Stories of Helplessness
Debbie Lynn Kellner, 1964 – 2004
Story & Recording by Crystal Gamet
My Mama, Debbie Lynn Kellner, August 2, 1964 – January 20, 2004.
My beautiful mama, who never knew she was beautiful and never got that message from this world.
I wish that I could tell her how beautiful she was. Losing my mother was like losing part of my own body. I compiled some pictures to share a little bit about who she was.
She was a woman who was born into extreme poverty to a family of ten. She was blessed to be a twin and have that incredibly deep connection in this world.
My mom could not read or write, and she suffered more physical violence than I can ever bring myself to describe — but she survived longer than the men who tried to kill her. She fought to graduate from high school, despite the incredible bullying she experienced for being in the special education program.
My mom contracted HIV at 21 and was convinced she would never have access to romantic love again in her life. This was partially true.
So when she met Tom, he had just been released from prison and he was homeless, so he immediately moved in with us. Even though that got us kicked out of public housing, my mom was willing to overlook that, because at least she had someone who loved her.
Her ashes are buried with him, and I still find this fact sickening.
She survived to the age of 39. She survived the early years of the AIDS epidemic, despite chronic poverty, domestic violence, stigma and depression.
She loved all of my friends. and to the friends who were brave enough to show her love at the end when they knew she had AIDS, I will never forget. I am grateful for how hard to she fought to live long enough to help me grow into the almost-woman I was when she died.
I will miss her forever.
Morgan MacDonald (1955-1983)
Recorded by Kathryn Danielle Hirsch
Story by Karen Eyres
In the early days of the AIDS crisis, a Florida hospital chartered a private jet to fly one of their patients – a 27-year-old man diagnosed with AIDS – to San Francisco, where he was deposited at a local AIDS foundation with $300 in cash.
Morgan MacDonald from Vero Beach, Florida was discharged from Shands Hospital at the University of Florida at Gainesville in October 1983 and immediately flown to San Francisco, where he was abandoned. MacDonald said Shands Hospital transported him to California against his will. Before his hospitalization, he lived in a religious commune in Florida.
Shands Hospital spent $7,000 for a Learjet to fly MacDonald to San Francisco. He was left on a stretcher at the office building of a city-funded AIDS foundation, which transferred him to the AIDS Ward at San Francisco General Hospital. Dianne Feinstein, then-Mayor of San Francisco, sent a telegram to Governor Bob Graham of Florida, informing him that a public hospital in his state dumped an unwanted AIDS patient on her city. She called the incident “outrageous and inhumane.”
The hospital defended its actions, saying MacDonald no longer needed hospital care and the hospital was unable to find a Florida nursing home that would accept him. The hospital’s public relations director said that the AIDS Foundation in San Francisco agreed to give MacDonald 30 days of free housing.
But Dr. Mervyn Silverman, San Francisco’s public health director, said the Florida hospital had contacted both the City of San Francisco and the AIDS Foundation and “played us one off against the other.”
Dr. Silverman said that while MacDonald was free to return to Florida, his condition was acute and it was essential that he receive appropriate care. Morgan MacDonald died 21 days later at San Francisco General at the age of 27.
A Grave on Hart Island
Recorded by Judd Hirsch
Story by The AIDS Memorial & Irwin M. Rappaport
Photo by Melinda Hunt for The Hart Island Project AIDS Initiative
A version of this story first appeared on The AIDS Memorial on Instagram
In 1985, the first infant to die from AIDS in New York City was buried in a gravestone marked “SC-B1 1985” on Hart Island, off the coast of the Bronx in New York. That grave is referred to by some as the “Tomb of the Unknown Child.”
“SC” stands for “Special Child” and “B1” stands for “Baby number 1.”
His or her name is unknown. The Special Child was buried along with 16 other people who died from AIDS. They were the first group of AIDS burials on Hart Island. Hart Island has been the final resting place for unclaimed bodies and the bodies of the indigent in New York City since just after the Civil War.
I’m Judd Hirsch. This heart-breaking story speaks to me as a native New Yorker.
In 1985, little was known about the cause or spread of AIDS, and empathy and respect for people with AIDS suffered as a result. So, these early AIDS burials were done differently.
Until 2021, burials on Hart Island were done by the Department of Corrections. Its officers supervised inmates from Rikers Island who dug the graves for 50 cents an hour. The officers and inmates were afraid to catch disease from the dead bodies, so they wore protective gear that they threw out after each burial.
Strangely, but perhaps poetically in retrospect, they buried these first 17 AIDS victims in individual graves because of fear and lack of understanding, not in the mass-grave trenches used for the rest of the island’s dead. They were buried as deep in the ground as the backhoe would go, on the southern-most tip of the island.
AIDS killed IV drug users who shared needles and their babies who contracted the disease in-utero. It killed poor people whose families and friends couldn’t afford a private cemetery plot. It killed gay men and kids estranged from their families or who had run away from home. Many of their parents wanted nothing to do with a child who had AIDS.
Many funeral homes refused to handle bodies of those who died of AIDS. In 1983, New York State Funeral Directors Association urged members not to embalm AIDS fatalities. These poor souls had nowhere to go except Hart Island.
Eventually it became clear that the bodies of people who died of AIDS presented no risk of contagion. So those bodies, including babies, were buried on Hart Island in mass graves like the rest. Crates stacked on top of each other, covered in dirt by bulldozers.
Over one million people are interred on Hart Island. It is estimated that over one-third of the dead are infants and stillborn babies.
The Hart Island Project is a nonprofit founded by artist Melinda Hunt to improve access to the island and information on its burials so that more of the bodies can be identified. The Hart Island Project AIDS Initiative now helps people to try and identify those buried on Hart Island who died of AIDS.
Baby Aaron
Story & Recording by Raymond Black
In the late 1980s and early 90s, I volunteered with an organization that placed volunteers in hospitals and group homes to work with children with HIV/AIDS.
I met Aaron when he was 9 months old and cared for him until he died at the age of 18 months. This photograph was taken on his first and only birthday.
The women who were full-time caregivers at the home used to call me Aaron’s father because of our bond. Both his parents had already died. The women used to say he seemed jealous if he saw me holding another child.
Aaron was very sick. His lungs filled constantly with mucus. I was often asked to gently pat him on the back while he was given medication through a nebulizer. I could tell how much stress it caused his tiny body. Seeing him suffer was not easy.
When I spoke, Aaron would put his little hand against my jaw as if he was feeling the words as they formed in my mouth. On his first birthday, I brought him some presents and we had a little party on the ward. He was healthier than he had ever been before. He didn’t need to remain attached to tubes. I was told I could take him up to the rooftop garden.
I walked Aaron around the garden, holding him like I am in this photo. Just him and I, alone outside under a beautiful blue sky. An airplane flew overhead and he looked up. I told him about airplanes. I showed him flowers, rubbed them against his cheek so he could feel them. I just kept talking to him. He held my jaw as I spoke the entire time, feeling the words as they formed.
When Aaron died months later, the women at the home told me that was the only day of his life that he went outside other than for trips to the hospital.
Aaron was moved to a hospital for his last few days and placed in an oxygen tent. I went every day after work. While I was not present when he died late one night, I leaned in under the tent whenever I was there and never stopped talking to him.
Aaron was one of the reasons that I joined ACT UP. His memory fueled my activism. We lost so much in this epidemic. So much suffering. So much death of those far too young to die.
Renée Williams & the Ice Around Us
Story & Recording by John Hanning
In 1981, I was going to school in Memphis. I started listening to music by the B-52’s, Blondie, The Go-Go’s and Joan Jett. It was as if my disco ball was slowly being shattered.
On weekends, I would go George’s Disco. Here were drag shows, and my favorite drag queen was Renée Williams. The DJ would announce her name and the lights of the club were turned off. In the darkness, someone would lay a sheet of clear mylar on the stage floor. Yoko Ono’s Walking on Thin Ice would begin to play and the disco ball would be lit by a single spot light.
Renee would walk out onto the stage — slowly pick up the mylar and eventually fall to the floor under the mylar. It was like she was drowning as she fell through the ice. As she rolled around the floor, wrapping herself in the mylar, she extended her arms gesturing for help.
It was around this time I heard of a “gay cancer” that was spreading in New York. A friend told me not to do poppers while having sex. Renée was featured in the documentary What Sex Am I (1985) – subsequently dying of AIDS.
We were all walking on thin ice.