somebody that was sick or anything like that? LK: At that same time, there was one individual who had admitted that he had AIDS and he was -- wonderful, another wonderful spirit. And I know that Candida was instrumental in taking care of him. She hired him at the bar because I guess he couldn't work his other job anymore. And that allowed him to be able to work when he could. And she actually, I believe, had some in-house bar benefits for him for money, as well. And I didn't really get to take care of him. I spent time with him, a lot of time with him. LB: Yeah. LK: And the hardest part was when we had to say goodbye because I got the call and -- saying, "You should come over and say goodbye." And I hadn't done this before. And I walked into his bedroom and I sat down and I'm thinking to myself: what am I going to say? What do I say to him? And he couldn't speak, he couldn't move, and he was definitely -- he had the wasting and he was so thin. LB: Yeah. LK: And I just looked him in the eye and I said, "I'm here." And I said, "Everybody's here to support you and it's okay to go. It's okay." And so, that's one of the closest things that I got to with it. But over the years, we've met many people and there were people that were grateful for what we were doing. And we were just throwing parties and that's what we did, you know? And then, with the guidance of some other people that -- like, Joseph Simonetta was another person who actually helped us formulate the 501(c)(3) so that could actually be a non-profit. And the other thing that I loved about the organization was that it was completely volunteer. There were no paid positions. LB: Sure. LK: So, every dollar that came in went right back out to people that needed it. LB: Yeah. When was that, when you were talking about people that were passing away? When was that in the epidemic? Was it near the beginning or -- LK: I remember the second annual Bar Olympics that we did, that person I just described to you that I said goodbye to was at those games and we actually did a balloon release that year to symbolize the people that have left us. LB: Yeah. LK: And we let the balloons go, and that was before we knew that balloons were bad for the environment. (laughs) LB: Yeah, I know, [right?]. LK: And so, I remember watching the balloons. I looked up and the sky was a bright blue and he looked up at the sky at the balloons, as well, and he looked at me and he said, "I might be a balloon next year." LB: Wow. LK: And I just -- LB: Yeah. LK: -- that was -- and then, a couple other friends were there and they heard it and so we're all a mess. And it's just -- LB: (inaudible) LK: -- okay, let's pull it together, we've got to pull this whole event off for today. So, let's just do this. And I think he died the next year. So, that would have been nineteen eighty-seven that he passed away. But there were plenty of others that just, like I said, have disappeared. LB: Yeah. LK: Oh. Excuse me. LB: When people -- you know, I was talking to a couple of other people because really, in those days, bars were so essential because there wasn't much else and -- because Le-Hi-Ho had become AIDS Services Center, so it was really not a social place anymore. And in the bars, I think, in some ways, because of ostracization of family, they were replacing people's families. LK: Oh, yeah, definitely. Most definitely. LB: (inaudible) seeing, like, people were coming in and stuff? LK: It was just an incredible experience to watch people rally and to join in that fight and to want to do things and to contribute money, to contribute prizes, and just time and energy, sit on committees, and all the work that it took. And believe me, I know, it was like having another full-time job. And I had actually worked with FACT for two years. They actually -- I was the president. And I had never done any of this before. I think second year, we raised over thirty-three thousand dollars and we had three events that year. There were two balls, two dinner balls that we did, which were pretty fantastic. And then, Billy Leh, I think, took it over the third year. And that year, I think he -- well, he had so many community connections, he brought in well over, I think, one-hundred thousand dollars that year. I was, like, oh, my God! This is amazing! Oh, my God! LB: Yeah. LK: So, it was definitely, like I said, empowering. It was a very positive thing amidst all the tragedy that we were going through at the same time. So, propelled us forward. LB: I know there was a lot of funerals and you were talking about that on the phone, I think. And people have told me about it. I haven't been able to talk to anybody directly about this, but about planting trees down in the park? Did you know about that, when people were planting trees? They planted the trees because they couldn't get -- people didn't want to have headstones because they didn't want the stigma or the relationship of people thinking that it was a negative thing. They didn't want to [deal with?] that, so -- [and there?] -- LK: And there were people who didn't want to have open caskets, either, because it was just they didn't want to -- they wanted to remember them as they were, not as they ended. LB: Yeah, yeah. LK: Yeah. LB: What kind of stuff was the -- let me think what I'm going to say. You were living in the Lehigh Valley the whole time. Are you from here? LK: I'm originally from Lehigh Valley, yes. I left the Lehigh Valley in nineteen ninety-two to come to Philadelphia. So, I was there, I actually was at the Stonewall from, like, nineteen seventy-eight through nineteen ninety-two. So, I saw a lot in that whole time period. LB: Yeah. So, do you think that there was a -- times that were frustrating because of education? Like, people just (inaudible) to take the extra steps to take care of themselves? Do you think people were afraid to be out, to be around other people or they changed their behaviors significantly? Did you see any of that? LK: I think that people were talking about changing their sexual behaviors because once it was discovered what the main mode of transmission was, people would basically refrain from that behavior. And then, when people were told to use condoms, then condoms were a part of our lives and there were just things that we didn't do. And, I mean, yeah, absolutely, people did talk about it. LB: Yeah, yeah. Did you have anybody tell you that they had instances where they [were just falling through the gaps?] because people found out that they were HIV positive [or anything or things about?] -- LK: [I couldn't?] -- LB: -- [they?] -- or anything -- LK: There were families that shunned them. You know, if anybody did -- I think that most people tried to keep this a secret because of the reactions that they would get. I mean, whether you were drinking out of a glass, you know? I mean, there was actually a little bit of fear in the very beginning, even in the bars, as far as drinking out of the same glasses, you know? Did you wash that good enough, you know? That kind of thing. So, there was all kinds of -- a greater fear that, because of a lack of knowledge, that people would just, you know, freak out about anything. So, it was definitely a tough time and -- until we found our footing. LB: Yeah. LK: Until we had more information. I was personally quite upset with the federal government, especially Ronald Reagan at that time, because he didn't mention anything for at least the first six or seven years of his term. I think it was nineteen eighty-seven when he finally actually mentioned the word AIDS. So, that, there was a lot of anger at the time for that. And so, we just used all that fear and all that anger and channeled that into: let's just take care of people. Let's do what we can do for people. Let's do what we do best: throw some parties and make some money for people. LB: Yeah, yeah. LK: Yeah. LB: Yeah. Did you know people that were -- I mean, I would guess that people were coming in and saying, "What can we do?" I mean, [I was?] doing that in nineteen ninety-two or ninety-one, saying, [you know?], "What can we do?" and that kind of stuff. LK: There were some key players in that. I mean, the board members, of course, really were invested as far as utilizing every contact that they had to pull in. And if they heard of anybody -- say, "What can I do?" they would immediately pull them in and say, "Hey, you can be on this committee, you can help us set up for this event, you could sell tickets for this." There are all different kinds of (inaudible) people and it was just they all felt good to do that. They all wanted to do their part. So, it was an amazing outpouring from the community. And I always wondered, you know, jeez, if we can do this for AIDS, what else could we do on this planet? (laughter) LB: (inaudible) Tell me who some of those people were and some, like, something that you remember about them. LK: You mean, the people that actually volunteered? LB: Yeah. LK: It would be hard to really pick out just individuals because there were so many. Their willingness, their spirit, their joy, their energy, it was just inspiring to see all these people coming together for a common cause. It just blew me away. And, you know, today, in twenty-twenty, to feel what we've been going through for the last three or four months now and three-and-a-half years, you know, the spirit kind of feels a bit weakened at this point. And I draw on that experience, I carry that with me all the time. And those people all contributed to that. And that will buoy you the rest of your life. It's amazing. But, yeah, I mean, they were just regular folks that would just help and do anything. They would pitch in and do anything. LB: So, when people started FACT, did you think that -- was there some specific thing that made people -- it was the bar games that made people do that, right? Did you used to work --LK: Yeah. LB: -- at Rainbow Mountain when they had the Rainbow Mountain stuff? What did you do there, what were you involved in? LK: No, I didn't work at Rainbow Mountain, I worked at the Stonewall. But -- LB: No, I mean -- LK: -- at Rainbow -- LB: -- for the Summer Games. LK: Oh, (laughs) well, it was actually quite a large set of -- we needed all those volunteers for that because the -- I remember Larry Roth had gotten a band shell for the opening and closing ceremonies and we had to set up the different areas for the games. We actually, the very first game, we had actually had a softball game. And the lesbians were so much better at softball, (laughter) let me tell you. All I remember of that softball game, because I actually participated in the games for the Stonewall, was running into the woods when they were hitting the balls to go get the balls because they were just socking 'em out of the park. I was, like, oh, jeez all mighty, come on! But there was a drag relay race, there was a tug of war, there was an uphill race, there was pool volleyball. There was an inner tube relay race, which actually was kind of bar-themed because basically the one person had to sit in the inner tube, another person propelled them across the pool, and they had to drink their beer before they got out of the tube for the next person to get in and do it. So, it was crazy, stupid, silly, funny events and -- but people were prepped for this only because of all -- like I said earlier, the stupid bar wars that we had going between the two bars earlier, the people, the customers actually got involved in that, you know? They were, like, "Oh, my God, what's going on? This is great!" You know? I mean, they were enjoying the show. So, we thought, okay, let's take this show on the road. (laughs) LB: Yeah, yeah. LK: And we did. So, those were some of the games that we did and it was [a lot of fun?]. And then, of course, you had -- we had, like I said, four hundred people show up for the first event, which Rainbow Mountain was unprepared for. They thought it was just going to be us and a couple friends. LB: Yeah! LK: But it was four hundred people. And they had a buffet and then they ran out of food, so people were a little upset because there wasn't any food. But thankfully, they had a restaurant, so [people ordered?] -- restaurant and they realized it was for a good cause, so everybody left okay, I guess. So, it was definitely a Herculean task, though, to set that up. LB: Yeah. LK: And then, the second year, we got rained out and that was unfortunate because we had pulled other bars in. I mean, we had 13th Street Pub, we had Candida's, Stonewall, we had Woody's from Philadelphia -- actually came out because I had a contact with them. But unfortunately, they couldn't participate and they couldn't make our rain date, so that was a shame. LB: Yeah. LK: And then, Rumors, there was Rumors and there were, like, oh, at least -- probably, like, eight bars at the time that participated in, like, the SummerGames. So, it was a lot of fun. It took forever to do it, though. (laughs) All the [events?]. LB: How was that, when you had the money? Did you just funnel that money directly into AIDS Services Center or what was it, A-- was that what it was? LK: No, once -- the first year we did. I think we apportioned some money to the AIDS Services Center after that but it depended on what other things came up as far as what the board would appropriate. So, I don't have all the records and I don't remember everything that we did. But like I said, we still had the fifty percent that went to the emergency contingency fund. That was a given and that was never changed. LB: Right. LK: And then, the other fifty percent went to various organizations. And then, later on, actually, there was a chapter that was developed in Bucks County, in New Hope. LB: Right, yeah, was familiar with that, yeah. LK: Yeah, so it was fascinating. And then, they actually went off on their own, which was probably a bit better for them. LB: Yeah. Were you involved with Le-Hi-Ho? LK: I was not, no. The only thing that I, the only involvement that I really had with them was reading their publication, the Lambda Valley Monthly -- LB: Yeah, [I just?] -- LK: -- which I told you about. Yeah, I have to give you this copies. LB: Great, that's good. LK: Yeah, and that was one of the only sources of news that we had at the time, too. LB: Yeah, yeah. LK: So, local people would do, like, articles and editorials and Bobby Sweeney from Candida's would do -- actually, he was one of the editors, I believe, yeah. LB: Who owned the Stonewall then? LK: Back then, it was David Bischoff. And, yeah, he was the sole owner at that time. And he was right behind us, which was -- he was actually a very supportive owner and I liked that about him because we actually had a victory party at the Stonewall when we won and we invited the other bars to come and we would buy cocktails for the other bar reps and things like that. So, he was definitely onboard with all of that, which was great. Good man. LB: You think that the bar itself was a great place where you could congregate and get people involved? LK: The bar was a hub. LB: [You must really?] (inaudible) LK: That was the hub of -- LB: -- everything else, you know -- LK: Yeah. LB: -- [with the?] bar LK: It was definitely our island of freedom, first of all, and it was a hub of activity. It was our community activity place, yes. And everything pretty much happened from there, you know? Yeah, that was amazing. LB: Yeah, when you were working with FACT, did you have any outreach to, like, government officials or anything for information or to share information with them? LK: That didn't happen in the beginning. That may have happened under the leadership of Billy Leh. But not in the beginning, no. We were just basically trying to get everything together, get -- because we were creating events as we were going along. So, I mean, the only event that we started out with was the Bar Olympics and which turned into the Summer Games because I guess we weren't allowed to use their Olympics thing, term, whatever, [I was?] -- LB: Right, that's right, yeah. LK: So, it was summer games at the third one. And so, I forgot where I was. (laughs) You have to excuse me. I just turned sixty-one. Memory's going. LB: [We are old?]. LK: (laughs) Yeah, I don't believe there was that much government outreach in the very beginning, no. It was just a matter of putting events together. And then, there were people who actually volunteered their homes and they would do picnics and bingo and there -- so, people from all over, just, you know, adding to the mix and just creating a larger pot of money for everybody, which is great. LB: Yeah. LK: Yeah. LB: Who was the person who was running AIDS Services Center then? Who was the first -- was that Dixie White that was the first person that was the leadership at -- was she the first AIDS Services person? LK: I don't recall her. I do know Ed Verba was there at the time that we had -- [was from?] -- LB: [Ed Verba?]? Oh, okay, yeah. LK: Yeah. Is he still around? LB: Yeah, he is, yeah. He's on Facebook, so I see him now and then, sure. LK: Okay. I didn't know he was still around. I don't know if he moved away. LB: No, he's still around. because most of those people you mentioned, I know them. A couple of them I didn't know but then most of them are still in this area. It's good, because a lot of people aren't still around, so that's one of the things. I mean, people died, was one of the things that was -- happened, too. LK: Yeah (inaudible) LB: Were you aware of things that were happening with -- we're talking to some people about medications that people had to take and how that influenced their lives and that they (inaudible) were aware of it and stuff. LK: I heard a lot about side effects, whether it was diarrhea, constantly being tired. Like I said, most of the people that actually did admit to having AIDS were -- they put on one of their best faces. They were strong people. They were the fighters. The ones that disappeared, that's not to say that they weren't strong, they just disappeared. We didn't know what happened. So, yeah, the efficacy of the drug was not really that great because I think that Joe [Keppel?] found out that he had AIDS in, I think in eighty-five, probably eighty-four, eighty-five, and he died three years later. So, it wasn't like there was a long lifespan after that diagnosis. LB: Who was Joe Keppel? He was part of the -- LK: He was the person I told you about earlier that Candida'd hired and she actually did the bar benefits for. A lovely man. I actually have a picture of him still in my bedroom. A character and a half. Witty, funny, sarcastic. (laughs) But a lovely man. LB: Yeah, yeah. LK: Yeah, we carry them with us all around, all the time now at this point, yeah. LB: It's true. In terms of, you know, encouraging people, what kind of stuff did the bar do to encourage people to have safe sex? I mean, was there anything that -- I mean, I know that that happened because I was around. But I think there was a lot of (inaudible) information through (inaudible) people couldn't get any [of the pamphlets?]. LK: There was definitely -- I know there was conversations about using condoms. Some bars would put out condoms and eventually that became a mainstay, actually, you know? Condoms were there, period. Use these, you know? And then, the large cities would put together kits, you know, with lubricant, the condom, instructions, you know, things like that. But there were educational materials. But people were definitely alerted to it. LB: Yeah. LK: Yeah, and so that was your information center, as well, the bar, yeah. It was your activity center, your fundraising center, your island of freedom to have fun. It was an interesting time. LB: Were you working there every day? LK: I was. LB: That was a regular thing, [your work there at the bar?]? LK: Yeah, pretty much. We were open six days a week at the time. We were closed on Sundays. So, yeah, I was there pretty much -- at least five days a week, yeah. LB: So, talk about, like, how -- I mean, I would guess that things would -- like, how that was nuanced, the nuances of how that changed your life, I mean, just sort of the awareness of it and stuff -- LK: What? The awareness of what? LB: Just that this was happening and people you knew might have gotten it or things like that. I mean, how did that -- just sort of an open-ended question to let you talk about anything you want. LK: Well, it pretty much galvanized me and many others, many others, to do something about it and to be useful in this fight because no one was doing it for us, like I said. And I just -- it energized me. It gave me the energy that -- and, like I said, we used that fear and anger to fuel that so that we actually could spend that second job doing this benefit experience to pull it through. Because I sat on every committee, you know, because I wanted to know what was going on and what people were doing and I wanted to encourage people and I wanted to make sure that things were going in the right direction and that if anybody had any questions, I could find out answers for them if I didn't have the answers. So, it was definitely, you know, one of those types of things. But the remarkable thing is is all the core people that were involved at the time were of that same mindset. And that energy was just incredible. I mean, to know that you could -- you don't really have to say anything to anybody. You can count on them to do their part and to do everything that they need to do, whether it's pulling people in and beefing up other committees. And so, there was communication going on but you didn't have to do much of it because these people just were of a mindset, like, we're going to get this done. We've got this. And then, as you enjoyed the events that took place and you saw the funds coming in at each event, it was, like, that much more of a reward. So, it's, like, yeah, let's do more! Come on, we can do this. We've got this now. So, it was definitely exciting. I also had an eye on the cities, as well. Like, Philly was doing their own thing. I know that Woody's was doing a [Roll-AIDS?] benefit -- was a roller skating party, which was a lot of fun. And I'd never gone to it but I had talked to them about it because he would come up to Allentown every year to visit us and -- because he had a college reunion at the time, once a year. So, we would talk to him about that and I saw the advertisements for that. And he would tell stories about what was going on down in Philly. And so, we would share stories. It was interesting to hear what was going on in the big city, as well, yeah. LB: Did you -- LK: [So, we got, like?] -- LB: (inaudible) LK: Go ahead, I'm sorry. LB: Go on. LK: I was just going to say we -- there were a lot of great mentors for me at the time. That was inspiring, as well. People that, you know, knew that I needed help in this area or whatev-- it was just such a concerted effort. It was -- I can't say anything other than inspiring. LB: Yeah. LK: Even to this day. I treasure that time. LB: Yeah. So, it was interesting when -- because I hadn't heard this before but I'm not surprised that when Billy Leh was involved that there was a different fundraising, you know, capability. And I [have?] that that also came out of Ardath Rodale being involved with David Rodale and [inaudible] Rodale. So, was he around then? Was he -- LK: Yes. LB: (inaudible) LK: Yeah, I believe so. LB: Yeah. LK: I believe so. But he was quite instrumental, though, in pulling in all these community members, you know? Yeah, the straight community. And it was, like, yes, we've got some more help. Yay! And he just took it to another level. So, that was truly amazing to me and it was amazing to watch him in action, yeah. LB: He's still around isn't he? Billy? LK: He's actually in Florida now. LB: Oh, okay. LK: I saw him last year. I actually stopped down to visit him and he's doing well. He's retired ; he's amazing. (laughs) LB: So, when people were concerned about healthcare and circumstances like that, because I know that that must have been -- I had friends that couldn't get healthcare because they were HIV-positive. Like, a doctor wouldn't see them. Was FACT doing any kind of thing like that where they [would?] (inaudible) [for people?] or hooking up doctors? I mean, some of the doctors were really involved. LK: We were helping to pay for doctor's visits but we didn't know anything about getting hooked up with doctors and things like that. That may have come later on, as well. Like I said, the first two years were pretty much the set-up years as far as getting the events in place and adding to that one single event the first year, then we had three events the next year, and the next year was that many more. So, that's where the focus was in the very beginning. And then, there may have been more outreach as far as trying to hook people up with various resources within the community. But I do know that we definitely helped pay medical bills. That was another thing -- from the emergency contingency fund, that people couldn't afford their prescriptions, you know, all different kinds of things. So, that's where a lot of that went, yeah. LB: So, who was it that helped you set up the 501(c)(3), the not-for-profit thing? Did you say somebody helped? LK: His name is Joseph Simonetta. He was actually living in New Hope at the time back in that day. And they called him the senator of New Hope because he was quite the impresario. He also was a lobbyist in Washington. Very, very smart man. And he saw the potential in what we were doing, so he wanted to help, as well. So, it was just -- all these gifts came [forward?] and I was, like, oh, my God, this is kind of overwhelming, you know? And so, he was definitely a boost. I remember him also describing to me about ACT UP. Because I remember at the time, there were some members of the gay community -- were kind of turned off by ACT UP because they thought they were too aggressive. And, of course, the general public at large thought they were way too aggressive. LB: Yeah. LK: But he described it to me like this: he said, "You know what?" He said, "ACT UP is performing a vital mission. What they're doing is they are creating all this mayhem and noise and then people like me get to walk in the door with the politicians and say, 'We're not like that. But this is what we're looking to do.' And you bring in the reasonable voices. So, that way, you scare the bejesus out of them and you get them to do what you want, what should be done." LB: Yeah. LK: So, I loved that description. It was, like, God, he's good. (laughs) LB: Yeah. LK: Yeah. LB: And he was out of New Hope? He was living -- LK: Yeah. LB: (inaudible) yeah. LK: Yeah, he still actually has a house in New Hope. He lives in Philadelphia, as well. And I think he has a house in Florida. He's done well with his lobbying. He's done very well. I've had many, many conversations over the years, I still see him here in Philly every once in a while. Yeah, great man. LB: Well, so, let me think now. Oh, so, I was going to say -- so, I asked about that kind of stuff. So, when you were hearing about HIV and AIDS [and how?] -- before, I mean, people didn't know anything about it. Then, you started to hear about the gay cancer thing, because I certainly remembered that. Did you start to hear about, you know, famous people talking about it or, you know, the sort of breakthroughs, when Reagan finally said something about it, was that something that people were sharing and people talking about that? What do you think about that? LK: Wow. I don't recall any famous people back at that time, back in the early to mid eighties or even beyond that that were coming out. I don't recall that there were any because that would have been a career destroyer for them, let alone being gay. I mean, you saw what happened when Magic Johnson made his admission. I think that was in the nineties. LB: Yeah. LK: And that sent some shock waves through the nation, unfortunately. I don't know why. But, no, I don't know of any celebrities back then that were -- I think there was -- jeez, I don't actually even remember the celebrity support, except Elizabeth Taylor. LB: Yeah. LK: Yeah, she was one of the big advocates. But even she was later, I think. LB: Yeah, she was (inaudible) LK: It was later eighties? LB: -- it related to Rock Hudson and that was later (inaudible) so, certainly that was true. What, let's see, what kind of -- so, how do you see this, when you think about this stuff, it's really hard not to think about this in relation to what's happening now with the pandemic. And some of the things are very, very similar and some of the things are totally different, you know? Completely different. Do you have any insights on that? Have you thought about that and how that has a relationship and stuff? LK: I would agree there's, like, a parallel there. And unfortunately, it seems that this administration doesn't seem to be taking this pandemic quite seriously enough. And yet, it's not as deadly as AIDS was. I mean, with AIDS, it was pretty much a death sentence at that time, before they came up with cocktail therapy. LB: Yeah. LK: So, but I mean there's still -- I'd say it's a pretty high death rate with this, as well, and it's unfortunate that we don't have that leadership today, once again, which is -- strikes me as odd that that parallel's there because we could probably be saving that many more lives if he was setting an example for people and wearing a mask and telling people to wear a mask as opposed to this macho bravado that he puts off. I don't quite understand that at all, you know? I think you're much more macho when you have information that you give to people and that you actually care about your people. And that was the same thing with Reagan, really. I mean, he -- there was nothing said, nothing done, really, on his behalf. So, there's definitely that parallel as far as the leadership goes. As far as the diseases, not exactly, no. But I'm also struck by the indifference by, seemingly, a large amount of people, by not wearing a mask and being considerate of others, and a lack of kindness, a lack of consideration for others, especially for elderly, who are much more at risk. LB: Yeah. LK: And since we know that, though, I'm surprised once again -- I shouldn't be, I guess -- that this administration also can't say, "Okay, here's our national plan," which -- we need one, actually. We do need that kind of leadership. LB: Right. LK: "We're going to take care of the seniors. All the nursing homes and all the nursing care facilities, all the elderly, all the people with preexisting conditions, and all the people that are generally affected by COVID-19, we are going to take special care for them, okay? Young people, you definitely still need to wear masks. You're going to get it and some of you will die, as well." And, I mean, that message is not even out there because, I mean, how do you rate a person's life versus the economy? And they're saying you have to open the economy. I don't know. LB: Yeah. LK: You know? And I think that back in the eighties, you know, there was also some argument, oh, you know, do we have enough money for AIDS? You know, there's always a budgetary concern. And I was, like, how do you sleep at night making that statement? How do you sleep at night, not wanting to take care of people. I don't understand that. That's foreign to me. LB: Did you have other people in your family around you that were, you know, straight people, whether they were family or other people that you knew that just, like, that were becoming aware of AIDS and you were educating them or you would talk to them about it or something like that, like (inaudible) LK: Well, actually, no. At that time, I -- because there was the other stigma of just being gay, itself. And some families just didn't react well with that. And that's not to say that my family disowned me or anything. But some were religious, so I knew where they stood. And so, there was not a close bond there at that time. I stayed away because I knew that they were not really all that accepting. And it's funny because over time, you see various things that do change. I know that my one sister who is very religious, it turned out that her son is gay. And so, that, she did a one-eighty on that. I was, like, wow! And I figured that she would and I thought her husband would have more of a hard time with it. But he actually -- they're both advocates now for gay people and for their son and I'm so proud of them. In fact, I actually worry about them because they're in an area that is very conservative and they're very outspoken. And I said, "You have to be careful." I said, "There are people who will hurt you for what you say." And I said, "I know this for a fact. I've seen it for decades. So, please, listen to me." I am concerned about her. But I applaud her vim and energy and want to support that son every which way. So, there are positives that come out of it. But that's one of the things that I was fighting back then. So, no, there was no real exchange with my family because there was also some ignorance. Yeah, in fact, a fair amount of ignorance. And some of those people just can't be reached. You can try. (laughs) Facebook's also a teller of that. (laughs) LB: Yeah. LK: That'll tell you a lot about your family. (laughter) So, yeah, so, I -- no, I -- it wasn't really that I shared a whole of information with them. That was more for our community. LB: Yeah, it's interesting. So, when Le-Hi-Ho was producing this newspaper and had information in it, you were talking about reading that stuff, were they talking about HIV during that time in that newspaper or -- LK: There were articles on it, yes, and then there was also -- I mean, it was pretty much a lot of different things. They also would report on the Summer Games, you know, how much money was brought in, the events and all that. There were all the bar advertisements in there, of course. There was a gossip column, which was run by Rob St. Mary, another character (laughter) who also we lost -- yes, we lost him, as well, I think in the nineties. LB: Yeah. LK: He was more of a long-term survivor. But, yeah, he wrote the gossip column and it was funny as hell. He went under the surname, the pseudonym of Myrna Louise. (laughter) So, yeah, so there were a lot of different things in there. But there were some AIDS articles but it wasn't like, you know, any kind of medical go-to. You know, like, this is what you got to do. There were just, yeah, things that were happening, basically, whether it was governmentally or not governmentally and statewide and things like that. LB: Did people have a sense of where they could get any kind of medical help? I mean, could they go -- hospitals were letting people in? because you're really -- I've been talking to different people and they were sort of at different times of the epidemic. So, like, I was talking to Dave Moyer and he was later in this thing and then he was involved in some of the testing and some of the stuff. But I was also talking to a couple people and you're really talking about right at the beginning, when they didn't know anything and things, like, they wouldn't -- like you were saying, that, you know, is this glass clean enough or could you go into the hospital room? My Trisha's -- is a very good friend whose brother was -- so, at the very beginning, [yeah, then?], and he was in New York and they wouldn't bring the food into his room. They'd leave the tray out on the sidewalk, you know, out in the hallway. LK: Yeah. LB: And did you see any of that kind of stuff here where -- LK: I, no, I never had the chance to visit anybody in the hospital. Like I said, a lot of those people just disappeared. So, there was no information really given, I mean, to know what the resources were. And I would imagine they went to a doctor and they were perhaps referred to somebody who was much more up on AIDS in the very beginning. And I don't know that there were that many. So, yeah, that was probably a bare bones kind of time for gay people that had AIDS because -- I can't imagine that. I mean, just the fear that you had this, alone, knowing that it's a death sentence, and then having to just climb through everything, every obstacle, every obstacle to get the things that you need, you know, whether it's basic medical care, money, housing, support, I can't imagine. But no, I didn't get to see any of that. I heard stories, once again, because, I mean, people would come -- the Stonewall was more of a regional bar, so people come in from Reading, they would come in from Scranton, Wilkes-Barre area, from Philadelphia. So, it was really like a whole melting pot of just southeast Pennsylvania. And so, when you'd talk to different people, you would hear some of these stories. But I never got to see it firsthand, unfortunately. But I heard about it. LB: Yeah. LK: But, yeah, I know at the Stonewall, I remember there were some straight people coming in and we put up with nothing. (laughs) It's, like, you will come in here and you will behave properly, you will not insult anybody, you will not bring up anything as far as, you know, AIDS and -- there were two guys, actually, they called us butt pirates, which was an odd phrase. And they were basically ejected from the club, you know? We didn't put up with -- we brooked no disrespect whatsoever from anybody. That was our safe place. This is our last safe place. You're not going to take that from us. LB: Right, right. I remember that sign in the lobby that said, you know, "This is a gay establishment. If you don't like it, don't come in." I liked it. I remember Steve Black saying he didn't like that that sign was there and I thought it was great. (laughs) [Made me feel comfortable?]. LK: Yeah, it was crazy back then. I mean, there was actually -- somebody shot something through our door. It was a wooden door in the very beginning, when I first started there. And that actually pierced the door -- I don't know if it was, like, a pellet gun, but it actually came through the door and it hit various customers. Some got hit in the neck. And it came back, actually, pretty far in the club. And that's why we actually put, like, a metal coating over the doors at that point because, like, this is ridiculous. So, yeah, there was all kinds of crazy things happening back then. LB: Yeah. LK: We had to hire off-duty police officers to protect us. That was a whole 'nother added expense to -- so people would feel safe, because people were getting beat up in the back parking lot. Yeah, that was the other thing: the religion, the religious right was -- that was another thing that fueled our anger. I mean, telling us way back then that this was God's cure against homosexuals, you know? I was, like, whoa, whoa, the vitriol, the hate, the lack of empathy, that didn't seem very religious to me. So, that, basically, that -- disintegrate any respect I had for religion at that point. I'm spiritual but I'm not religious. LB: Did you have -- were there instances where people directly -- brought that kind of information to the bar? You know (inaudible) made letters to the editor -- LK: Yeah. LB: (inaudible) LK: No, we had a pretty secure team at the front door. If there was anything, I was never even aware of it, you know? And I actually worked at the back bar at the Stonewall and then later on, I was deejaying. So, I was more towards the back. So, anything that went on, I found about at the end of the night. And most things were not even worth commenting about because they had everything under control at that front door. That was like Fort Knox. And that was Markie Cummings and Barry Eastwood. They were amazing together. (laughs) Nothing got by them. Nothing, yeah. LB: They were the bouncers? LK: Markie actually was the person -- took the money at the door and Barry was the bouncer. But they were extremely protective, observant, and they could spot trouble in a heartbeat. I know that one person actually came in and for some reason, she wasn't letting them in. I forget what it was. And the person said, "You're prejudiced, that's why you're not letting me in." And she said, "I'm prejudiced against assholes." So, that's where that stood. He didn't get in. (laughs) But I've just -- my heart breaks still to this day for all those people that, A, disappeared and never really had a chance to live their lives or to enjoy the life or to enjoy those islands of freedom. And I fantasize sometimes what it'd be like today to have more -- those people around, if they were still around. Because my age group was pretty much decimated, you know, which made dating really hard. (laughs) But I do fantasize about that every once in a while, thinking about that. I think there was -- actually, in one of the movies, where somebody had that fantasy scene towards the end of the movie where everybody was alive again. And that was powerful. LB: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, in fact, doing any kind of -- because of that, I mean, you know, sometimes, when I think through our Pride festivals or stuff like that -- I mean, MCC has always been there -- it's been around almost as long as FACT, Metropolitan Community Church, you know? There was a link, I think, through the Pride festival there where people had some kind of spiritual support and (inaudible) were you seeing any kind of outreach? I mean, I remember way back in, well, it was, like, nineteen ninety-three when we were trying to [insert?] laws and stuff. And there were a couple of ministers that were working with us, directly working with us. And that was really good because it was hard to -- I feel the same way as you do. It's hard to be enthusiastic about religion and people using it to [say negative things you?] -- not really getting anything on the other side, so -- but I think there's a big variety of people that used to go to the Stonewall. I think one of the things that would frustrate me in (inaudible) years of when I went to bars when I was younger -- that there were people that were so closeted -- that they could've really helped but they were really just there to hang out and then leave, who weren't there for the community. And -- LK: Yeah, and that's another reason why a lot of people disappeared, though, too, because they were closeted. They did not want that to be known. They didn't want anybody to know. And that's quite the statement, you know, when you have to hide your life. LB: Yeah. LK: And actually, for me, it's always been a matter of: it's none of your business what I do in my bedroom and you shouldn't be concerned about it. And why are you so concerned about it, you know? So, it is what it is. Or it was what it was and it still is what it is to some degree today. LB: Well (inaudible) LK: It's definitely better. LB: Yeah. LK: We have a lot of work to do, still. LB: True. It's true. LK: Lot of work to do still. LB: So, in terms of seeing sort of parallels to the -- I mean, one of the things about COVID, the big difference about COVID-19 compared to HIV/AIDS is that, although lots of people had HIV and lots of people were getting it, particularly when people didn't know how you got it, COVID is -- you know, you can just walk by somebody and get it, so it's a totally different circumstance and situation. And I think that the other big glaring difference is what you were saying about, you know, the president not saying anything about it for seven years, whereas because this is affecting straight people, COVID's -- LK: Yes. LB: -- straight people, they're [allied?] all over the place. And even if the president isn't saying stuff about it, everybody else is. They're talking about it every -- constantly. The similar-- LK: I believe that that's -- [you?] -- that was one of the beliefs of the government at that time. It was, like, oh, it's just affecting the gays, you know? So, you know, let's just make them go away. I really believe that because I -- to me, it's just inexcusable that for seven years and with the mounting toll of deaths that you do nothing, you say nothing. You could have used that bully pulpit to educate people. You could have used that to save lives. To me, that's just inexcusable. I still haven't forgiven Ronald Reagan for that. And I know you're not supposed to speak ill of the dead but I intensely dislike that man, bordering on hate. And I don't like to hate. LB: Yeah. Makes you angry that you have to feel [like that?]. LK: That wells right back up. It doesn't go away. LB: Yeah. LK: And I've come to terms with it but it's still there and it's still kind of fresh. And so, it's amazing. And I can draw on that to motivate myself to do things once in a while, you know? But, yeah, that was -- and once again, though, it's -- that parallel makes me a little crazy and it definitely reminds me and brings that feeling back where we have a leader who's not really doing what he should be doing, although there has been some response. But also, the fear. LB: Right. LK: People, there was definitely a fear out there. There still is, to a large degree. I mean, you have some people going around, you know, "Give my liberty back," all that kind of crap, whatever. The reality is that there is still a lot of fear out there in the population. So, they're pretty much where we were back in the eighties. So, that's another kind of parallel. Kind of. LB: Yeah, yeah. The interesting thing was that when we were dealing with HIV/AIDS, we were in the middle of the epidemic, people our age, because we're about the same age, is -- a little older than -- but the big similarity or interesting thing is we are the same group of people. We Baby Boomers who are moving into senior citizen land and who are at higher risk for COVID are the ones that were fighting the HIV/AIDS (inaudible) LK: Interesting. LB: -- we were kids. LK: Yeah. LB: We were twenty-three -- LK: Yeah, that's right. LB: -- and it's a big difference about life then. LK: Yeah, yeah. It's weird to kind of be under attack again, though. It's, like, wow, okay, here we go. That's kind of weird. Not quite the same, though, but still -- LB: Yeah, it feels different, yeah. One of the things that we had during the AIDS epidemic, we found, is these chosen families that came to help people who were HIV-positive, that came to help people who were alone, who came to help people that had been ostracized. The bad thing is that people presume that these chosen families are something that will continue to take care of us into our eighties. The reality is, we were the age of the people that we were taking care of, yeah. When lesbians were taking care of their gay male friends, when I was doing that, I was twenty-five and they were twenty-five. LK: Yeah. LB: Now I'm sixty-three and they're sixty-three. LK: Sixty-one here, yeah. Yeah, I get you. LB: And when we get to be eighty, we can't go, well, our chosen family -- we're all going to be eighty! And it's a -- LK: Yeah. LB: -- that, in a way, we did such a great job coming together, helping each other during the AIDS epidemic and -- LK: Yeah. LB: -- the presumption is we can all do it in our eighties and we can't. LK: No. LB: It's not the same. LK: No, it's not, you know? And, you know, as we get older and we lose the people that are still with us, thankfully, but we lose them now and so you do lose your chosen family. So, you are much more alone now. It's, like, oh, okay. Now what do I do next? I just remember going to too many funerals, though. LB: Yeah. LK: Yeah. LB: What was that -- LK: Hmm? LB: Was it usually the same place? LK: No, it was different places, it was different towns. But, yeah, lot of funerals. In fact, there were two on the same day and I was, like, oh, my God, how am I going to make both? They were both at the same time, too, so it was, like, impossible to make both, which was really bad, you know? And I worked with both guys but their families had set things up and we tried to, like, tell them, "Look, we want to be there for both of them," you know? So, how horrible it is to have to make a choice, you know? It's, like, jeez all mighty! Not only did we lose them, now we can't get together for the funeral. Or one of them. That was a mess. LB: Yeah, yeah. LK: Interesting, though, because, like, some families just -- it was very small representation of family and it was much more chosen family, though the chosen families were the ones that were there to actually support them and to be there to memorialize them. LB: Yeah. Did you see, through FACT, family members that were coming forward to help with FACT? LK: No, not in the beginning. That, I think that was an eventuality. There was definitely -- I think there was more of that, but not in the beginning, no. That was more just people that we knew and people that volunteered from the bars, friends of people that worked in the bars, friends of people that were helping us. It was a whole community effort on that. But, no, it wasn't -- I didn't see a lot of family members reaching out. I think eventually they did. But, like I said, that was all way back in the beginning when everything was still so stigmatized, so heavily stigmatized that people were definitely ostracized from their families or the families couldn't be bothered with them. It was, like, "I don't want to catch that," you know? I don't know how you do that. I don't know how you sleep at night. Because I -- you know, Joe [Keppel?] was one of the first people that I actually got to make sure that he got his hugs and kisses and that he felt that love because a lot of them felt like they couldn't be touched anymore. LB: Yeah. LK: And people didn't want to touch them. So, I don't know how people do that. LB: Yeah. Had you actually found information that it was okay? I mean, was it pretty clear to everybody that it was okay to touch people and be around people and, you know, stuff-- LK: Yeah, I think so. But at, you know, with Joe, I didn't care. I didn't care. I loved him and I didn't want him to feel like he was being shunned. And I know that some people were shunning him. And I didn't want him to have any more of that than he had to, you know? And so, I know that Candida was there for him. I know that [Cathy Kaiser?] was there for him. She used to work at Candida's, she -- another character, whoa. And she actually took him into her home and he stayed there with her. And, yeah, and I remember I stayed overnight there a couple times and, yeah, those people needed love just like everybody else, especially then, at that time. Oh, my God. They had enough to deal with. LB: Yeah, yeah. Did you have, like, a routine to see people like that if you, you know, [call 'em up?] and -- LK: I'm sorry? LB: Did you have a routine where you [had?] people that you were calling and checking on and stuff like that? Or was that something that people just shared with each other [and?] -- to go and see these people? LK: Oh, yeah. I mean, definitely. I mean, there had to be a comfort level, I think, for the persons that had AIDS for that. But, I mean, Joe was definitely in that whole thing. (laughs) And Katie would call me and say, "Hey, you know, let's do something with Joe," whatever, and I'm, "Sure, okay. I'm not doing anything. Let's go." So, it was just one of those types of things where it was just a family kind of thing, yeah. And that chosen family, wow, that got me through life. All of those people. I mean, whether it was just an acquaintance with a great conversation or the core group of friends that I still carry with me today, amazing, amazing people. But they're my -- they were my chosen family because, like I said, I left my family because I knew that most of them would not understand what I was about. And I was not about to subject myself to that, no. LB: Yeah. Life was rough. LK: [Yeah, I?] -- (laughter) it was, truly, you know? And so, I can only imagine how all those -- the persons with AIDS felt at that time. I can only imagine how difficult a time that was for them to -- I mean, we were stressing out, to have no idea about resources and to have to actually talk to strangers to get information and reveal yourself. I mean, I -- Joe was pretty good-natured about it, though. He was a tough cookie. (laughs) Later on, when I was at Woody's -- (laughs) I lost about five or six people there while I was there but they'd already lost, like, nineteen people. We'd gone to see the AIDS quilt in Washington for the last time, when it was on full display. LB: Yeah. LK: And that was overwhelming. And we got to see the -- Woody's quilt with all the names of all the Woody's employees that had passed. And I went by a number of the quilts and there was one panel that struck me. And there was, like, a butterfly on it and there was a sun and the words were sewn on it, "Not a day goes by." And that just hit me, the feeling, because it was so true that not a day went by that you wouldn't think about these people, that you didn't -- they made you smile, they made you cry, made you mad. But not a day that went by that you wouldn't think about them. So, that panel, particularly, struck me hard. And I treasure that memory, too. LB: Yeah. LK: Yeah. LB: Was that in the March on Washington or just when they had the AIDS quilt there? Do you remember when that was? LK: It was just when they had the AIDS quilt and I -- it was the last time they were having the whole thing in its entirety on display. LB: Yeah. LK: So, we had organized a bus trip from Woody's to go down and see it. That was the early nineties. And, yeah, that was powerful. LB: Yeah. LK: That was powerful because you imagined that each one of those panels was a person. And so, that just filled the entire -- I think it was on the Mall. LB: Yeah. LK: And it was incredible. It was an incredible sight. Overwhelming. LB: Yeah. Well, I know that FACT brought the quilt to Lehigh Valley several times as [a program?]. It was part of the Summer Games and other events, too. But, yeah, seeing the whole thing, I think that was nineteen ninety-three when that -- when it was there, when I was there for that. LK: Yeah, that's after I had left. LB: Yeah. LK: Right after. LB: Yeah. LK: I was just so glad to see that organization continue on, though, and to this day, you know? LB: Yeah. LK: And kudos to the people that are still there today: Carl Mancino, Brian Marx, just that whole cast. I mean, they've been fighting the good fight for a long time. And I told them, when -- I was living in Allentown once again from two thousand, two thousand thirteen and actually asked me to be part of the board members again. And I said, "No, I don't really have the time to do that," I said, "but what you do need to do is get some younger blood in -- (laughter) we need to recruit some new people because you guys need a break, first of all. And secondly, we got to get the next generation going here and show them what to do." So, I don't know if they took [the pep talk?] but -- so, that what was where they needed to be -- LB: It's hard. I think it's hard. They've had some younger people but I think it's hard to do. LK: Well, it's because everything's changed, too, you know? I mean, you have the medications now, you know? It's one pill a day. And so, I guess that makes a whole difference in life for people. But there are still people who need help. I don't know exactly what those numbers are but -- yeah. LB: Yeah. Are you familiar with -- I was talking to somebody else about PrEP. Are you familiar with PrEP? You know? LK: Crap? LB: PrEP. PrEP (inaudible) (laughter) LK: Okay. LB: (inaudible) LK: I have a hearing aid, too. (laughter) LB: No, I was talking about -- I was talking to Dave Moyer about PrEP and [said?] (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible) ask him what he thought about how that was going to help people, the [pill?] -- LK: I just wish there was more education about that because there are people that are afraid of that or were afraid of that because they didn't know the efficacy of it. LB: Yeah. LK: And also, the cost, does your -- can you afford it, will your prescription plan cover it? So, healthcare in this country still, to this day, is still a major issue. LB: Yeah. LK: I think that Obama had the right idea with Obamacare but he didn't get everything that he wanted in that bill, you know? He had (inaudible) the pharmaceutical industry, the lawyers, the healthcare lobby. So, we lost out on a lot of things as far as -- eventually, it's going to have to go single payer. There's no way that we can afford to keep going in this direction for that. So, yeah, that's paramount at this point, you know, as far as the healthcare end of that. But PrEP, yeah, I mean, I even have my own doubts about it and it wasn't -- you know, you can actually Google things but -- anymore, who knows what's real and what's not any-- so, we've been thrown into a whole different dimension, it seems. I'm, like, what is going on anymore as far as information goes? It used to be you look things up, there's your information, that's the way it is. Well, not necessarily anymore, you know? So, I think there's a lot of people out there that had doubts about it and some still do. And then, we come up with, then -- I think PrEP has been -- or Truvada. Truvada is the one that was canceled because -- LB: Truvada's the company that produces PrEP.LK: -- bone problems. They had bone problems. LB: Yeah. LK: Something like that. So, you hear about that and then they're -- they've developed other drugs for it, so there's other PrEP drugs, so that's great. But I still think there needs -- there's no real education about that. If this government was truly serious about eradicating AIDs like President Trump has said he wants to do -- LB: Yeah. LK: -- well, then you would have this massive educational campaign and stop being such prudes in high school because, to me, knowledge is power. That gives you the power to make the great decisions in your life -- and actually good decisions so that you can live. I'm appalled that we don't have more of an effort in that direction as far as prevention. LB: Right, yeah. LK: I mean, you have the information, so -- and you have the medication. So, what are you doing? Back in the eighties, we didn't have education in the very beginning. We had nothing to go on. We had rumor, innuendo, fear, that's it, you know? So, just don't have sex. Okay, all right. That's all we had to deal with. At least now, you have the permission -- get the information out there, dammit! LB: Yeah, yeah. LK: I think in your larger cities, you have definitely good resources for that. But even that, I mean, the -- that should be supplemented with a national campaign to actually -- you could eradicate [this?]. I mean, you see the effort that we're putting into a vaccine for COVID-19, hello. LB: Right. LK: We still don't have a vaccine for AIDS. LB: Right, yeah, yeah. LK: Do you wonder sometimes that maybe that's because they don't want to have a cure for it? I don't know. Call me old-fashioned, call me suspicious, call me a conspiracy theorist, which I try not to be, because I can't stand that. But I, you know, when it comes to gays, we seem to have been on the lowest part of the totem pole along with minorities. And so, therefore, there's a lot less care given our way, a lot less though given our way. It's true. So, I don't trust them. (laughs) Still. LB: Well, you go through, you know, an epidemic like HIV/AIDS where you have the kinds of information that was kept from our community for seven or eight years and still (inaudible) [ways?], it's hard not to be suspicious [that every?] (inaudible) LK: Yeah. LB: Yeah. LK: Yeah, which, you know, I mean, in the current environment, also, not to get off the topic, but -- I mean, but with minorities -- I mean, with black people, you know, I can understand their mistrust of the system, completely. So, I identify with that and I'm sure that that's magnified probably tenfold for them. I mean, God! But, yeah, education would be definitely a place to start to try and put your money where your mouth is. LB: Well, we're coming to the -- almost to the end but we still have some -- several minutes and the concept of this archived thing is [support?] people to ultimately look back at this -- you know, twenty, thirty years from now, people can look at this and say, you know, some of [the things you're?] saying, people will never imagine that that was the way things were. And so, I was wondering if you had any other things that you might want to be sure that are covered that you sort of think, like, people wouldn't believe that this actually happened or that this is still happening. But then, things happened that -- you look back and you think I can't believe that happened. LK: The thing that immediately comes to mind is just the violence against gays and whether that was because they were afraid of AIDS or they were afraid of us or they -- which, a lot of that is fear but also, I think, closet cases will act out in anger because they feel something inside and then -- but society's saying that's not okay. So, they will lash out because they have that anger and conflict inside themselves. So, they have to try and get -- let some of that out. So, they would take it out on the gays. I was amazed at the amount of violence. You know, just senseless violence and the fact that it would take two, three, four, five guys to beat up one guy. That just -- what? Why? It was also senseless, you know? LB: Yeah. LK: And I like things like this because I think that people do need to have that time capsule, look back and say, oh, can you believe this? Oh, my, I don't believe this at all! Because I know that -- I had spoken to one of my coworkers who has now left us all. So, he was eighty-three when he passed a couple years ago. And he had told me a story back in the day in Philadelphia in, like, the fifties and what it was like to be gay then. And at one of the bars here, I'm not sure if it was Raffles or if it was Drury Lane, but they had a system where, if the police were coming into bust them or to check on them, you know, they had -- the front door man had, like, a light switch and he would flip the light switch in the bar. And so, the lesbians were dancing with the lesbians, the gays with the gays. They would switch and dance with each other, man and woman, so that when the cops came in, everything looked okay. So, it blows my mind to have that story told to me about the fifties, so I can only imagine thirty years from now what it would be like for someone to hear about the '80s and how we survived the disease and how we were treated in the beginning with this disease. Yeah, I think this is really important. LB: Yeah, it's good to get this information. I think it's very important and I really, really -- LK: Yeah. LB: (inaudible) [off of this?]. And I love that we're talking about the work that FACT did because what an organization to rise to the occasion. Because a lot of places didn't [have that. I mean?], we can look around at other towns around the Lehigh Valley and they didn't do that. There wasn't any organization like that in Reading, there wasn't organizations like that in Scranton. So, you know, and those are big cities, good size cities, too. So, it really happened, I think, in the Lehigh Valley. LK: Liz, it gives me chills to this day thinking about it because it just seemed like magic to me. It was an experience, like I said, that I will always treasure, I will cherish, I will never forget. I carry it with me and it propels me forward. Those people propel me forward. They were an inspiration. LB: Right. LK: So, yeah, I mean, we were very lucky to have that. And it was just the right timing of it, just seems, I guess, that sometimes it happens. And we had the right mix of people and then there were others that just glommed onto that and added to that critical mass. That just made the whole thing just explode out, work. It was truly an amazing time, though. Frightening time, amazing time. And we actually tried to take that fear and turn it into something else because that's what it was really about, I think, for us because we were tired of this. No one was doing anything, no one was taking care of us, no one was saying anything, there was no information. Okay, let's just take care of our own, then. The hell with it. And that inspiration came from, like we talked earlier, the group ACT UP. And I forget the Philly groups that were back then. I think there was an ACT UP chapter in Philly but there were other groups. So, yeah, yeah, that was an amazing feat, I think, for that to take place at that time. LB: Do you think [all?] -- LK: And all -- go ahead. LB: -- sometimes, I think when there is nobody doing anything, there's a whole statistic that shows, like, that if nobody does anything, then somebody will come forward [but people are going?] -- if there had been some, like, [even straight?] half-assed organization, then maybe other people wouldn't have come out to take care of ourselves and -- LK: Yeah, yeah, maybe. LB: -- but, yeah, you know? LK: I just get thrilled thinking about that it all started with something really silly. (laughs) I mean, just a silly little rivalry between two bars that turned into this whole thing. I'm -- wow. LB: What were some other things that were happening between the bars? LK: Oh, my God. Well -- LB: The silly things? LK: -- for example, one night, the Candida's crew raided the Stonewall. The front doors burst open and I was behind the bar and Rob St. Mary was there. And he's looking at me and all of a sudden, [yeah?], boom-boom-boom-boom-boom, all these water balloons. And they go -- and they're traveling out the back door and they're gone! (laughter) And all the customers are laughing at us because we got pummeled with water balloons. And I'm, like, soaking wet. I'm, like, those sons of -- hmm. (laughter) So, we would plot the next thing, you know? So, they also, one night, came and stole our door person, while he was working. They lured him outside, someone grabbed him, threw him in the back of a station wagon, took him to Candida's. And they called us and the doorman, his name was Dana, and he said, "I feel like Patty Hearst! I feel like Patty Hearst! Get me out of here!" (laughter) So, we had to go over and sign surrender conditions to get our doorman back. And actually, the whole thing -- actually, the very beginning of it was we stole a mascot. We stole their parrot. The parrot was Candida's mascot and we had the moose [home?], which -- we had this giant moose. So, we stole their parrot and they stole our moose. (laughter) So, that's how the whole thing really basically started. But we ended it all, though. We wanted to make sure that they were, like, sufficiently taken care of. So, the final event was: I have to get two getaway cars and five people dressed in face paint and fatigues. And so, the two getaway cars would arrive at Candida's, out would come two innocent civilians, they'd go in and order a cocktail with canned farts tucked down their pants. (laughter) Two other people went to the back door with twenty pounds of rice. The five silly stringers, five came in the front door spraying silly string and screaming. The two innocent civilians went to the back door, opened that, let the twenty pounds of rice in. We would start throwing the rice around. They'd take the canned farts out and spray that. The place stank, it was a mess, and the bartender was Pat Gibson and she had her -- [came out of the?] bar. She was just -- (laughter) so, it was a mess. So, Dina actually called me. She said, "Okay. We got to do something." She -- "have rice on my pool table, you got rice in my cocktails. I had to make all new cocktails for my customers." She said, "We need to do" -- and that's when we started the Summer Games, the Bar Olympics, yeah. LB: Great alternative to that, too, because you could see that escalating to the point where maybe it would be problematic. So, it's really so smart that you moved into something like the Summer Games and -- LK: Yeah. LB: -- [then it ended up?] really helping people for years -- LK: Yeah. LB: -- and years, still, thirty -- more than thirty years later. What a success, (laughter) that silliness can grow to that level. It's pretty great. LK: Yeah, yeah. If you want any more of the stories, call me, I'll tell you the rest of them, because there were a lot. (laughter) because it was a tit-for-tat and it had to be bigger and better. (laughs) LB: I think I remember Dina saying something about people stealing the "Candida" record out of the jukebox. LK: Yes! We tied up her bartender and we actually left her tied up, with the business open. I mean, we did things that I can't believe -- to say that we did, you know? But we tied her up, we made her give us the key to the jukebox, we stole -- and I had gone to all the stores in the Lehigh Valley and bought out every copy of "Candida." (laughter) Little did I know that Candida was an egomaniac and she had twenty copies upstairs. (laughter) LB: Ah! LK: Oh, my God. And then, my other favorite thing was she had put Candida stickers on all of our glassware at the Stonewall. Someone had snuck in, someone let them in. All of our glasses had Candida stickers on them. (laughter) So, I called the staff and I said, "Okay, help me." We gingerly peeled off all the labels, put them on a piece of paper that said -- on the back, it said, "Good for one free drink at Candida's." (laughter) Well, they started taking them over and redeeming them. (laughter) That was one of the best ones. Dina liked that one. (laughs) Yeah. LB: Oh, man. And FACT's been going on for thirty-fiveyears and she's a city councilwoman now. LK: Yes. (laughs) Oh, I got more stories about her. Woof! (laughs) LB: Right, I've known her for a long time. LK: (laughs) You should ask her about when she got escorted home by the police one night because they actually had come to the Stonewall to raid us, more of the silly stuff. And so, there was, like, a water battle ensued inside the Stonewall. There was, like, an inch of water all over the place. It was a mess. And so, I remember, the last thing I remember is all of us on top of her station wagon and she's pulling away. There's, like, ten of us on top of her station wagon. (laughter) She drives us up to Chuck [Woodbury?], the manager's house, where they had shaving creamed his windows, all right? And we get off at that corner. And so, they're laughing and they have a bullhorn and the whole nine yards. And so, they drive up the street and all of a sudden, wham, surrounded by all the police. LB: Oh! LK: And we're down on the corner going -- (laughs) so, the police knew Dina and they said, "Dina, do you have a bullhorn?" And she said, "Yes." And [Denny Cara?] in the backseat said, "No." So, he said, "Were you using the bullhorn?" And Dina said, "Yes." And he said, "What were you saying [to me?]? Were you saying fire?" She said, "No." He said, "What did you say, Candida?" She said, "Rub-a-dub-dub, three queens in a tub." (laughter) Now the other officers had moseyed over and they heard this and they started to, like, snicker. (laugher) And he said, "Dina, don't you think it's time you take this party home?" This is, like, three, four o'clock in the morning. (laughter) And she goes, "Yes, officer." And they actually escorted her home. LB: Oh, my. LK: Another one of the greats. So, yeah, so there's wonderful stories in that. She loves to tell those stories. She's good at -- she's a good raconteur, yeah. LB: Yeah. (laughter) Well, this has been terrific, Larry. I'm really glad to -- and I love to end on a big laugh, bunch of big laughs. (laughter) That was terrific. So, I really appreciate you talking to me. Thank you so much for doing that. And -- LK: Well, thank you. LB: -- I'm supposed to remind you that what happens now is that once I get this done and I upload the video file, then they send it to someone that transcribes it and then they'll bring it -- and they'll mail it through email to you -- LK: Okay. LB: -- as a written document (inaudible) (laughs) LK: I fell down! LB: That was dramatic! (laughter) That was amaz-- LK: Oh, boy. LB: -- [flying?] sensation! (laughs) LK: At least it waited till the end. (laughter) LB: So, and I love that Maxfield Parrish that you have on the wall [next to?] -- LK: Oh, my God, I love Maxfield Parrish! I'm glad you noticed it, thank you. LB: Yeah, [that's?] -- no, I like [it?]. So, and he's got some -- I did a whole art history thing about Maxfield Parrish because he was -- he had some interesting -- yeah, so, we have to have -- LK: Oh, we have to talk. (laughs) LB: -- the recorder's off -- let me see, where do I do that? I'm going to stop it. END OF AUDIO FILE Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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01:30:56
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Larry Kleppinger, June 18, 2020
Description
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Larry Kleppinger talks about the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. He focuses on working at Allentown's Stonewall Bar; the formation of Fighting AIDS Continuously Together (FACT) and his participation as the president of FACT; the FACT Summer Games; and people working together to create support and funding during years of government inaction.
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PH40_02
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AIDS (Disease)
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2020-06-18
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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https://lgbt.digitalarchives.muhlenberg.edu/files/original/b69b20af2ca3fb81a4900417b8507a75.png
a93bd24828832186eba0cf19ecc86158
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40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community: HIV/AIDS
Description
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In the spring of 2020, the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive received a grant to collect oral histories and written stories for 40 Years of Public Health in the Lehigh Valley’s LGBT Community: Collecting and Curating Local LGBT Health Experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19.
The collection consists of oral histories from individuals who experienced the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as oral histories from members of the local community as they lived through 2020's summer of Covid-19. Running through both are the themes of dealing with the fear of an emerging health crisis, loneliness and isolation, and coming together as a community in support and activism.
The project was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Oral History
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Liz Bradbury
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Mitch Hemphill
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=PH40_12.xml
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5.4 June 17, 2020 Mitch Hemphill, June 17, 2020 PH40_12 01:02:34 LVLGBT40 40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository This oral history recording was sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, with generous support provided by a grant to Lafayette College from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg AIDS (Disease) Mitch Hemphill Liz Bradbury video/mpeg HemphillMitch_20200617_video.mp4 1.0:|25(5)|42(5)|71(3)|94(10)|113(7)|138(2)|159(5)|180(4)|199(5)|220(4)|245(3)|270(5)|293(6)|316(16)|339(14)|364(18)|387(16)|408(2)|429(14)|456(9)|479(8)|508(2)|533(6)|562(9)|583(9)|612(8)|633(2)|660(4)|685(7)|706(15)|727(8)|750(8)|775(2)|806(13)|827(10)|850(15)|875(12)|902(2)|927(3)|948(13)|971(13)|996(4)|1017(13)|1040(10)|1067(6)|1088(18)|1111(10)|1144(5)|1165(4)|1192(4)|1213(16)|1242(13)|1269(10)|1292(7)|1319(5)|1342(10)|1361(11)|1384(13)|1411(18)|1442(7)|1475(5)|1506(13)|1533(5) 0 https://youtu.be/09bpVqt3Ywo YouTube video 0 Interview Introduction LIZ BRADBURY: -- do -- great, and there we are. So, I have to start out by saying this project, with this project, the Bradbury Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College will collaborate on 40 years of public health experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community, collecting and curating local LGBT health experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19. And so, I start out by saying, and this is all on and everything -- I’m supposed to, let’s see, I want to be sure I’m going to do the right thing here. Yes. So, this is the first one I’ve done. So, that’s why --
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 ; MITCH HEMPHILL: Oh, okay. 
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 ; LB: (inaudible) [a little hesitating? ]. My name is Liz Bradbury and I’m here with Mitch Hemphill to talk about his experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community -- oh, this is the wrong one.(laughs) No. During this -- oh, I see, the LGBT community, during this time of the COVID-19 epidemic as part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT archive, our project was funded from the Lehigh Valley engaged consortium. We’re meeting on Zoom and so today’s date is June 17th --
 ; 0 187 First time hearing about HIV/AIDS LB: Great. So, here’s the deal: we’re just going to start right out. And so, what I’m going to -- just start with this little prompt and then say in the midst of the current health crisis that we are experience-- we want to take this opportunity to look back and reflect and to capture the stories of those who lived through the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the nineteen eighties and nineties. So, we just have three things to prompt you. I’m going to start you right out to say do you remember the first time you became aware of the disease and just talk about that? 
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 ; MH: Sure. I may have heard of it before but I wasn’t really aware of it until about nineteen eighty-four or nineteen eighty-five. That’s at the point that people that we knew were starting to get sick. And I believe -- and in nineteen eighty-five, when Rock Hudson, when it was on the news that had HIV and then died shortly after, I think that really brought it to the attention of a lot more people. 0 329 Living in the Lehigh Valley/ Moving to Florida LB: Yeah. So, at what point in the crisis were you living in the Lehigh Valley? So, you were at the Stonewall, you were living there -- here the whole time and can you speak -- so, talk about that and then also talk about -- can you speak to what resources or communication or attitudes were going on at the time? 
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 ; MH: Well, I actually lived in the Lehigh Valley all of my life with the exception of three years where I lived in Florida, which was from nineteen eighty-seven to nineteen ninety. So, actually, right in the middle of the peak. But before that, before moving to Florida, in the -- like I said, around eighty-five is where you started hearing more about it. There didn’t seem to me -- I didn’t see a lot of information out in our area at that time. 0 562 The formation of FACT / The Bar Olympics LB: Yeah. When you were talking about FACT being formed, that was before you went away in eighty-seven? 
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 ; MH: That was actually before I went away. FACT was formed in nineteen eighty-six. It came out of a friendly competition between the Stonewall bar and Candida’s bar. The staff on both, at both bars, were always doing things with friendly competition and it kind of built up to what we decided was going to be a bar competition. At the time, we called it the Bar Olympics. 0 726 Educating the public about HIV/AIDS LB: Yeah. In nineteen eighty-six, when these things were happening, do you think that people were -- they were changing their behavior? I mean, you were raising money with FACT. What was the money for? Because in eighty-six, I don’t know whether there was medication. I was just moving to Lehigh Valley then, so I wasn’t as aware of that. But, like, when they were trying to raise money, what was the money for? Was it for education? 
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 ; MH: The money at that point, as I understood it, with my involvement with them, in the beginning, was a lot of it, it had to do with helping people that were HIV-positive. It had to do with educating the public. It had to do with getting materials like condoms out in bars and literature out in bars and making people more aware of it within the community. 0 831 Being young and not thinking about the effects of AIDS LB: I think there was, perhaps, a time, and maybe you could comment on this, where people didn’t know where it was coming from. They just thought it was a gay disease that gay people were getting but they didn’t really know how it was communicated. Were you sort of aware of --
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 ; MH: Definitely was the case, especially in the earlier days. And I think a lot of us -- and like I say, I was young and a bit selfish, you know, with my own life at that time. Had it been happening when I was in my forties, perhaps I would have been different. But a lot of people really just thought this was something that affected a small group of people in other places, you know? 0 1320 Emotional toll on caregivers LB: Did you know people that were taking care of other people, who were -- you know, people who were caring for people that were dying or sick? 
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 ; MH: Just indirectly, for the most part, you know? And, yes, and that was -- in the nineties, there were numerous people I -- that took such a toll on the people that were the caregivers. I can only relate to it having taken care of my father until he passed [at the? ] first of the year. But there is quite a struggle for a lot of people that not only had to, you know, deal with this -- and from the entire community as a whole, you know, that were taking care of people like that and having to watch them waste away, especially in the early days, you know? 0 1390 Starting Above Ground Magazine LB: So, when you were doing the -- talk a little bit about the magazine because [I think it? ] --
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 ; MH: Well, when I did come back -- like I said, I helped with the formation of FACT and I was doing that. That was my involvement and I was a little bit, you know, involved with some of the work on the fundraisers and things like that in the early years, then I moved to Florida. When I came back, like I mentioned, in the early nineties, that’s when people were being more affected/ 0 1524 Working at the Stonewall LB: Oh, yeah, no question. So, what do you think, in terms of activism, I mean, you did some significant things with activism and we saw the continuation of FACT over all of that time. And things began to change in terms of medications and stuff. In about nineteen ninety-three, I think that really began to change. How did that seem different to you? Did you see any kind of difference or did you see people still being actually more aware of things? 
 ; 
 ; MH: I actually believe people were -- after I came back from Florida, I did go back to work at the Stonewall again and I worked there for another eight years or so. And so, you know, just having to see the view of how people are reacting in the bar scene, do you know what I mean? There was a difference made. You know, the work of FACT and other organizations like that actually was working and people were being less promiscuous, in my opinion. I think people were starting to show, you know, safe sex practices more. They were involved. 0 1694 Social life in the bars LB: So, how did you think -- with the competition between the bars that really began FACT and began those kinds of things, that part atmosphere that made things more fun in some ways, do you think that that was something that really encouraged people to become involved? 
 ; 
 ; MH: Oh, absolutely. To be honest with you, if it was less fun, you wouldn’t have had people coming to it. You know, sometimes you have to kind of make things fun to make it worth people to do things, you know? It’s difficult. Right now, (inaudible) we’re looking at the pandemic, with the COVID-19, how do you really encourage people by doing something fun to do the right thing or to -- you know, it’s a totally different situation in that it really can affect anyone and everyone. 0 1793 Being young at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic and parallels to COVID-19 pandemic MH: One of the things that was a parallel that I see was to the way I felt when I was younger and AIDS came out, we were young. And, you know what? We’re strong and we will get through this and it will not affect us and if I get it, I will beat it. I saw that, especially if they close down things and I’d see big groups of people on the basketball courts: younger people, still playing, you know? And that feeling that you’re invincible when you’re younger, it’s difficult with younger people, you know? So, it’s such a different situation now than the AIDS crisis was. 0 2318 The beginning of the Pride Festival in the Lehigh Valley LB: I think that the Pride festival in the Lehigh Valley grew out of that. So, were you involved with Pride during the beginning times of that? 
 ; 
 ; MH: I was. And when Pride first started, one of the ways I was actually involved with Pride was doing graphic work for them. Now, let’s see, Pride started --
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 ; LB: Nineteen ninety – 
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 ; MH: around nineteen ninety-four, three, ninety-four? Yeah, at that time, ninety-four, I had started the magazine. And before that, I was actually doing a newsletter for the Stonewall. 0 2505 The Summer Games / Competition between the bars LB: [Tell me a? ] little bit about the summer games because people in the future should hear about that because they were pretty wonderful. 
 ; 
 ; MH: They were fun. First of all, like I say, they came out of a fun competition between competing bars. And they built into a much larger thing. At first, it only included Candida’s and the Stonewall, which, you know, because of our friendship with each other and our competition with each other -- but then, after the first year, then it was decided that we were going to make an event and it was going to be a FACT event now that FACT had been formed. 0 2691 Bringing together the community and strengthening it MH: Yeah, it brought our community together, too. I mean, beyond the AIDS epidemic and, you know, it strengthened our community as we moved forward looking into our own rights. So, some of the things that came out of that epidemic were then -- we as a community became stronger. We became used to getting together and doing things together, which made us stronger going into the nineties with the elections and as we go down the line. And then, the different organizations that -- you know, has the voter’s guide that came out and the -- now with the Bradbury-Sullivan Center, you know what I mean, there’s so many things that would have been unthought of actually years ago. 0 2826 Growing up in the Lehigh Valley LB: Where did you go to high school? 
 ; 
 ; MH: I went to school in a high school in Emmaus, just outside of Allentown. So, I grew up in a pretty small, somewhat privileged area. And then, like I said, I was in a big hurry to move out to the big city of Allentown as soon as I could and I hadn’t even turned eighteen yet, yeah. 
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 ; LB: Yeah. 
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 ; MH: [You know? ]? 0 2871 Moving to Florida LB: Yeah. So, is the reason that you came back to the Lehigh Valley because you just missed it so much? Or was there some reason why --
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 ; MH: Because everybody comes back (laughs) that’s from here. I moved to Florida with a boyfriend at the time. Things didn’t work out so well and then you come home, you know? Actually, while I was here on vacation, I met my current husband and came back to be with him. And then, like I said, we’ve been together for thirty years now. So, it’s not a bad area and it’s not -- we don’t get as much cold weather as up north. (laughs) So, that’s why I came back to this area. It’s home. 0 2954 Thoughts for future generations LB: Well, I think -- so, here’s one thing I think everybody should ask and -- because we hope that someday in the future, somebody will look at this and get a sense of, you know, various different people’s experiences with the HIV/AIDS epidemic. And it is true that we Baby Boomers are the ones that went through this in our twenties and now we’re at a different age. We’re about to go through the aging epidemic, as well, since that’s another thing. But what would you want somebody in the future to know, like, in terms of what that was like? I mean, if you were just going to sort of describe what the AIDS epidemic was like to somebody who had no sense of what it was like -- and I think there are young people today who really don’t have any sense of what it was like. 0 3084 Rock Hudson having AIDS LB: Yeah. I want to ask you one more thing because you brought it up because you were talking about how you became aware of this sort of -- of HIV/AIDS because of Rock Hudson. And I think people don’t have an understanding of how significant Rock Hudson’s circumstance was. And there were some other famous people that -- 
 ; 
 ; MH: Yeah. 
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 ; LB: -- spoke out about -- but you want to say a little bit more about that? because I don’t know if people would always really get what happened. 0 3349 Comparisons between HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 MH: No, no. I wish I -- like I said, I thought to myself I didn’t know that I would be a good candidate for this because I wasn’t one of those heroes that walked the straight and narrow. But I think I’m more an example of how a lot of people were back then, you know? Like I say that the knowledge wasn’t there in the beginning and then it was a bit sketchy as we did get it. And a lot of us still carried on, thinking this won’t affect me. 0 3534 Using Corel for Above Ground and the Valley Gay Press / Above Ground Magazine as an inspiration LB: I just want to say, Mitch, that when you were doing Above Ground and I was writing an article for it, I remember one time me sitting in your office and you were showing me how to use that program that -- Corel. 
 ; 
 ; MH: Corel Draw that I used to use, yeah. 0 MovingImage Mitch Hemphill talks about the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania. He focuses on working in the local bar ; the rise of the Fighting AIDS Continuously Together (FACT) organization ; and creating and running his newspaper "Above Ground," which covered AIDS information. MITCH HEMPHILL LIZ BRADBURY: -- do -- great, and there we are. So, I have to start out by saying this project, with this project, the Bradbury Sullivan LGBT Community Center and the Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College will collaborate on 40 years of public health experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community, collecting and curating local LGBT health experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19. And so, I start out by saying, and this is all on and everything -- I'm supposed to, let's see, I want to be sure I'm going to do the right thing here. Yes. So, this is the first one I've done. So, that's why -- MITCH HEMPHILL: Oh, okay. LB: (inaudible) [a little hesitating? ]. My name is Liz Bradbury and I'm here with Mitch Hemphill to talk about his experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community -- oh, this is the wrong one.(laughs) No. During this -- oh, I see, the LGBT community, during this time of the COVID-19 epidemic as part of the Lehigh Valley LGBT archive, our project was funded from the Lehigh Valley engaged consortium. We're meeting on Zoom and so today's date is June 17th -- MH: June 17th, 20-- LB: -- 2020. And thank you so much for your willingness to speak with us today. To start, can you please state your full name and spell it for me? MH: Certainly. My full name is Mitchell Hemphill, spelled M-I-T-C-H-E-L-L H-E-M-P-H-I-L-L. LB: Great. And will you please share your birth date? MH: Yes. September thirteenth, nineteen sixty. LB: Okay. So, this is the consent part. So, do you consent to this interview today? MH: I do consent. LB: Do you consent to having this interview being transcribed, digitized, and made publicly available online in searchable formats? MH: I do consent. LB: Do you consent to the LGBT Archive using your interview for this -- educational purposes in other formats, including films, archives, websites, presentations, and other formats? MH: I do consent. LB: Do you understand that you will have thirty days after the electronic delivery of the transcript to review your interview and identify parts you would like to delete and/or withdraw from your interview from the project? MH: I understand. LB: Great. So, here's the deal: we're just going to start right out. And so, what I'm going to -- just start with this little prompt and then say in the midst of the current health crisis that we are experience-- we want to take this opportunity to look back and reflect and to capture the stories of those who lived through the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the nineteen eighties and nineties. So, we just have three things to prompt you. I'm going to start you right out to say do you remember the first time you became aware of the disease and just talk about that? LB: Sure. I may have heard of it before but I wasn't really aware of it until about nineteen eighty-four or nineteen eighty-five. That's at the point that people that we knew were starting to get sick. And I believe -- and in nineteen eighty-five, when Rock Hudson, when it was on the news that had HIV and then died shortly after, I think that really brought it to the attention of a lot more people. Honestly, even at that point, still, it wasn't very much a part of our life, it seemed, you know? It was still happening to other people, more so before that, too. And it seemed like it was happening more so to other people. It was only happening to people that were very promiscuous or using drugs and so -- even at that point. And I have to admit, at that time, I was very young. I was in my early twenties. I had only really come out a few years before that. And so, I was exploring my own sexuality and really kind of self-focused on my own life and what was going on with me, with work, and relationships, and things like that. But in eighty-four, I started working at the Stonewall and that's really when I -- by working there, that's when I started hearing more about it, although it wasn't -- there wasn't a lot of focus, still, yet and I didn't see much about it. LB: Yeah. So, at what point in the crisis were you living in the Lehigh Valley? So, you were at the Stonewall, you were living there -- here the whole time and can you speak -- so, talk about that and then also talk about -- can you speak to what resources or communication or attitudes were going on at the time? MH: Well, I actually lived in the Lehigh Valley all of my life with the exception of three years where I lived in Florida, which was from nineteen eighty-seven to nineteen ninety. So, actually, right in the middle of the peak. But before that, before moving to Florida, in the -- like I said, around eighty-five is where you started hearing more about it. There didn't seem to me -- I didn't see a lot of information out in our area at that time. And it may be my own guilt of not noticing things that were out there but I wasn't paying a lot of attention to. And I know a lot of people like myself and my circle of friends, we were more focused on partying (laughs) and enjoying each other's company than we were about the issues. Also, at that time, I wasn't much of a news watcher and things like CNN were still in their infancy. So, you weren't hearing about it on the news and it was considered still a gay disease, you know, that was affecting gay people only. So, you really didn't hear anything and you didn't get any support from the government about it. In the early days, there was an organization I was aware of, the AIDS Service Center, although I was not involved with them other than seeing some of their literature and things like that. The time, as far as the way people felt at that period of time, and this going -- before eighty-seven, when I moved, in the early years. To be honest with you, I think, like myself, a lot of people were still of the opinion of this was an isolated thing. It wasn't something affecting me, it wasn't going to affect my lifestyle, and as long as you weren't -- if you were in a monogamous relationship where you weren't sleeping with somebody that looks sick, you were fine, you know? Something we all learned later was not really going to be the case. But there didn't seem to be a lot of resources at that time. But if you weren't looking for them, you weren't going to find them. Until about nineteen eighty-six, when FACT was formed, that's when things really developed as far as information getting out there, activism being there. And so, that's when it became more -- I became more aware of it, myself. That's pretty much -- like I said, I think, still, like I said in that period of time, there wasn't a lot going on that you could see, going up to eighty-seven. Then, I did go -- eighty-seven to nineteen ninety, I lived in Florida. There were some activities going on there, too, some fundraising events and stuff like that. But to be honest, being around Orlando, which was a vacation spot, promiscuity, et cetera was in full swing, you know? There was more focus on having fun and the shows and things like that then there was, actually, on activism about this disease. LB: Yeah. When you were talking about FACT being formed, that was before you went away in eighty-seven? MH: That was actually before I went away. FACT was formed in nineteen eighty-six. It came out of a friendly competition between the Stonewall bar and Candida's bar. The staff on both, at both bars, were always doing things with friendly competition and it kind of built up to what we decided was going to be a bar competition. At the time, we called it the Bar Olympics. LB: Right. MH: And a few forward thinking people, not necessarily that were part of the actual activities, thought to use this event to actually do something more with it, raise awareness about AIDS and things like this, and started FACT. So, that was in eighty-six, eighty-seven I moved to Florida, and then didn't return until nineteen ninety. So, when I came back in nineteen ninety, things were -- we're seeing results of the disease within my community and my circle of friends and things like this. LB: Well, I want you to talk about that but I just want to get an idea, like, when FACT was forming in nineteen eighty-six, do you think that that was happening because people were hearing about the disease or because people had it? MH: In eighty-six, when it was actually formed, it was -- FACT was formed in our area because we were seeing people we knew who were being affected by it, that had it, and were already passing away, you know? LB: Right. MH: And within our community, we knew that the government wasn't really doing much of anything for it. The health departments really weren't doing anything. And to raise awareness and do something about it, we kind of had to do it on our own. And that was one of the reasons, you know, with founding FACT, although it was supporting the entire community, not just gay and lesbian, you know, people and LGBTQ, but it opened itself up, knowing it had to do everything for the entire community and have those services for everyone. That was a big step forward, you know, and drove a lot of things, I think with, like, the Allentown Health Bureau and different -- made more things available and brought more information out there as a result of it. LB: Yeah. In nineteen eighty-six, when these things were happening, do you think that people were -- they were changing their behavior? I mean, you were raising money with FACT. What was the money for? Because in eighty-six, I don't know whether there was medication. I was just moving to Lehigh Valley then, so I wasn't as aware of that. But, like, when they were trying to raise money, what was the money for? Was it for education? MH: The money at that point, as I understood it, with my involvement with them, in the beginning, was a lot of it, it had to do with helping people that were HIV-positive. It had to do with educating the public. It had to do with getting materials like condoms out in bars and literature out in bars and making people more aware of it within the community. And, like I said, obviously, they, you know, were open to the entire population of our area. However, that was where the focus needed to be because our community was being affected in a higher ratio than the community at large. So, that's really where their focus was, to educate, to -- there was money, as they went down the line, that was made available, like, through grants for different other organizations. So, they're almost, like, a parent organization to other organizations. But the main thing was to get the word out, to get the materials out so that people understood better what was going on and how to help prevent it from spreading. LB: I think there was, perhaps, a time, and maybe you could comment on this, where people didn't know where it was coming from. They just thought it was a gay disease that gay people were getting but they didn't really know how it was communicated. Were you sort of aware of -- MH: Definitely was the case, especially in the earlier days. And I think a lot of us -- and like I say, I was young and a bit selfish, you know, with my own life at that time. Had it been happening when I was in my forties, perhaps I would have been different. But a lot of people really just thought this was something that affected a small group of people in other places, you know? Like I say, it's only the people that are going to the bathhouses or, you know, that have way too many partners or, you know, people that were IV drug users, we heard about it, and were also being affected by it. But I don't think it was something that we thought of as a community so much was going to affect us individually. It's not going to get me. Kind of like the young people right now with this pandemic. I'm strong, I'm young, and if I do get it, I'll beat it, you know? And I think that attitude, it wasn't -- I think I had that attitude and I believe a lot of other people did, as well. And, you know, coming from the freedom of the seventies and the sexual freedom and everything we experienced as a community that you were able to do without having to worry about somebody getting pregnant, you know, that's one of the reasons that it was spreading so rampantly through the community. But we really didn't think that it was going to affect me personally. And I think a lot of my circle of friends and a lot of people that I waited on as customers and knew from the bar, I think they felt the same way until, like I said, around eighty-six -- was when we were starting to see people we actually knew getting sick with it. And back then, with what little you did hear about it -- was that if you did get it, it was a death sentence, you know? because people were getting very sick and people were dying rather quickly in the beginning. LB: Yeah. MH: You know? So, that was eighty-six, when FACT was formed. And then, by the time I came back from Florida in nineteen ninety, a lot more people were affected and a lot more people that I knew were affected. And I went to a lot of funerals and I got to the point, in the early nineties, where I just felt I can't go to one more funeral because I had been to so many where I had seen friends and people that I had known, you know, pass away from this thing. But even then, to be honest with you, the mentality of myself, even -- I'm guilty of this. I'm one of those lucky fools because I wasn't even tested myself. I didn't get tested until about nineteen ninety-one . In 1990, I moved back to be with my current partner of, where -- my husband and we've been together for thirty years. But before -- and to be honest with you, I'm not proud to say this but I tried to have monogamous relationships throughout my life but in between those relationships, I lived a free life and I did a lot of things that were not safe and I was a bit of a hypocrite because even after the formation of FACT, I would encourage people to use safe sex, and -- if it's abstinence and everything that was involved with trying not to get this disease. But myself, I was not following the rules. And when I took that test in -- around nineteen ninety-one, I was actually of the opinion and thought I'm definitely going to show up positive because I did too many things that were too risky. I drank too much in those days and I made some very poor decisions. And I knew of some people that I had been involved with that actually had contracted the disease and then later passed away from it. So, I thought it's a given and my only protection was not to do things with my current husband that could put him at risk. So, when I actually got the test back negative, I was actually kind of surprised, you know? LB: Wow. Is that why it took you a while to get tested, because you were afraid -- MH: I think so. I think I was kind of, in my head, it's going to be positive, you know? But ignorance is no excuse, you know? And I can't really relate that to something that's going on in this situation other than the -- my behavior, I was a hypocrite. It's like telling somebody you should be wearing a mask but then I go out and don't wear one myself, you know? So, yeah, it was a hard time within my own mind, too, and I don't know if a lot of other people struggled this way. I contemplated -- like, this interview, I'm not the best example of it because I wasn't the best hero, definitely, through that period. I was doing the things that I was telling other people not to do and I was the lucky fool in this case. LB: Weren't there other people that were doing that too, though? MH: Oh, I know there were, yes. There were multitudes of people doing that. But, you know, when you look at it and you think of the things you have done to try to help with the epidemic and stuff like that -- but while not following your own words, you know? And I was guilty of that, you know? It was something that I think a lot of people within my age group, you know, that are now coming on sixty and, you know, a little younger and older, we were all pretty much doing the same thing and we were very quick to be a part of the organizations, go to the fundraisers, do these kinds of things, and go to the fun things, you know? The Summer Games were fun, you know, to be a part of them, to be there. Going to the Snowball, the FACT Snow Ball, that was fun. You got to dress up. It was kind of like just another event. And you all often lost sight of why you were actually doing it while there were people in the background always working. You know, some of the people, you know, that I've known through time, like Carl Mancino and David Moyer and people like this that were doing all the hard work through all of that, you know? But it's a time I look back on and say I didn't deserve to make it through it, in some ways, you know? And I'm sure there's a lot of people that feel the same way, you know? LB: What was the hard work? I mean, what were some of the things that you saw -- MH: The hard work is actually living what you're saying, you know? Doing -- not only just doing the fundraising and actually doing the work of an organization but also walking the walk and talking the talk. Not just saying this is what you should do, you should be safe, you should be using condoms, you should be doing this and then going out on your own and doing otherwise, you know? And like I say, I know a lot of people, they -- we've talked about this, you know, looking back, and it's, like, how did we survive this when our friends who were less active, even, didn't, you know? We knew people that actually had had one sexual encounter and that was it, you know? But this was all before they had the medications that they have now to make it that it is not a death sentence. LB: Yeah. MH: You know? LB: Did you know people that were taking care of other people, who were -- you know, people who were caring for people that were dying or sick? MH: Just indirectly, for the most part, you know? And, yes, and that was -- in the nineties, there were numerous people I -- that took such a toll on the people that were the caregivers. I can only relate to it having taken care of my father until he passed [at the? ] first of the year. But there is quite a struggle for a lot of people that not only had to, you know, deal with this -- and from the entire community as a whole, you know, that were taking care of people like that and having to watch them waste away, especially in the early days, you know? There wasn't -- the drugs that were out there really weren't extending life and it wasn't making life better, you know? So, the early days were really rough and a lot of us, people like me, sometimes it was easier to look the other way. But then, when a friend of yours died, it brought it right back to the forefront and it was, like, you know, why are we forgetting about this, you know? LB: Yeah. MH: Was a lot of that. LB: So, when you were doing the -- talk a little bit about the magazine because [I think it? ] -- MH: Well, when I did come back -- like I said, I helped with the formation of FACT and I was doing that. That was my involvement and I was a little bit, you know, involved with some of the work on the fundraisers and things like that in the early years, then I moved to Florida. When I came back, like I mentioned, in the early nineties, that's when people were being more affected. But I started Above Ground magazine and launched that in November of nineteen ninety-four. And the reason for launching the magazine was because the LGBQT (sic) -- the community in Lehigh Valley no longer had a periodical, you know, that -- and it was something that was needed, it was missing for a period of time, since other things had fallen apart. So, it was an entertainment and information monthly magazine that I put out. And one of the things that I made available through it was access to the HIV/AIDS groups so they could advertise their events, put in articles, you know, different things like that. And I would actually always go to the big events and give them some publicity and things like that so people kept aware of it. And the magazine I had ran for -- I had it for three years, until I sold it in nineteen ninety-seven. And then, shortly after, it stopped being published. But it was filling a need at that time, which was filled by other things in the meantime. Some, notably -- (laughs) but at the time, there was really nothing out there, so you didn't know about these events other than that. And that was one way that it actually spread throughout the community and into the surrounding areas and people were made more aware of these different events, as well. So, I hope to think that it did something to help in that way. LB: Yeah. MH: [You know? ]? LB: Oh, yeah, no question. So, what do you think, in terms of activism, I mean, you did some significant things with activism and we saw the continuation of FACT over all of that time. And things began to change in terms of medications and stuff. In about nineteen ninety-three, I think that really began to change. How did that seem different to you? Did you see any kind of difference or did you see people still being actually more aware of things? MH: I actually believe people were -- after I came back from Florida, I did go back to work at the Stonewall again and I worked there for another eight years or so. And so, you know, just having to see the view of how people are reacting in the bar scene, do you know what I mean? There was a difference made. You know, the work of FACT and other organizations like that actually was working and people were being less promiscuous, in my opinion. I think people were starting to show, you know, safe sex practices more. They were involved. Over time, after the medications became better and treatment became better, I think there was less urgency with a lot of people. Like, we have to do something and we have to do something about this now, you know? However, I think that it did make a change. Now, whether that change is still relevant today is a little different. For a short period of time, sometime after two-thousand, for a very short period of time, I worked part-time in the Stonewall's coat check, for their underage night. LB: Ah. MH: And all of the materials are there. I think that they have a different sense -- the younger generation definitely has a younger sense and they're more aware of how easy they can contract the disease from another person, although they don't have the same fear that a lot of people did, especially in the nineties, you know, because of the advances that have been made, you know, through medicines and treatments. LB: Yeah. MH: So, I wouldn't say that they're ignoring it. I think they're still behaving better than we did in the early '80s, I really do. I think in a lot of ways, they're more responsible. But, like I say, good medicine also makes you little more comfortable with thinking that if I do get it, they can take care of it, you know? Which does nothing to stop the spread. LB: Right, right, right. MH: Yeah. LB: So, how did you think -- with the competition between the bars that really began FACT and began those kinds of things, that part atmosphere that made things more fun in some ways, do you think that that was something that really encouraged people to become involved? MH: Oh, absolutely. To be honest with you, if it was less fun, you wouldn't have had people coming to it. You know, sometimes you have to kind of make things fun to make it worth people to do things, you know? It's difficult. Right now, (inaudible) we're looking at the pandemic, with the COVID-19, how do you really encourage people by doing something fun to do the right thing or to -- you know, it's a totally different situation in that it really can affect anyone and everyone. It's an even more invisible thing and it's, you know, so much easier spread that people just don't -- they don't realize how severe it is, you know? What we had to deal with with the AIDS epidemic was kind of compartmentalized, you know what I mean? It was only affecting people that were having sex with each other or transferring blood, you know, through the use of different needles and stuff like that. But it was something that -- at least you weren't going to get it just by walking up to somebody and talking to them, you know? One of the things that was a parallel that I see was to the way I felt when I was younger and AIDS came out, we were young. And, you know what? We're strong and we will get through this and it will not affect us and if I get it, I will beat it. I saw that, especially if they close down things and I'd see big groups of people on the basketball courts: younger people, still playing, you know? And that feeling that you're invincible when you're younger, it's difficult with younger people, you know? So, it's such a different situation now than the AIDS crisis was. But, at the same time, there are a lot of parallels that we see and one of the things, if we as the gay community hadn't kind of taken hold of it ourselves, it would have been left to just run rampant, you know what I mean? We weren't getting support from the, you know, Reagan/Bush government. We weren't getting support by a lot of people in general because they thought this was a gay disease. It was only affecting gay people and it was only affecting drug users, so better to it. I mean, even leading to some conspiracy theories, you know, that it was actually put out there on purpose to wipe us out, you know? But one of the parallels I see to this and our situation now is actually the way that a lot of people in the government are trying to make it seem as if it's a non-issue, it doesn't exist, you know? We can look the other way, it'll just go away, you know? And that, we saw when we had the AIDS epidemic. It was, like, this is a small, isolated thing. It's only affecting, you know, this type of people. It's nothing for us to worry about, you know, until it started going into the population as a whole and heterosexual couples had to worry about it, too, and it was, like, this is something that could be spread that way. So, it was a difficult time going through that. But, unfortunately, I'm one of the examples of the, like, I say the lucky fools that, even though I was doing everything I could to help promote information about it and promote people to do the right thing, I wasn't necessarily doing the right thing, you know? And so, I'm fortunate that I can look at that in hindsight and know that I didn't contract it myself. And, more importantly, I didn't pass it on to someone else, you know? This epidemic here, you can get it, you may not even get very sick. But you can pass it on to so many other people, so -- LB: Yeah, in terms of contagion, really, HIV is very hard to pass on just to another -- MH: Correct. LB: -- [you know, to? ] -- MH: You can't pass it through the skin, it's not breathed in. It's something that has to be done through a bodily fluid. LB: But do you remember a time when people had no idea how it was passed and so there was [no? ] -- MH: Oh, yes, I do. You know, at first, when you'd first heard about it -- and like I say, I was mostly -- really became aware of it around eighty-four, eighty-five, when I started working at the bar because that's when you'd actually hear some inklings about it and people that were a little bit more aware and actually took the time to look into this when they were hearing about it and reading about it in the news. Before that, like I say, I believe I'd heard of it, you know? And then, in the beginning, we really didn't know what was happening. In the early days, I think, from when it came out around eighty and eighty-one that they saw the first cases of this, they were just telling us they didn't really know what was happening but it was affecting heterosexual males I mean, homosexual males more than other people and so it was kind of focused on the group. So, no, we didn't know and, to be honest, we didn't know that it wasn't the government or some group trying to actually wipe us out. We didn't know that. That's why these theories come up. Until science took a hold of it and funding came in, we didn't really find out all the details of what caused it, where it came from, and how it was transmitted. One of the things -- I wasn't very politically motivated until leading up to the elections in nineteen ninety-two. And one of the main focuses of that was because of the way the government was responding to the AIDS epidemic and it was important that, then, Bill Clinton got into office and got the Reagan/Bush era over so that we could see something done. And we did, you know? That's when you really saw a lot more information come out from the scientists. LB: And maybe there's a tie-in, do you think, between that and when people were really understanding about it? I guess people who had been infected, people who were scientists, people who were doctors had enough information then and they could begin to make scientifically informed -- MH: Oh, definitely. And, well, there was more motivation -- there wasn't a lot of motivation to push for it, to give money for the funding into the research into it in the beginning because of who it was affecting. Had AIDS been only affecting rich, white businessmen, they would have had funding a lot quicker. But like I say, there wasn't -- a lot of funding has to come through the government. And so, if it's not being funded for the research and to find out what this is, to actually look at it and say this is going to be a problem and we got to take care of it, in the early days, that wasn't there, you know? And so, as a result, none of us knew, really, what was going on. And if there was science coming out, it wasn't coming out to us. LB: In the Lehigh Valley, do you remember any kind of political response or any kind of elected officials who talked about it or didn't talk about it or supported the rights and stuff that had an effect on that? MH: I really don't have a big memory of that. And perhaps during the time from eighty-seven to ninety, when I was actually out of the Lehigh Valley, there may have been more of that. I knew that there were people within the health department that were very focused on it. But that was actually coming a little bit later, once there was more knowledge of what it was. But I didn't really notice a feeling of support or denial or anything like that coming from, you know, government. It almost felt, to be honest with you, back then, it felt like this was our problem, we had to take care of it. Nobody else cares, nobody else is even looking at it, and so if anything's going to be done, we have to do it as our own community. And I honestly believe that communities across the country, that's how a lot of this got done. Philadelphia having a bigger city and a lot more different groups and stuff like that and activism, that kind of filtered to us, some of that. They were more active before we were in this area, I think, in a lot of ways. LB: In nineteen ninety-three, people in the Lehigh Valley who -- and this really came out of the bars -- organized a bunch of buses to go to the March on Washington in nineteen ninety-three. MH: Yes, yes. I actually didn't go on that march. But, yeah, that was a big thing. It really was. Wish I had gone. It was one of those things that I didn't go, probably because something was going on with one of my relationships at that time. No, actually, no, that was ninety-three, so, you know, I think I was just too focused on work and things like that. But after hearing about it and seeing people bring back pictures and stuff and [come back with? ] camaraderie -- it was a wonderful experience for a lot of people that I wish I'd been a part of, you know? LB: I think that the Pride festival in the Lehigh Valley grew out of that. So, were you involved with Pride during the beginning times of that? MH: I was. And when Pride first started, one of the ways I was actually involved with Pride was doing graphic work for them. Now, let's see, Pride started -- LB: Nineteen ninety -- MH: around nineteen ninety-four, three, ninety-four? Yeah, at that time, ninety-four, I had started the magazine. And before that, I was actually doing a newsletter for the Stonewall. And so, I was doing some kinds of graphic things. And some of the board members from Pride actually came to me and I did their, like, their booklet for the day of Pride and things for the first two years. And then, obviously, with working within the bar situation, we were able to promote things to a lot of people. And the bar itself making -- was very supportive of all kinds of things, always showing -- actually, all of the bars were as far as getting literature out there for people to read, making announcements, doing fundraisers within their own bars. And so, yeah, that, I think the Pride event grew out of that and some other things and our community already coming together because of the AIDS crisis. So, I think that helped strengthen that, as well. LB: Yeah, I think that's a big deal. MH: Yeah, it is. LB: So, as things went on and the various different stuff kind of wound down for the AIDS community, I mean, I think if we look back at that, there were some pretty key people that were making things happen in those days. And can you mention some of those folks and what they -- MH: Oh, yeah, in the early days, I mean, we lost some people that actually were -- Ken [Tall? ] was an example. But Dave Moyer, Carl Mancino. There were people that were just part of -- they weren't part of the LGBTQ community but they were actually close friends and stuff and they became very instrumental, as well. Off the top of my head, coming up with names, those are two people that did a significant amount in those days, especially with FACT and things like that. But there were so many people involved and, to be honest with you, I wasn't as involved with the organizations other than, for instance, with the startup of it, promoting their events, perhaps, and like I said, helping with organizing some of the events. And I did concession stand -- I was in charge of concessions and stuff in the second Summer Games and things like that but -- LB: [Tell me a? ] little bit about the summer games because people in the future should hear about that because they were pretty wonderful. MH: They were fun. First of all, like I say, they came out of a fun competition between competing bars. And they built into a much larger thing. At first, it only included Candida's and the Stonewall, which, you know, because of our friendship with each other and our competition with each other -- but then, after the first year, then it was decided that we were going to make an event and it was going to be a FACT event now that FACT had been formed. And so, other bars were invited, as well, from outside of the Lehigh Valley. There was bars from Reading, there was bars from Wilkes-Barre, Scranton. So, you had bars from other areas coming in and bringing more people in and learning about these things. One other thing about the summer games was it was a lot of fun. It was fun to watch, it was fun events. There was swimming, there was, you know, things like a drag competition where people would have to do a relay race getting into different outfits and stuff. A lot of fun. But one of the things that I remember the most we would get to the end of the competition and there would be a ceremony at the end and that is when everybody had time to actually remember what we were doing there with candlelight vigils, sometimes the naming of names and remember what we were doing there and take time to reflect on that. And that was a very heartwarming part of those events. So, like I said, the different events were always a lot of fun. You want people to do things, you want people to participate, you got to make them fun. The Snowball, a lot of people didn't do the Snowball as they thought it was a little bit elitist because everybody was renting tuxes and going like this. So, they said, well, I can't afford to rent a tux and if I don't wear one -- you know, and over the years, that changed somewhat. There was a lot less people worrying so much about what they looked like and just enjoying the event. But the summer games was one thing where everybody could just show up, was a big ol' picnic, kind of atmosphere. And Rainbow Mountain resort in the Poconos hosted it for most of that period of time until it moved past that. But, yeah, for people that didn't experience that, at a time in our community, it was just something where you could bring all kinds of bars from all different areas and people from those areas together, just have a great day. But at the same time, you're doing something for a wonderful cause. And that makes people feel good, that you can actually still have fun and you're doing something good. LB: Yeah, great. MH: Yeah, it brought our community together, too. I mean, beyond the AIDS epidemic and, you know, it strengthened our community as we moved forward looking into our own rights. So, some of the things that came out of that epidemic were then -- we as a community became stronger. We became used to getting together and doing things together, which made us stronger going into the nineties with the elections and as we go down the line. And then, the different organizations that -- you know, has the voter's guide that came out and the -- now with the Bradbury-Sullivan Center, you know what I mean, there's so many things that would have been unthought of actually years ago. There was little fringe things here and there but they never got a full acceptance and support of community. And so, like I say, our community is actually better off -- not that we had the disease come through us but how we came together for it. LB: Were you involved with Le-Hi-Ho? MH: Le-Hi-Ho, that goes back pretty far and I don't have a lot of memory of that. I believe Le-Hi-Ho is back in the late seventies, perhaps? LB: The eighties, I think. MH: Was it eighties? LB: Yeah. MH: Yeah, there was some -- I have to be honest, I'm not the best one for an interview because a lot of my time was spent inebriated. (laughs) Let's just get right to it. When I was young, I drank a lot. I had a lot of fun. But those were the days. I graduated from high school at seventeen, moved out of the house at seventeen into my first apartment. Had just realized that I was gay, finding out what gay was, and was living to -- exploring myself, you might say. It was a different time coming off of the craziness of the seventies, so -- LB: Where did you go to high school? MH: I went to school in a high school in Emmaus, just outside of Allentown. So, I grew up in a pretty small, somewhat privileged area. And then, like I said, I was in a big hurry to move out to the big city of Allentown as soon as I could and I hadn't even turned eighteen yet, yeah. LB: Yeah. MH: [You know? ]? LB: I didn't ask a whole bunch of demographic questions on this. I don't think this really -- oh, well, it does ask you what your zip code is. We're supposed to day what your zip code -- MH: Oh, well, right now, I'm in one-eight-oh-five-two, which is the Whitehall area, but -- LB: Yeah. So, is the reason that you came back to the Lehigh Valley because you just missed it so much? Or was there some reason why -- MH: Because everybody comes back (laughs) that's from here. I moved to Florida with a boyfriend at the time. Things didn't work out so well and then you come home, you know? Actually, while I was here on vacation, I met my current husband and came back to be with him. And then, like I said, we've been together for thirty years now. So, it's not a bad area and it's not -- we don't get as much cold weather as up north. (laughs) So, that's why I came back to this area. It's home. LB: Yeah. And I guess, see, in this list, they didn't -- they ask, in the COVID thing, that you're supposed to identify yourself within the community. So, in other words, how do you identify your LGBT-ness? And so, you would say what -- how would you identify your -- MH: Within the current situation, really? LB: No, no, just, like, I would identify myself as a lesbian, in other words. MH: Oh, I identify as gay, I'm -- you know, but -- LB: [That's? ] easy, okay. MH: Yes. LB: Well, I think -- so, here's one thing I think everybody should ask and -- because we hope that someday in the future, somebody will look at this and get a sense of, you know, various different people's experiences with the HIV/AIDS epidemic. And it is true that we Baby Boomers are the ones that went through this in our twenties and now we're at a different age. We're about to go through the aging epidemic, as well, since that's another thing. But what would you want somebody in the future to know, like, in terms of what that was like? I mean, if you were just going to sort of describe what the AIDS epidemic was like to somebody who had no sense of what it was like -- and I think there are young people today who really don't have any sense of what it was like. MH: I think more so than anything, I would like them to know that hopefully sometime in the future when there's no real recollection of that, I hope that we as a community are accepted just as -- the same as anyone else in the community, that our -- as the gay community is no longer the gay community, you know? I'm hoping that would be that but the case would be that we were at a time then where we still considered less than, being part of our community. And we had something that struck us really hard but we showed a strength that probably would not have been imagined. And we pulled ourselves up by our boot straps and we took care of it on our own when the government wasn't there to do so, you know? It was a time of a lot of pain but there was a lot of camaraderie and a lot of good things actually did come out of the situation, so -- although it was a difficult time for a lot of people, we lost a lot of friends, we lost family members, a lot of good actually did come out of the situation for us because we became stronger. LB: Yeah. I want to ask you one more thing because you brought it up because you were talking about how you became aware of this sort of -- of HIV/AIDS because of Rock Hudson. And I think people don't have an understanding of how significant Rock Hudson's circumstance was. And there were some other famous people that -- MH: Yeah. LB: -- spoke out about -- but you want to say a little bit more about that? because I don't know if people would always really get what happened. MH: That was actually something, by somebody of his stature coming out. And for somebody of my age, we thought of him as McMillan from McMillan and Wife, you know, even more so than the movies, in the black and white movies and stuff. But he was a leading man. He was everything. So, from a gay person's point of view, I almost wonder if -- he brought attention to it but we were also looking as, like, well, look, he was gay, you know? And we were almost more focused on that when the whole thing arrived than we were on the fact that this guy has HIV. And at that point, we thought, well, he came out -- that he had HIV. It's, like, oh, he must be gay because this is a -- you know, we were still being told this was a gay disease. But for somebody like that, somebody in the public eye like that, that meant so much to older people, too, older than us at that time. That meant a lot. It's, like, oh, wow. LB: Yeah. MH: He's, like, Rock Hudson and he got this disease. And I think it made people think, you know what? I can get this, too. It was really big. Other people did talk about it frequently. You know, we had Magic Johnson come out, that was very big, to have somebody that wasn't homosexual get the disease, come out publicly about it. I think that was really a big turning point because this wasn't somebody that was gay, to our knowledge, at least. And so, when celebrities or famous people like this actually can show that "this can happen to us, too" and then they relate their story and they actually speak out in support of a cause like that, it means the world, it really does, just like right now, with this epidemic, you're seeing so many famous people, celebrities, whatever you would call them actually speaking up: "Wear a mask, you know? It's not that hard. This is very important. This is a serious issue. " Without that, a lot of people would actually ignore it completely. So, that was an important turning point and it really was and -- as were some of the people that got -- contracted it and came into public view after that, even more so -- there's other people that may have been more known to the gay community but not to the entire population of our country that -- that's why, to me, that was extremely important and that's why it made you notice it right then and there and this is a real thing. LB: Yeah, it' pretty -- it was remarkable. And even Elizabeth Taylor's response and -- MH: Yeah. LB: -- you know, that kind of stuff, too. MH: Yeah. And when, like, for instance, when Liberace died, he didn't do a lot for -- the fact that he denied that he was gay throughout his lifetime. He didn't talk about having AIDS throughout his lifetime. It was done -- all that came out posthumously. So, that did nothing, really, to help in eradicating the disease. It takes a lot for a celebrity, even knowing that he's going to pass away soon to know that everything he's done and the way he wants to be remembered, this is what you may be remembered for but this is important. So, that actually was something that really meant a lot at that time and especially, like I said, to be a leading man like that, a heartthrob to so many heterosexual Americans, you know what I mean? It was a very important -- yes. LB: Great. Well, is there anything else you want to add that you're thinking -- MH: No, no. I wish I -- like I said, I thought to myself I didn't know that I would be a good candidate for this because I wasn't one of those heroes that walked the straight and narrow. But I think I'm more an example of how a lot of people were back then, you know? Like I say that the knowledge wasn't there in the beginning and then it was a bit sketchy as we did get it. And a lot of us still carried on, thinking this won't affect me. When we look at this pandemic right now, I have a whole different world of thought. Not only did we hear right away from experts and scientists of what it is, how dangerous this could be, but every person that I know that's in the medical profession says this is serious. And these are Republicans and Democrats and Independents, you know? But when it came to this disease, they weren't hedging on it. And so, to see people not take it seriously is scary. It is scary. Like I say, the AIDS epidemic was a little bit different, you know? It wasn't as easily transmitted by any measure. But when you see some of the ways -- you know, I think about -- I somewhat had a somewhat cavalier attitude back then and I see that to the nth degree right now with something that's far more contagious, you know? So, that's just fuel for thought, you know? LB: It is, it's -- MH: I believe, to be honest with you, too, as far as our own community, I think we're more -- I see very few people that I know from the LGBTQ community that aren't watching this closely, aren't very cautious about it, and a lot of that may come from the fact that we went through this. We went through an epidemic of our own, on a smaller scale, but we know this is serious business. And, like I say, with that community, I'm not seeing the same kind of divisiveness I'm seeing through people in general and the way they ignore it, you know what I mean, and don't take it seriously. So, [I don't know? ]. LB: Hashtag not our first virus. MH: What's that? LB: Hashtag not our first virus. MH: Not our first virus, absolutely, absolutely. LB: [Thanks that we're? ] -- MH: And although we may not have individually dealt with it so well then, now that I'm older, more mature, now more so than ever, my biggest fear is that I get it and give it to someone else, you know? That was something that was part of our epidemic at the time. With maturity comes the understanding of that. LB: I just want to say, Mitch, that when you were doing Above Ground and I was writing an article for it, I remember one time me sitting in your office and you were showing me how to use that program that -- Corel. MH: Corel Draw that I used to use, yeah. LB: (inaudible) [and hook it, yeah? ], and when I was watching you set up the graphics on it and then, soon after, the magazine, your magazine was over and I started the Valley Gay Press and I used Corel for eight years. MH: Did you? (laughs) LB: So, well, I could probably do this. And Mitch is doing it and he's -- and I really -- I wrote the paper in Corel -- MH: Yeah. LB: -- and typed it in in Corel and [part of it was? ] just because you were doing it that way. And I ran that paper for eighteen years. MH: Yes. LB: So, it grew out of [the stuff you learned? ] and I thought Above Ground was a huge inspiration to a lot of people. People really paid attention to it and read things in it. And, you know, Steve Black wrote political articles in it and we really covered information to a lot of people and we began -- MH: Steve Black, there's another one who was so involved with so many different things, especially in the political field with us -- LB: Yeah, yeah. MH: -- [another one? ]. LB: Yeah, [just? ] Steve in my office and at the center. He was amazing. MH: Yeah, yeah. There was actually so many people that we've lost over the years that -- and, like I say, you almost become numb to it. And then, when you think about somebody, it was -- it took a lot of people that it shouldn't have. LB Yeah. MH: There's a lot of people that passed away that never allowed it to even be said that that's what they passed away from, you know? LB: And Steve died of AIDS. MH: I know he did, yeah, yeah, because -- yeah. And he had said something to me about it. But he did not want that to be out as public knowledge, either, and a lot of people didn't, you know, that were suffering through that. It was [a pitiful? ] -- LB: [Yeah? ], that he had it. MH: Yeah. LB: It was too late by the time -- MH: Yeah. LB: It was [clear? ] that he had it. MH: So, it was too late and also too early as far as the medical advances they had made, yeah, yeah. LB: Yeah. So, well, thank you very, very much for talking to us about this. This is really terrific that you've done this and I -- let me just remind you again, I'm supposed to do that, to say that, let's see, that, you know, you -- we're going to -- this Zoom meeting is private and so it has a password entry so there's no, you know, other people on this or anything like that. And we, I just want to remind you again, that once this is done and I upload this and then they'll send it to be transcribed and then you'll be able to review it. We'll send it to you in an email so that you can read through the whole thing. And if there's things in it that you want to change or add or rearrange or [look at? ] -- MH: Absolutely. Will they look at it at any point and say we should edit certain parts of this or -- LB: [Not -- not? ] -- MH: No? Okay. All right. I just wonder if -- I get a bit long-winded sometimes. LB: No, and I don't think that's the case at all. I thought that you were really great and fascinating. But I think that, you know, people may listen to this in the future and what they would do -- and I think I'm going to stop it now because we're just chatting. MH: Okay. LB: Turn this off -- END OF AUDIO FILE Copyright for this oral history recording is held by the interview subject. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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01:02:33
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Title
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Mitch Hemphill, June 17, 2020
Description
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Mitch Hemphill talks about the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania. He focuses on working in the local bar; the rise of the Fighting AIDS Continuously Together (FACT) organization; and creating and running his newspaper "Above Ground," which covered AIDS information.
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PH40_12
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AIDS (Disease)
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2020-06-17
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Copyright remains with the interview subject and their heirs.