Timeline

August 28, 1981

CDC Reports that 40% of Identified Cases Die of KS/PCP

Of the 108 known cases of Kaposi's Sarcoma and pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, 107 are male and 94% of those whose sexual orientation is known are gay/bisexual.  About 40% of all patients have already died. Learn More.

The MMWR article, “Follow-Up on Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Pneumocystis Pneumonia,” reported that CDC received information on 70 additional cases of KS and/or PCP since its July 3 edition, making a total of 108 known cases. News of the article alarms the gay community for its indication that the new disease is spreading and that the outcome of those infected was likely to be a quick and brutal death. * * * * * Source: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, “Follow-Up on Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Pneumocystis Pneumonia,” August 28, 1981

October 28, 1981

'Patient D' Dies at NIH Facility

The National Institutes of Health reports the death due to severe immune deficiency of a man admitted to its facility in Bethesda, Maryland in June.  He was 35. Learn More.

Known only as "Patient D" in NIH research reports, the patient had been transferred to the NIH Clinical Center from Hartford Hospital, where doctors had been unable to reverse the course of multiple infections spreading through his body.  He had previously been living in New York City. The white, gay man said he had been healthy through adulthood until February 1981, when he began experiencing fatigue and weakness, followed by weight loss and fever.  By the time he was admitted to the NIH in June 1981, Patient D had been diagnosed with neumocystis carinii pneumonia, lymphocytopenia, cytomegalovirus, herpes simplex II, Candida esophagitis, and Mycobacterium avium tuberculosis of the lung, bone marrow, and esophagus. Thomas A. Waldmann, M.D., who at the time was chief of the Metabolism Branch of the NIH's National Cancer Institute, said in a 1990 NIH interview that Patient D was the first patient with AIDS seen at their facility.  He said that he could see that this disease, combined with the patient's identity as a gay man, "had a devastating effect on his relationships to individuals who had been close to him in the past." He noted that, besides the occasional visit from family members, Patient D was largely left alone to die.  Through others on his medical team, he learned that the patient had been abandoned by his partner and others from his social circle in New York. "No one visited this individual, who was in a critical and life-threatening condition, throughout his whole four-month stay," said Dr. Waldmann. The NIH medical team performed every test and issued every treatment they could think of, to no avail, he said. "We were all groping, trying to understand what was going on," Dr. Waldmann recalled.  "In that era, one couldn't be fatalistic, even when someone was in an apparently irreversible state. One had to assume that somehow one might be able to reverse the immunodeficiency and with that bring into control the infectious disease." "We had a great number of people involved in treating all the different systems," he said.  "His disease continued, and the patient finally died on October 28, 1981 of hypotension and respiratory failure, with multisystem involvement." An autopsy of the body revealed an even wider spectrum of infections, including massive necrosis, encephalitis, and degeneration of the brain.  The autopsy states: "This case represents an example of a recently described syndrome of acquired immunodeficiency in previously healthy young male homosexuals." The willingness of Patient D to spend what would turn out to be the last four months of his life in a NIH cancer research center would prove to be valuable to researchers, health officials, and the medical community for years to come. Cells taken from Patient D led to the discovery of the first human retrovirus HTLV-I and ultimately to the discovery of HIV-1 as the cause of AIDS -- one of the major scientific achievements during the last century, said Dr. Waldmann.  In addition, these cells played a critical role in the ability for Waldmann's lab to achieve a major breakthrough in immunology with the production of the monoclonal antibody to the Il-2 receptor, anti-Tac. By subjecting himself to research studies, Patient D provided critical information to the country's top researchers during the very earliest months of the epidemic.  The handful of cases reported at that time to the NIH and Centers for Disease Control had included instances of young, gay men with Kaposi's sarcoma, but the report of Patient D was the first to include malignant lymphoma as a condition. Patient D was also diagnosed with other conditions that were unique to his case at the time, including his deteriorating eyesight and the failure of his body to repond to a tuberculin skin test, despite the fact that he had widespread Mycobacterium avium. As these new conditions were reported widely to the medical community, the case study of Patient D helped to broaden the defnition of the disease early on and served to provide critical information to physicians and health officials across the country. * * * * * Sources: National Institutes of Health, "Dr. Thomas Waldmann Oral History 1990," interview with Dr. Waldmann on March 14, 1990 by interviewers Dennis Rodrigues, NIH Program Analyst, and Victoria Harden, M.D., Director of the NIH Historical Office. Retrovirology journal, "A Historical Reflection on the Discovery of Human Retroviruses" by Anders Vahlne, May 1, 2009 National Institutes of Health | National Library of Medicine, "Anti-IL-2 Receptor Monoclonal Antibody (anti-Tac) Treatment of T-cell Lymphoma," by Thomas Waldmann, M.D., 1994

November 30, 1981

Ken Horne Dies of Kaposi's Sarcoma in San Francisco

After falling ill in 1979 with unusual conditions related to a suppressed immune system, Ken Horne dies in San Francisco at the age of 38. Learn More.

In April 1980, the Centers for Disease Control received a report on Horne, who was diagnosed with the then-rare disease of Kaposi’s sarcoma.  In 1981, the CDC would retroactively identify Horne, who was a gay man, as the first American patient of the AIDS epidemic. Horne had grown up in Oregon and, when he was 21, he moved to San Francisco in 1965 to study ballet.  Within a few years, he abandoned his dance career and took an office job with the local transit system. He’d also discovered the city’s vibrant gay social scene and became a regular at the leather bars. By the fall of 1980, he’d become ill with the first reported case in San Francisco of what would eventually be called HIV/AIDS.  He was 37 years old. Dr. James Groundwater, a dermatologist, was puzzled by the symptoms Horne presented to him in November 1980.  Horne told him that for two years, he was experiencing fatigue, diarrhea and nausea.  More alarming was Horne's enlarged lymph nodes and the purple spots on his skin, one on his left thigh and another near his right nipple.  Dr. Groundwater took photos of the lesions and  biopsied of one of them.  He also drew some of Horne's blood to be tested. About a week later, Horne was back in Dr. Groundwater's office to hear about the results of the tests.  The dermatologist told him that something was wrong with his white blood cells and his immune system seemed compromised.  Horne's lesions represented something more mysterious; results were inconclusive.  He needed more tests. Over the next four months, Horne's condition worsened.  He suffered daily now from severe headaches and fever, and new lesions appeared on his face and back.  On March 30, 1981, Horne was admitted to St. Frances Hospital in San Francisco, where he was given a lumbar puncture.  The results showed he had cryptococcosis, an infection acquired by inhalation of contaminated soil.  This made no sense to Dr. Groundwater. In the San Francisco AIDS Oral History Project, Dr. Groundwater recalled sending the biopsy of Horne's lesion to as many as ten pathologists, trying to crack the mystery of the purple spots. "In the early days of the AIDS epidemic, very few dermatologists, dermatopathologists even, had seen much Kaposi's sarcoma. This was very rare. And so they missed the diagnosis. They read it as hemangioma and proliferating angioendotheliomatosis, et cetera,"  he said.  "But finally, I think it was Dick Sagebiel, a dermatopathologist over in the melanoma clinic at Mt. Zion, who was the first one who made the diagnosis of Kaposi's sarcoma on these lesions." On April 9, Dr. Richard Sagebiel would give Dr. Groundwater the first "reading" of the biopsy that made any sense of Horne's deteriorating condition.  But this just opened up a bunch of new questions.  KS trypically affected elderly men, usually of Jewish or Italian descent, and the condition was easily treatable. Weeks later, things started to fall into place when Dr. Groundwater was attending dermatology rounds at the University of California San Francisco.  Clinic chief Marcus Conant, MD, asked attendees if any of them had seen any unusual cases of Kaposi's sarcoma. "At that moment, the realization was born that a new epidemic had arrived in San Francisco," wrote Randy Shilts in his masterpiece of investigative reporting, And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic Drs. Groundwater and Conant exchanged information; they had known eachother since the late 1960s, when Groundwater did his residency at UCSF.  Dr. Conant said that Dr. Alvin Friedman-Kien in New York had some cases of KS in young gay men. "So I called Alvin Friedman-Kien," Dr. Groundwater said in the San Francisco AIDS Oral History Project.  "At that point, Alvin had, I think, six, seven, or eight cases of these young gay males with Kaposi's sarcoma." On April 24, Dr. John Gullett, a key member of Ken Horne's medical team at St. Francis Hospital, called the Centers for Disease Control to report the case of KS, making Ken Horne the first reported victim of the new disease. Over the next seven months, doctors ordered the usual treatments for Horne's KS, cytomegalovirus, and cryptococcal meningitis — but nothing was working. "He went through one horrendous experience after another with these various opportunistic infections," Dr. Groundwater said.  "But I think when he began to lose his vision from the cytomegalovirus retinitis, he gave up the battle.  When he went blind, he died within a couple of weeks.  I think he gave up." Ken Horne died of AIDS-related illness on November 30, 1981 at St. Francis Hospital at the age of 38. * * * * * It is now believed that the first HIV/AIDS patient in North America was Robert "Bobby" Rayford, a Black teenager from the Old North neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri.  Fifteen-year-old Rayford was hospitalized in 1968 with shortness of breath, swelling in his lower body and other infections that he reported experiencing for about two years. First suspecting that he had contracted an exotic illness, Rayford’s doctors were surprised to learn that the teenager had never traveled outside of the Midwest. They proceeded to administer numerous tests on Rayford's blood and tissue, but were unable to determine an overall diagnosis or effective treatment.  He died of pneumonia in 1969 at St. Louis City Hospital.  An autopsy revealed small, cancerous, internal tumors throughout his body -- Kaposi’s sarcoma. Almost 20 years later, a western blot postmortem test on Rayford’s tissue samples confirmed HIV. Also relevent is the illness and death of Grethe Rask, a Danish physician and surgeon who spent years working in the Congo.  Over several years, she suffered from a number of opportunistic infections and severe immunodeficiency, and then died of pneumonia on December 12, 1977 in Copenhagen.  A 1987 blood test determined that she was infected with HIV. An early "cluster" case was that of Arne Vidar Røed, a Norwegian truck driver and former sailor, and his wife and child.  While still a teenager, Røed worked in the kitchen of a Norwegian ship, travelling to Nigeria, Ghana, Cote D'Ivoire, Liberia, Guinea and Senegal.  When he returned to Norway in 1965, he married and became a father to two children. Beginning in 1968, Røed suffered from joint pain, lymphedema, and lung infections, conditions which traditional medicine and treatments failed to resolve.  He died in April 1976.  His wife, who had come down with similar symptoms, died the following December.  Their eight-year-old daughter died, too.  Although the disease was not identified until long after their deaths, all three are believed to be the first confirmed HIV cases in Europe.  This was also the first documented cluster of AIDS cases before the AIDS epidemic of the early 1980s. * * * * * Sources: Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt www.History.com | A&E Television Networks, "AIDS Crisis Timeline," June 14, 2021 University of California Libraries, "The San Francisco AIDS Oral History Series | The AIDS Epidemic in San Francisco: The Response of Community Physicians, 1981-1984," interview with James R. Groundwater, M.D. by interviewer Sally Smith Hughes in 1996 National Park Service, "Robert Rayford" The Weekly View, "Robert Rayford: America's First AID S Victim" by Al Hunter, May 8, 2014 University of Copenhagan School of Global Health newsletter, "After Hard Working Days, She Rested by the Beautiful Ebola River," July 22, 2020 Discover magazine, "The Sea has Neither Sense nor Pity: The Earliest Known Cases of AIDS in the pre-AIDS Era" by Rebecca Kreston, October 22, 2012

December 31, 1981

45% of Patients Die by Year-End

At the close of 1981, a cumulative total of 270 cases of severe immune deficiency are reported among gay men, and 121 of those individuals have died. Learn More.

By this time, some researchers began to call the condition GRID (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency).  This terminology would have a negative influence on both the medical profession and the public, causing people to perceive the epidemic as limited to gay men. This early misconception of the disease would have serious long-term consequences as it becomes evident that anyone could be infected with HIV, including women, heterosexual men, hemophiliacs, people who inject drugs, and children. * * * * * Source: www.HIV.gov, "A Timeline of HIV/AIDS"

January 1982

Dancer-Choreographer Antony Valdor Dies

Antony Valdor, a dancer, choreographer and teacher known throughout North America, dies of AIDS-related illness at the age of 49. Learn More.

Valdor, a principal dancer with Théâtre du Châtelet who was fluent in French, toured Europe extensively.  After dancing with Les Grands Ballet U.S., Marquis de Cuevas and London Ballet Theatre. he became technical coach for Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. In the late 1960s, he was ballet master for San Francisco Ballet, and produced one of the company's most popular events, Ballet69, an innovative series of dance performances in the summer of 1969. He choreographed several pieces for SF Ballet, for the National Academy of Arts Ballet and co-choreographed ballet pieces with Gemze de Lappe. He toured the U.S. as guest teacher and choreographer with many ballet companies and dance academies. Born Robert Dishman in Los Angeles, Valdor studied with Olga Preobrajens, Alexandra Danilova, Robert Joffrey, and Jose Limon, among others.  He was a Navy veteran, serving for four years. His first performances after being released from military service was in the summer of 1955 with the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera dancing in their summer musical series. Valdor is memorialized in the project Dancers We Lost: Honoring Performers Lost to HIV/AIDS.

January 1982

Stonewall President Kenneth Schnorr Dies

Kenneth Schnorr, president of the Stonewall Democratic Club in Los Angeles, dies of AIDS-related illness at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.  He was 35. Learn More.

Schnorr would be among the first in the U.S. to die of AIDS.  After being found unconscious in his car in December 1981, he was hospitalized and Cedars-Sinai's top-notch medical team was perplexed with his rapidly declining health. West Hollywood activist Ivy Bottini, who was Schnorr's friend, would tell the story of Schnorr's illness and death in her 2018 memoir The Liberation of Ivy Bottini. Bottini recalled receiving a phone call from Schnorr's mother, who was sitting bedside with him at Cedars. "He's full of black and blue marks.... I don't know what to do," Schnorr's mother told her. Bottini asked to talk with Schnorr, and quickly realized that he had lost his hearing.  She eventually was able to speak with Schnorr's doctor, Joel Weisman, M.D., who would go on to open one of the first medical clinics to treat HIV/AIDS.  When Dr. Weisman was unable to give Bottini a clear picture of what was going on, she felt a growing dread that Schnorr's condition was an indication of a larger issue. Schnorr died about a week after entering the hospital.  Bottini was among the members of the Stonewall Democratic Club who attended Schnorr's funeral. “After Ken died, something said to me there is more to this than we see,” Bottini said. “So, for some reason, I just picked up the phone and called the CDC.  I had never done that before.  ‘Look, this just happened to my friend. Do you have any answers?'  The hesitancy at the other end of the line, the hemming and the hawing before they would say anything — I just knew it was bad.” The CDC official told her the black and blue marks was a symptom of Kaposi sarcoma, which was usually found in elderly Jewish men. “And that was the explanation,” she said. “I thought, ‘No, this doesn’t make sense, because Ken was one of three first guys diagnosed with Kaposi in town, in West Hollywood, in LA, and that started me on working to find out what the hell was going on.” After many phone calls and the realization that the government was failing to act on the crisis, Bottini called Dr. Weisman to invite him to update the community at a town hall she was organizing at West Hollywood’s Plummer Park.  She was hoping he would share any information he had and would provide his theory on how this new illness was transmitted.  She herself suspected that it was being passed during sex, through bodily fluids. "That’s the only thing that made sense to me," Bottini said.  "Because if it was airborne, women would be getting it, everybody would be getting it, and that wasn’t happening.” On the night of the town hall, Fiesta Hall in Plummer Park was jam-packed. “It was all guys — and (Bottini’s then-girlfriend) Dottie Wine and I," Bottini recalled.  "And Joel talked about transmission and he believed it was bodily fluids, too.  And I thought, ‘I’m not crazy.’” Schnorr's legacy was that he may have saved many lives by inspiring Bottini and others to search for answers and share that information with the greater community in the earliest days of the epidemic. * * * * * Sources: Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt The Liberation of Ivy Bottini by Judith V. Branzburg (Bink Books, 2018) Watermark, "Tribute to 'Give 'em Hell' Lesbian Feminist Pioneer Ivy Bottini" by Karen Ocamb, March 3, 2021

February 19, 1982

Billy Kovinsky is First Canadian Known to Die of AIDS

William "Billy" Kovinsky dies of AIDS-related illness, becoming the first known case of HIV/AIDS in Canada.  He was 43 years old. Learn More.

About a month later, Canada Diseases Weekly Report would print an article about the case, alerting medical officials that HIV had come to Canada. As far back as August 1979, Kovinsky sought medical treatment for illnesses that overwhelmed his immune system.  According to his doctor, John Doherty, M.D., Kovinsky came to his office in March 1981, and the doctor found he had enlarged lymph nodes and abnormal levels of immune globulins. During a follow-up visit a month later, Kovinsky's immune globulins were normal again.  Then in May 1981, he went to a different doctor and received a blood test, which found that his white blood count was “extremely low.” His sister Anna Levin told Canada's Xtra magazine that she vacationed with Kovinsky in Florida around that time, and saw that his health was in decline. “He was very thin and gaunt and suffered from sweats,” Anna recalled. When Kovinsky returned to Canada in June 1981, he submitted to a series of tests at the University Hospital in London, which showed “leukopenia, atypical lymphocytosis and an elevated sedimentation rate,” according to Dr. Doherty's case report.  He was admitted to the hospital for eight days and then discharged without a diagnosis or treatment plan. Kovinsky continued to search for an answer to his health problems, but doctors had little to offer him.  He became very depressed and attempted suicide in August 1981 by taking an overdose of pills, according to Dr. Doherty. After a two-day hospital stay, he was sent to Toronto for four weeks of psychiatric treatment.  In December 1981, Kovinsky was diagnosed with thrush, an infection which covered the entire lining of his esophagus, from mouth to stomach. On January 5, 1982, Kovinsky checked himself into the hospital for the last time.  A battery of tests were performed on him, according to the case report, including an “open chest upper lobe biopsy.”  His sister Anna said she visited Kovinsky at his hospital bed three times a week.  His friends Phyllis and Jack would also come by and try to cheer him up. He had his own room, and Anna recalled that he was treated very well by the staff at the hospital. Kovinsky died just six weeks later at the age of 43. Dr. Doherty told the Canadian Medical Association Journal that he reported Kovinsky's case to Canada's Laboratory Centre for Disease Control, and the very next day investigators came to his office for more information.  On March 27, 1982, Canada Diseases Weekly Report carried a short article on the case, and soon, it would be clear that Dr. Doherty had reported the first known case of AIDS in Canada. “I still remember this case vividly, because I knew the guy really well,” Dr. Doherty recalled for the Journal in 2002. “Billy was just a really nice guy who led two lives," said his sister Anna to the Windsor Star.  "One was his public life where he was a supposedly heterosexual guy and had all heterosexual friends. The other one was a life that nobody knew about. I’m sure it was very difficult, exceptionally difficult."

April 12, 1982

Award-winning Broadway Actor Lenny Baker Dies

Lenny Baker, who won the 1977 Tony Award for Best Actor in a featured role (musical), dies of AIDS-related illness in a hospital in Hallandale Beach, Florida at the age of 37. Learn More.

Born Leonard Joel Baker in 1945 in Boston, he began his acting career in regional theater and spent several summers at the O'Neill Center's National Playwrights Conference in Waterford, Connecticut.  He told an interviewer in 1977 that the center was instrumental in his career, partly because he saw performances of the National Theater for the Deaf there. ''It's perhaps because of watching them work,'' Baker said, ''that I can be so brazen with comic uses of my body.'' After moving to New York City in 1969, Baker acted in Off-Broadway stage productions until making his Broadway stage debut in 1974 in The Freedom of the City.  Baker won a Tony award and the Drama Desk Award as Outstanding Actor  in 1977 for his performance in the musical I Love My Wife. Baker also acted in films and television shows, including Paul Mazursky's Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976), for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe award.  His other film credits included The Hospital (1971) and The Paper Chase (1973). Following Baker's death, a memorial service was held at The Public Theater, located at 425 Lafayette Street in New York City. * * * * * * Sources: Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt The New York Times, "Lenny Baker, 37, Stage Actor" by Eleanor Blau, April 13, 1982 IMDb, "Lenny Baker biography"

May 6, 1982

Hibiscus - Founder of Cockettes & Angels of Light - Dies

To the shock and dismay of many fans in San Francisco and New York City, The Advocate announces: "Founder of Cockettes, Hibiscus, Dead of GRID." Learn More.

Hibiscus was famous on both coasts for founding and performing with the flamboyant theatrical groups The Cockettes and Angels of Light.  He died of AIDS-related illness (then called "Gay-Related Immune Deficiency") at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York at the age of 32, becoming one of the earliest casualties of the epidemic. Born George Edgerly Harris III in Bronxville, N.Y.,  he was the child of theater performers who relocated the family to a home on El Dorado Avenue in Clearwater Beach, Fla.  Before long, George Jr. had founded his first theatrical group, the El Dorado Players, which performed in the family's garage.

"He was fascinating even as a small child," his mother Ann Harris told The New York Times Magazine in 2003.  "All the other kids followed him and acted out his fantasies. He did Camelot one time and had the kids on bicycles with the handlebars as the horses' heads. Another time he directed Cleopatra, and used the garden hose as the serpent and our cats as Cleopatra's gifts to Caesar. He was very much the little producer."

When his family returned to New York in 1964, George Jr. reprised the El Dorado Players, augmenting the troupe with children he met in Greenwich Village.  He took acting and singing classes at Quintano's School for Young Professionals, and soon he was cast as an extra in a milk commercial, a deaf-mute in a television series and an antiwar protester in an Off Broadway play called Peace Creeps, co-starring Al Pacino and James Earl Jones.

The latter role would be strangely prescient.  On October 21, 1967, an 18-year-old George Jr. would be photographed placing a flower in a gun barrel pointed at him while taking part in an anti-war demonstration at the Pentagon.  The photo, widely circulated in the media, became iconic of the anti-war movement and generational divide in the country.

Washington, D.C. was just a stop-over, through, of a trip he was taking to San Francisco with friend Irving Rosenthal, the author of the homoerotic novel Sheeper and the onetime lover of William Burroughs.  Inspired by an image in a Cocteau novel, he changed his name to Hibiscus, and started wearing the glittery makeup, diaphanous robes and floral headpieces that would become his signature. He joined Rosenthal's commune, KaliFlower, which was dedicated to distributing free food and creating free art and theater.  This was the fertile environment in which Hibiscus founded The Cockettes. Hibiscus and other KaliFlower members first performed at the 1970 New Year's Eve Show at the Palace Theater, an old Chinese movie house in North Beach.  They called themselves The Cockettes, a bawdy allusion to the Rockettes, and danced a cancan to the Rolling Stones' song Honky Tonk Women. Under the leadership of Hibiscus, the group's act quickly evolved into bigger, wilder, and more lavish productions, and The Cockettes’ shows fast became not-to-be-missed events.  New shows were created every few weeks, with Paste on Paste, Gone with the Showboat to Oklahoma, and Tropical Heatwave/Hot Voodoo being some of the early productions. Pearls Over Shanghai became the Cockettes first show featuring an original script, music and lyrics, and was an instant hit with fans.  Some members of the Cockettes, like Sylvester and Devine, began to garner their own fan followings.  During this time, Hibiscus found he could express his sexual identity with fearless abandon. ''He came out of the closet wearing the entire closet,'' says Nicky Nichols, a fellow Cockette.

When some members of The Cockettes began insisting that they begin charging for their shows, Hibiscus refused and found himself expelled from the group he founded.  Unperturbed, Hibiscus formed a new theatrical group called the Angels of Light Free Theater. Their shows included Flamingo Stampede and The Moroccan Operette, which Hibiscus described as being ''like Kabuki in Balinese drag.''

Among the people he convinced to perform with the Angels of Light was poet Allen Ginsberg, who appeared in drag for the first time. Hibiscus found another collaborator in his new boyfriend, Jack Coe, also known as Angel Jack, who eventually moved to New York with Hibiscus in 1972, around the same time that the Cockettes disbanded.

Upon his return to NYC, he recruitd his mother and three sisters (Jayne Anne, Eloise and Mary Lou) into an east coast version of the Angels of Light. “I wrote almost all the music for the Angels of Light,” said his mother, Ann. “George would say, ‘Oh, I need a sheik scene, with a sheik in it,’ and then I would come up with a song.”

The group performed at the Theatre for the New City, where John Lennon was known to jump on the stage and sprinkle glitter on Hibiscus.

In the early 1980s, he and his sisters and brother formed the glitter rock group "Hibiscus and the Screaming Violets," supported by musicians Ray Ploutz on bass, Bill Davis on guitar and Michael Pedulla on drums.  But he had to stop performing in 1981 due to his escalating illness.

It's testament to the power of his personality and creativity that the spirit of Hibiscus dominates the 2002 Cockettes documentary, even though the film's focus is on the group.  Decked out in gender-bending drag and tons of glitter, the flamboyant ensembles of both The Cockettes and Angels of Light are considered to be the inspiration for later theater productions like The Rocky Horror Picture Show and acts like The New York Dolls.

* * * * * * Sources: Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt

The New York Times Magazine, "Karma Chameleon" by Horacio Silva, August 17, 2003 The Washington Post, "Flowers, Guns and an Iconic Shapshot" by David Montgomery, March 18, 2007 The Cockettes, A Film by David Weissman and Bill Weber, 2002 (trailer) Hibiscus and the Angels of Light, video (YouTube)

July 4, 1982

Terrence Higgins - Hansard Reporter in UK - Dies

Terrence Higgins dies at St. Thomas Hospital in London, becoming one of the first people to die of an AIDS-related illness in the United Kingdom.  He was 37 years old. Learn More.

Born in 1945 in the Wales town of Haverfordwest, Higgins left for London as a teenager.  He worked as a reporter for Hansard, the House of Commons' official record, and in the evenings as a nightclub barman and DJ.  In the late 1970s, he would often travel to work in New York and Amsterdam.

In 1980, he was forced to put his traveling on hold due to persistent and, at the time, unidentifiable illnesses.  In the summer of 1982, he collapsed while at work at the Heaven nightclub in London and was hospitalized.  Soon after, he died of the AIDS-related illnesses Pneumocystis pneumonia and progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy.

After Higgins' death, his partner, Rupert Whitaker, and his friends Martyn Butler, Tony Calvert, Len Robinson and Chris Peel founded the Terrence Higgins Trust to raise funds for research and awareness of the illness that was then only known as "Gay-Related Immune Deficiency" (GRID). Terrence Higgins Trust was the first service organization in the United Kingdom to respond to the HIV epidemic. * * * * * * Sources: BBC News, "Terrence Higgins' Legacy, 30 Years After Death" by Neil Prior, July 5, 2012 Terrence Higgins Trust, "How It All Began"

1982

San Francisco Dancer Larry Hinneman Dies

Larry Hinneman, a dancer with the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company in San Francisco, dies of AIDS-related illness. Learn More.

The exact date of Hinneman's death is not known, nor is his age at the time of his death. * * * * * * Source: San Francisco Chronicle, "AIDS at 25" by Steven Winn, June 8, 2006

October 21, 1982

Jimmy Howell - Bay Area Dance Teacher - Dies

Dancer and teacher James "Jimmy" Howell dies of AIDS-related illness in San Francisco at the age of 47. Learn More.

Howell was a psychologist in Yakima, Washington, who moved to New York and then Los Angeles to dance and teach with the Joffrey Ballet.  He then moved to San Francisco and started his own dance studio. Howell performed his last ballet, Journey of the Soul, earlier in the year.   A videotape of the ballet was shown at a celebration of his life. * * * * * * Sources: Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt Bay Area Reporter, "Gay Victim Dances Over Death" by Konstantin Berlandt, November 11, 1982

November 18, 1982

Musician & Producer Patrick Cowley Dies

Patrick Cowley, a dance music pioneer who recorded with musician Sylvester in 1977-1979, dies of AIDS-related illness at his Castro District home in San Francisco at the age of 32. Learn More.

Cowley, who specialized in electronic dance music, joined Sylvester's studio band and played synthesizer on Sylvester's 1978 album Step II, which included the hits "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" and "Dance (Disco Heat)." In addition, he wrote "Stars" and "I Need Somebody to Love Tonight" from Sylvester's 1979 album Stars.  Cowley also joined Sylvester's live band and joined him on several world tours. Born in 1950 in Buffalo, New York, Cowley became a drummer with amateur bands while attending Niagara University and later the University of Buffalo.  In 1971, he moved to San Francisco to attend the City College of San Francisco, where he studied music. After working with Sylvester, Cowley produced his own hits, including "Menergy" in 1981 and "Megatron Man," from the album of the same name.  He also wrote and produced the dance single "Right on Target" for San Francisco artist Paul Parker and "Do Ya Wanna Funk," a collaboration with Sylvester. Cowley also did a 15'45" long remix of Donna Summer's "I Feel Love," which is now a collector's item. Mind Warp, his final album, was composed as he felt the increasing effects of HIV infection. * * * * * Sources: Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt Pitchfork, "Patrick Cowley Is One of Disco's Most Important Producers. These Are His Must-Hear Deep Cuts" by Jesse Dorris, January 17, 2018 The Guardian, "San Fran-disco: How Patrick Cowley and Sylvester Changed Dance Music Forever" by Geeta Dayal, October 26, 2016

December 10, 1982

CDC Issues First Report on Pediatric AIDS Case by Transfusion

The case of "an unexplained immunodeficiency" and opportunistic infections in a 20-month-old infant who received blood transfusions in San Francisco is described in a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Learn More.

In “Epidemiologic Notes and Reports Possible Transfusion-Associated Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) -- California,” the Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report stated for the first time that an infant may have received the AIDS virus through an infectious agent, specifically blood. The infant was delivered via caesarian section on March 3, 1981 and received six blood transfusions over a four-day period.  Subsequent tests found that the blood transfused to the baby came from a donor infected with HIV. "If platelet transfusion contained an etiologic agent for AIDS, one must assume that the agent can be present in the blood of a donor before onset of symptomatic illness and that the incubation period for such illness can be relatively long," stated the CDC report in an editorial note.  "This model for AIDS transmission is consistent with findings described in an investigation of a cluster of sexually related AIDS cases among homosexual men in southern California." * * * * * * Source: Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report, "Epidemiologic Notes and Reports Possible Transfusion-Associated Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) -- California," December 10, 1982

December 17, 1982

CDC Reports Additional Pediatric Cases

In another MMWR report on the burgeoning issue of pediatric AIDS, the Centers for Disease Control reports four additional cases of immune-suppressed infants. Learn More.

The CDC report provides background on the infant cases:

• the mother of one infant was a prostitute and IV drug user;
• two were the children of Haitian immigrants; and
• one was the child of an IV drug-using woman who had died of AIDS.

Unlike the case of the San Francisco infant with AIDS-related symptoms, these infants had not undergone a blood transfusion.  Although the nature of the immune dysfunction described in the four cases was unclear, the report pointed toward the AIDS virus as the likely commonality between these infants. At the time, it was still unknown exactly how the virus could be transmitted from one person to another.  The CDC's report was notable in its conclusion that the deteriorating health of the infants was likely caused by an infectious agent, a theory based on the researchers' epidemiological observations. * * * * * * Source: Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report, "Unexplained Immunodeficiency and Opportunistic Infections in Infants -- New York, New Jersey, California," December 17, 1982

April 1, 1983

First Male Supermodel Joe MacDonald Dies

Joe MacDonald -- the most popular male model of his time and a favorite photography subject of Andy Warhol and Bruce Weber -- dies of AIDS-related illness in New York at the age of 37. Learn More.

Square-jawed and classicly handsome, he was frequently featured in GQ magazine during its Haber-Coulianos-Sterzin era, described by Meredith Etherington-Smith, who was GQ's editor in the 1970s, as "so Zeitgeisty, in a tiny window of time when homosexuality was chic but not yet widely accepted.”  Considered to be the first male supermodel, MacDonald counted David Hockney among his many friends and he enjoyed collecting art. Friends were shocked to see how much MacDonald's appearance had changed when his photo was featured in an early 1983 advertisement appearing in The New York Times fashion supplement, the results of MacDonald's final modeling assignment. "He looked very old," Susi Gilder, a model who knew MacDonald personally, would tell New York magazine for an article published in June 1983. “The eyes were just very sad." In Vogue magazine's 2020 retrospective on the AIDS crisis, fashion designer Michael Kors recalled MacDonald as the "first famous person who passed away" from AIDS. "When we first started reading about [HIV/AIDS] and hearing about it, people did not want to acknowledge that this disease didn’t discriminate," Kors told Vogue.  "People thought, oh, if you’re young and you’re healthy and you, quote, live a clean life, you’re not going to get it. And then they started seeing people like Joe MacDonald and realized this was not selective. The reality became very harsh at that point." As the first AIDS casualty in the fashion industry, the news of MacDonald's death sent shockwaves through New York. "I remember walking in NYC on Columbus and 83rd - on the corner - one summer night," model Rosie Vela told The AIDS Memorial on Instagram.  "I passed Joe sitting at a crowded outdoors cafe.  It was a year before he died." "He stood up when he saw me, and invited me to sit with him," Vela recalled.  "He was gorgeous, elegant and kind.  I’ll never forget how welcome he made me feel.  A true gentleman." * * * * * * Sources: Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt GQ magazine, "It All Started Here: The Gay Legacy of GQ" by David Kamp, June 23, 2017 New York magazine, "AIDS Anxiety" by Michael Daly, May 20, 1983 Vogue magazine, "Chapter One: How Fashion Was Forever Changed by 'The Gay Plague'” by Phillip Picardi, December 16, 2020 The AIDS Memorial on Instagram, tribute post about Joe MacDonald

April 30, 1983

Infant Diagnosed with AIDS Following Blood Transfusion

Lancet medical journal reports on the case of an infant who developed multiple opportunistic infections when 6 months old after he received multiple blood transfusions when he was just days old.  The infant dies of AIDS-related illness at the age of 17 months. Learn More.

Between the age of 6-14 months old, the infant developed symptoms of hepatitis, thrush, Candida dermatitis, otitis media, and Mycobacterium avium intracellulare.  Tests revealed raised immunoglobulin levels, decreased mononuclear-cell responses to allogeneic cells and mitogen, and a decreased T-cell ratio. It was determined that a blood donor, who was well at the time of blood donation, had died of AIDS about 17 months after donating.  The case study's researchers find that the infant likely acquired AIDS ("a transmissible infectious agent') from the blood transfusion. * * * * * * Sources: Lancet, "Acquired Immunodeficiency in an Infant: Possible Transmission by Means of Blood Products" by A J Ammann, M J Cowan, D W Wara, P Weintrub, S Dritz, H Goldman, H A Perkins; April 30, 1983

May 23, 1983

Ken Ramsauer - First Person with AIDS on TV - Memorialized in Central Park

Ken Ramsauer, a businessman who was featured in reporter Geraldo Rivera's investigative report for ABC's 20/20, dies of AIDS-related illness in New York City.  He was 29 years old. Learn More.

Ramsauer was a freelance lighting designer and hardware store manager who became the first person with AIDS to be the subject of a national television program when he was interviewed by Geraldo Rivera on 20/20. His final televised wish was that people might gather in Central Park to remember those who had died of AIDS.  The following month on June 13, more than 1,500 would gather in Central Park for  a candlelight vigil to commemorate Ramsauer and others who died of AIDS.  The event featured a eulogy by Rivera, a speech by New York Mayor Ed Koch, and a reading of the names of the 600 people known to have died from AIDS by that time. ''Kenny Ramsauer wanted the people of New York and of this country to learn about the disease,'' Rivera told the people gathered at the park's Naumberg Bandshell on that early summer evening. ''He wanted society to know the discrimination and negative publicity that has allowed this disease a mortal head start.'' The vigil was considered the first large gathering acknowledging the existence of the epidemic. David France, author of How to Survive a Plague, attended the vigil with a friend and later wrote: "The plaza was crowded with 1,500 mourners cupping candles against the darkening sky.  As our eyes landed on one young man after another, it became obvious that many of them were seriously ill.  A dozen men were in wheelchairs, so wasted they looked like caricatures of starvation.  I watched one young man twist in pain that wsa caused, apparently, by the barest gusts of wind around us." Frances goes on to write that 722 cases of AIDS were reported in New York at the time, but judging from the scene around him, the numbers were likely considerably higher. "We had found the plague," he wrote. * * * * * * * Sources: The New York Times, "1,500 Attend Central Park Memorial Service for AIDS Victim" by Lindsey Gruson, June 14, 1983 How to Survive a Plague by David France (MacMillan, 2017)

August 3, 1983

Singer-Musician Jobriath Dies

Rock star Jobriath dies of AIDS-related illness at the age of 36.  He was the first openly gay pop singerto be signed to a major record label, and one of the first internationally famous musicians to die of AIDS. Learn More.

Born Bruce Wayne Campbell and raised in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, Jobriath started his music career in the West Coast production of the musical Hair, receiving positive reviews in the lead role of Woof, a character implied to be gay.  After leaving the production in 1969, he joined the folk-rock band Pidgeon as their lead singer and guitarist, followed by a two-album solo deal with Elektra Records in 1972. His debut album Jobriath, released in June 1973, would feature an album sleeve design by photographer Shig Ikeda depicting a nude Jobriath as an ancient Greek statue.  This photograph was used in an extensive publicity campaign for the album release. Critical praise for the album followed the hype, and he was often compared with David Bowie, some critics contending that Jobriath had more talent than Bowie.  But American music fans of the 1970s weren't ready for a talent like Jobriath. "At a concert at the Nassau Coliseum, chants of 'faggot' started from the minute he took the stage, along with rubbish thrown at him, and Jobriath was forced a flee the stage," writes music historian Kevin Burke. Elektra then rush-released Jobriath's second album and ended its contract with him.  Jobriath would spend the rest of the '70s in a new identity, "Cole Berlin" (an amalgamation of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin), whose professions were nightclub signer and sex worker. Jobriath had begun to feel ill in late 1981 but still managed to contribute to the Chelsea Hotel's 100th birthday celebration in November 1982. "A decade after his billboards hung in Times Square, Jobriath Boone died alone and abandoned in his rooftop apartment at the Chelsea Hotel," Burke writes.  "Sadly overlooking the New York skyline he once adorned, here his body lay decomposing for four days before it was found." * * * * * * Source:

August 6, 1983

Singer-Performer Klaus Nomi Dies

Klaus Nomi, a rare countertenor with an eccentric act, dies of AIDS at the age of 39. Although Nomi's work had not yet met with national commercial success, he has a cult following in New York and in France. Learn More.

Nomi is an important part of the 1980s East Village scene, a hotbed of development for punk rock music, the visual arts and the avant-garde.  Born Klaus Sperber in Immenstadt, Germany, Nomi began his career in the 1960s, singing opera arias at the Berlin gay discothèque Kleist Casino.  His distinctive performances featured his wide vocal range and an otherworldly stage persona. In 1972, Nomi moved to New York and appeared in a camp production of Richard Wagner's Das Rheingold at Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theatrical Company. In 1978, he caught the attention of the NYC art scene with his performance in "New Wave Vaudeville."  Dressed in a skin-tight spacesuit with a clear plastic cape, Nomi sang the aria "Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix" ("My heart opens to your voice") from Camille Saint-Saëns' opera Samson et Dalila. After that performance Nomi was invited to perform at clubs all over New York City. Nomi would go on to create the Klaus Nomi Band, release albums, and perform in NYC's top clubs.  In 1979, David Bowie hired Nomi as a backup singer for his Dec. 15 appearance on Saturday Night Live.  During the performance of "TVC 15," Nomi and Joey Arias dragged around a large prop pink poodle with a television screen in its mouth. In the last several months of his life, Nomi would change his focus to operatic pieces and adopted a Baroque era operatic outfit complete with full collar as his typical onstage attire. The collar helped cover the outbreaks of Kaposi's sarcoma. Nomi's death at the Sloan Kettering Hospital Center in New York City is one of the first of many celebrity deaths from AIDS. * * * * * * * * Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt

1983

San Francisco Dancer Graham Conley Dies

Modern dancer Graham Conley, who performed with the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, dies of AIDS-related illness at the age of 32. Learn More.

* * * * * * Sources: Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt   Bay Area Reporter, June 8, 2006

October 4, 1983

AIDS Patient Flown from Florida to California & 'Dumped'

A Florida hospital arranged for a private jet to fly a patient with AIDS to San Francisco, where he was left at a local AIDS foundation with $300 cash. Learn More.

Morgan MacDonald, 27, of Vero Beach, Florida, was brought to San Francisco in a chartered Lear jet after being discharged from Shands Hospital at the University of Florida at Gainesville.  MacDonald told Dr. Mervyn Silverman, San Francisco's public health director, that he was transported to California against his will. Shands Hospital in Gainesville, Florida, spent $7,000 for a private jet to fly MacDonald to San Francisco last week and leave him on a stretcher at the office of a city-funded AIDS foundation.  He was immediately transferred to the AIDS ward at San Francisco General Hospital.

Dianne Feinstein, then-Mayor of San Francisco, sent a telegram to Gov. Bob Graham of Florida, asserting that a hospital there dumped an unwanted AIDS patient by having him flown to San Francisco.  She called the incident "outrageous and inhumane."

Gov. Graham's press secretary said Florida's Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services would investigate the matter.

Virginia Hunt, Shands' public relations director, defended the hospital's actions, saying MacDonald no longer needed hospital care and the hospital was unable to find a Florida nursing home for him.  She contended that the AIDS Foundation in San Francisco agreed to give Mr. MacDonald 30 days' free housing.

But Dr. Silverman said the Florida hospital had made contact with both the City of San Francisco and the AIDS Foundation and ''played us one off against the other.''

Silverman said MacDonald was free to return to Florida, but said his condition was acute and it was essential that he receive proper care. MacDonald would die 21 days later at San Francisco General Hospital's AIDS Ward.  MacDonald was said to have no family. Before his hospitalization, he lived in a religious commune in Florida. * * * * * * Source:

October 4, 1983

Russell Hartley, Performing Arts Archivist, Dies

Russell Hartley, curator of the Archives of the Performing Arts, dies of AIDS-related illness in a San Francisco Hospital at the age of 61. Learn More.

In 1947, Hartley created the San Francisco Dance Archives, which is now known as the Museum of Performance + Design and includes 3.5 million items documenting the performing arts in the Bay Area. By 1979, Hartley's collection included 2,000 books, 8,000 periodicals, 4,000 slides, 5,000 negatives, 10,000 pieces of sheet music, 2,000 posters, 250 phonograph records, 25,000 historical photographs, 10,000 stills from the San Francisco Ballet, 10,000 movie stills, 12,000 theatrical prints, 500 artifacts, and 250 costumes, according to art critic Renée Renouf in Dance Chronicle. "His unique confluence of personal artistry, a fund of personal anecdote and experience, and his single-minded devotion for the perpetuation of a collection commenced 40 years ago passes into its own special historical niche with Russell's death," Renouf wrote in 1983. Born in 1924, Hartley attended Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, California, which is located in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Russell designed window displays for his father's hardware store, according to the Museum of Performance and Design's Performing Arts Library.  His artful window displays caught the eye of Ruby Asquith, a dance instructor who invited Hartley to visit the San Francisco Ballet studios and sketch dancers as they rehearsed. Subsequently, he signed up for ballet classes and a year later, was given a part in Willam Christensen's acclaimed production of Romeo and Juliet. Early in his dance career, Hartley enjoyed success with the San Francisco Ballet in eccentric character roles between 1942 and 1949.  In 1944, Christensen enlisted Hartley's help in revising costume designs for Now the Brides, and this led to more significant work, including designing 143 costumes for the first production of the Nutcracker Suite in 1944, Pyramus and Thisbe, Coppelia, Swan Lake, Les Maitresses de Lord Byron, Jinx, Beauty and the Shepherd, and the Standard Hour television show. Hartley's art portfolio, Henry VIII and his Wives (1948), served as an inspiration for Rosella Hightower's ballet by this name, which premiered in New York at the Metropolitan Opera House. In the 1940s, Hartley became interested in collecting historical materials on local performers and dance and theatrical companies. He began combing antique stores for old dance and theatrical programs, photos, and ephemera, and these materials would become the start of his San Francisco Dance Archives. In February 1946, Hartley, then almost 22 years old, and his friend Leo Stillwell, a 20-year-old artist, opened the Antinuous Art Gallery at 701 McAllister Street in San Francisco.  Hartley began creating series of dance paintings and show windows in New York, leading to exhibitions of his paintings at the Feragil Galleries in New York, the Labaudt Gallery in San Francisco, and the Miami Beach Art Center, an exhibition on ballet at the De Young Museum, and features of his paintings in various one-man shows at galleries in San Francisco.  Meanwhile, Stillwell worked furiously, creating 500 works of art before succumbing to an early death at the age of 22 following a case of measles. Hartley carried on, executing costume designs for Balanchine's Serenade, William Dollar's Mendelssohn's Concerto, Lew Christensen's Balletino, and the San Francisco Opera Company's productions of Aida and Rosenkavalier.  He began studying the conservation of fine paintings with Gregory Padilla and carried out restoration projects for the Maxwell Galleries, the Oakland Museum, and Gumps. In 1960, he became a member of the International Institute for the Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. Dance Magazine hired Hartley to write a monthly column, which ran through the 1960s.  He also contributed feature articles to After Dark Magazine, Opera and Concert, and The Trumpeteer. He organized exhibitions on the history of the performing arts at the War Memorial Opera House and the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library with materials from his personal collection.  In 1975, Hartley sought a permanent location for the Performing Arts Archive and was able to obtain a space in the basement of the Presidio Branch of the San Francisco Public Library. His own archival collections, which had expanded to include materials on the history of the San Francisco Opera, San Francisco theaters, and the San Francisco Symphony, was supplemented by a dance library and other materials donated by local collectors. However, in 1981, budgetary cutbacks led to the closure of the archives and Hartley was forced to move the entire collection to his Mill Valley home. At this time, Hartley's health began to decline. In 1983, the archives were moved from Hartley's home to the San Francisco Opera Chorus Room in the War Memorial Opera House and a Board of Directors was formed to ensure that Hartley's legacy would carry on. Former San Francisco Ballet dancer Nancy Carter became the archives' first executive director. The archives are now known as the Museum of Performance + Design, which also serves as keeper of The Russell Hartley Collection, materials from Hartley's early days as a costume designer for the San Francisco Ballet to his tenure as director of the Archives for the Performing Arts. In 2016, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on the story of Alan Perry, a retired truck driver who found in a dumpster 200 letters written to Russell Hartley by his friend Leo Stillwell, the promising artist who died at the age of 22.  Perry and his wife, who subsequently learned about Hartley and Stillwell and appreciated the cultural value of the find, donated the letters to San Francisco State University, where the prolific young artist's 500 works of art are housed.

October 22, 1983

Keith Barrow, Soul Singer & Son of Civil Rights Champion, Dies

Keith Barrow, a singer and songwriter best known for the soulful "You Know You Wanna Be Loved” and the disco-beat-fueled "Turn Me Up," dies of AIDS-related illness at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago.  He was 29 years old. Learn More.

The only son of Chicago civil rights leader Rev. Willie Barrow (1923-2015), Keith Errol Barrow started singing as a teenager with the gospel group “Soul Shakers.”  His mother told Windy City Times in 2004, "Keith had music in his bones and in his soul.  He started writing music when he was eight." After Barrow came out to his activist mother, she publicly embraced gay rights, according to The New York Times. In 1973, Barrow released a self-titled gospel album at the age of 19 with Jewel Records, and his solo career began to gain traction with the popularity of one of the album's singles, "Mr. Magic Man."  The major label Columbia signed him in 1976, and he left Chicago for New York and then Los Angeles.  After a song he wrote for the Philadelphia R&B group Blue Magic rose in Billboard's Top 100 R&B hits, Barrow was invited to Philly’s famed Sigma Sound Recording Studios to work under legendary producer Bobby Eli for his first Columbia album. The release of Barrow's record was announced in a full-page ad in Billboard magazine for the week ending May 7, 1977.  “Keith Barrow is why you should pay attention to this debut album,” the ad proclaimed. "Though he’s not talked about much today, Keith was a true talent of his era, a singer’s singer whose velvety falsetto was on par with the finesse of Eddie Kendricks and the fancy of Sylvester," wrote music critic S.E. Fleming Jr. in 2008.  "When it was all said and done, Keith Barrow didn’t prove a huge hit, but it was a high quality effort that laid the groundwork for what would become his finest hour on record." Fleming says the best track on the album is Barrow's performance of his own composition, “Teach Me (It’s Something About Love)," calling it "one of the most beautiful slow jams the singer ever recorded." "It was a perfect fit for a young man at a stage in his life where most people are finding their own voice, a lovely portrait of innocence and melancholy," Fleming writes. In 1978, Barrow switched to CBS Records, which produced his second album, Physical Attraction.  Most of the material was co-written by producer Michael Stokes and songwriter Ronn Matlock, and they updated Barrow's sound to include three disco songs. Immediately, the seven-minute single “Turn Me Up” became a hit at dance clubs and broadened his fan base.  Meanwhile, another song on the album, a smooth soul ballad titled "You Know You Want to Be Loved," rose to #26 in Billboard's Top 100 R&B hits. Barrow recorded a final album, moving to Capitol Records.  Produced by Ralph Affoumado, Just As I Am (1980) was an ambitious work, but the dance sound that initially drew in fans was declining in popularity.  Still, the album has a few gems, such as the seductive and funky "In the Light (Do It Better)" and “Tell Me This Ain’t Heaven,” which is reminiscent of some of his earlier work with Columbia. Barrow tried to  extend his career by performing live.  While touring in Europe in 1983, he fell ill and called his mother, saying he was too sick to perform: "He called me from Paris and said, 'Momma, I don't think I'll be able to go on stage tonight. I really feel sick.' I said, 'Oh, you'll be alright.' I prayed for him and then he called again a couple of hours later and he said, 'Momma, I can't perform. I have to go; they have to take me to the hospital.'" After returning to the U.S., Barrow moved back to Chicago and his mother tended to him as his health declined.  After being admitted to Michael Reese Hospital, he was diagnosed with AIDS. "I remember the first of the weekly reports that Keith was ill and the requests for prayers," wrote Barrow's childhood friend in 1007. "Keith's mother is a fiery orator and fierce civil rights activist nicknamed 'The Little Warrior,' so it was hard to see her sadness and distress as his health declined." When Barrow died later that year, more than 1,000 people attended his memorial services.  Barrow was one of the first people in the entertainment industry to die of AIDS, and the cause of his death was not reported in his obituary.  But his mother openly talked about it in the years that followed, and she contributed a panel in memory of her son to the AIDS Memorial Quilt.

November 14, 1983

Stephen Lamb, Profiled in New York Times, Dies

Stephen Lamb, a man living with AIDS who was profiled in a widely-read New York Times article, dies of AIDS-related illness at New York University Medical Center.  He was 40. Learn More.

In a NYT article published in the December 5 issue on Page 1 of Section B, celebrated reporter Maureen Dowd chronicled Lamb's final months. Lamb, his body overwhelmed with cryptococcal meningitis, tuberculosis of the bone marrow, and an intestinal infection, had until recently lived on the upper east side of Manhattan and worked as a travel consultant. One of the few visitors at Lamb's hospital bed was William Carroll, a volunteer from the Gay Men's Health Crisis who two months before had been assigned to be Lamb's "buddy."  According to the NYT article, Lamb and Carroll found that they shared a love of literature, and in Lamb's final weeks, Carroll often read to him from books of poetry by John Keats and Andrew Marvell. "Bill and I have grown to like each other," Lamb told the reporter four days before he died.  "I just needed some companionship." Lamb's death was the 514th AIDS-related fatality recorded by the City of New York.  At the time, the Gay Men's Health Crisis had provided services to 420 people with AIDS, and was facing a surge in their caseload, according to Dowd's article. The organization had been receiving about 50 new cases every month, but in November, they noticed a dramatic increase in the number of people with AIDS (PWAs) who needed help.  Some were gay men, but there were also intravenous drug users who were heterosexual as well as people who had received tainted blood transfusions. The GMHC was running 20 therapy groups, organizing its volunteer-run "buddy" program, and operating a 24-hour hotline which received an average of 1,200 calls every week, according to the article. The organization's volunteers, which then numbered about 200, did whatever was needed, from taking orange juice to homebound PWAs to serving as intermediaries with the city's social-service agencies. "They clean apartments, do laundry, make dinner, pick up prescriptions, mail rent checks, walk dogs, take their patients to doctor's appointments, and simply keep them company," Dowd reported. Many of the volunteers, she wrote, had horror stories about the terrible treatment of PWAs. "They tell of government clerks who neglect AIDS cases, because they are afraid to be in the same room to fill out forms. They tell of nurses and orderlies in hospitals who are so loath to enter the rooms of AIDS patients that they let the food trays pile up outside the door, leave trash baskets overflowing, or neglect patients lying in their own urine or excrement," wrote Dowd.

One volunteer, Diego Lopez, told the reporter that he went to visit a dying patient in the hospital, and discovered him with blood seeping from his nose and mouth. When he asked a doctor to help the patient, the doctor handed him some gauze and told him to take care of it himself.

"I was shocked, but I did it," Lopez said.  "Afterward, I looked at my hands and there was blood all over them. I realized I had to start being more careful. But when you see a person dying, you don't think about finding some gloves to wear."

Dowd closed her article with a conversation she had with Larry Kramer, co-founder of Gay Men's Health Crisis.  Kramer told Dowd of how the AIDS crisis had deeply affected him.  Already, 37 of his friends in New York were dead from the disease.

"I heard about Vinny on Saturday," Kramer said. "Ron is a Black actor I know. Paul, a pianist. Gayle went to Yale with me. Ron Doud, the designer of Studio 54. Mark, I was involved with a long time ago. Peter, an architect."

"Can't something be done?" he asked, clenching a small green notebook he used to record the names of his dead friends. "The rest of the city, my straight friends, go on with life as usual -- and I'm in the middle of an epidemic."

February 4, 1984

San Francisco Actor-Singer John Ponyman Dies

John Ponyman, an off-Broadway actor who migrated to San Francisco, dies of AIDS- related illness at the age of 41. Learn More.

Ponyman regularly appeared in shows at Theatre Rhinoceros.  His final project was a solo show titled "Sawdust," featuring several of his own songs. * * * * * * * * Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt

March 26, 1984

TV Producer Philip Mandelker Dies

Philip Mandelker, who produced the television show The Dukes of Hazzard and 17 made-for-TV movies between 1974-1984, dies of AIDS-related illness in Los Angeles.  He was 45. Learn More.

When Mandelker was diagnosed with AIDS in 1983, the first person he called was his friend Rob Eichberg, a Los Angeles clinical psychologist active in the LGBTQ+ community. “His family was very dedicated to him and they insisted on people knowing Philip died of AIDS,” Eichberg told the Los Angeles Times. “The day Philip died, I cried,” said Mandelker's sister, Jane Makowka.  “But I had cried my tears for months before. I knew a long time before anybody ever said it was AIDS that it was." Makowka said that her brother had a passion for living life to its fullest, which allowed him to bring a special quality to his television shows. “Most important was his love of people and love of nature. He tried to bring that, something of quality to television, something people would remember," she said.  "He was very fortunate to have been as successful as he was in that short of a lifetime. You wonder what he might have done if it hadn’t been cut short.”

March 30, 1984

Canadian flight Attendant Gaëtan Dugas Dies

Gaëtan Dugas dies of AIDS in Quebec City at the age of 32.  A few years later, Dugas would be erroneously vilified as "Patient Zero" due to the CDC's labeling of his case as "patient O" (as in the letter O). Learn More.

In 1987, three years after the death of Dugas, journalist Randy Shilts would publish the best-selling book And the Band Played On, an influential work on HIV that would help shame the U.S. Government into properly funding research.

In the book, Shilts would identify "patient zero" as Dugas, who had a home in Los Angeles and travelled to many cities, and implied that he was the first-known source of the HIV spread in the U.S.

The media would erupt: Dugas' hansome face would be pubished everywhere, and he would be characterised as a kind of "typhoid Mary" who callously spread the virus in the early 1980s.

Flash-forward to 2016, when this would be scientifically disproven by a group of researchers led by evolutionary biologist Dr. Michael Worobey.  Worobey's team conducted a genetic study of blood samples taken from gay and bisexual men in 1978 and 1979 as part of a hepatitis B study, and based on the results of the data, concluded that Dugas was not the source of the virus in the U.S. "On the family tree of the virus, Dugas fell in the middle, not at the beginning" Worobey concluded.  "Beliefs about Patient Zero are unsupported by scientific data." Worobey's paper, published in Nature in October 2016, finds neither biological nor historical evidence that Dugas was the primary case in the U.S. It is also important to note that Dugas was particularly helpful and transparent with the CDC in tracing his network of partners, providing names and addresses for many of them (which was further expanded because others remembered his distinctive name). * * * * * * * * Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt

April 4, 1984

Dancer-Choreographer Bill Kendall Dies

Performer Bill Kendall, who received rave reviews for his portrayal of "Mr. Peanut" in the long-running San Francisco production of Beach Blanket Babylon, dies of AIDS-related illness at the age of 35.   Learn More.

Beach Blanket Babylon was the world's longest-running musical revue at the time. The show began its run in 1974 at the Savoy Tivoli and later moved to the larger Club Fugazi in the North Beach district of San Francisco. Kendall was in the production's original 1974 cast and continued to be a featured performer through 1982, playing the roles of Superman, John Travolta Sat Night Fever, and The Original Mr. Peanut. Beach Blanket Babylon was created by Steve Silver, who died of AIDS-related illness in 1995.  The San Francisco Chronicle described the show’s roots as a combination of “Vegas lounge acts, the Follies Bergere, God Rush-era extravaganzas, English music halls, a child’s birthday party gone mad and dopey beach party movies.” * * * * * * * * Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt

April 7, 1984

U.S. Military Veteran Dennis Yount Dies

Dennis Yount, a Marine who served in the Presidential Honor Guard at President Kennedy's bier in the Capitol Rotunda, dies of AIDS-related illness at the age of 43. Learn More.

Yount was born in North Carolina and attended North Carolina University at Columbia before joining the Marines.  In 1970, he moved to New York City and became a favorite bartender at the Village bar Trilogy.   He moved to San Francisco in 1980 and began tending bar at the Eagle. Once relocated to the Bay Area, Yount pursued his long-held interest in acting and performed in local stage productions of Delivery and Sunsets. * * * * * * * * Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt

May 6, 1984

Theatre Rhinoceros Founder Allan Estes Dies

Allan Estes, the founding artistic director of Theatre Rhinoceros in San Francisco, dies of AIDS-related illness at the age of 29.  His final project, "The AIDS Show," would become the first work by a theater company to deal with the AIDS epidemic. Learn More.

Theatre Rhinoceros is the nation’s oldest and longest-running LGBTQIA+ theater, founded in 1977 by Estes. Estes came to San Francisco from Boston in 1977 with one goal: to establish a theater where the gay community could go to make and see theater which reflected the realities and joys of homosexual life. From 1977 until 1984, Estes and Theatre Rhinoceros produced works by gay New York writers that included Doric Wilson, Robert Patrick, Lanford Wilson, Terrence McNally, and Harvey Fierstein, as well as several San Francisco playwrights including C.D. Arnold, Robert Chesley, Cal Youmans, Philip Real, and Dan Curzon. In the early 1980s, Allan began transforming the Rhino from a gay men's theater into a lesbian and gay theater, and invited lesbian screenwriters to stage their plays. In 1984, he conceived the production Artists Involved with Death and Survival ("The AIDS Show"), which was brought to fruition by director Leland Moss (who would die from AIDS at age 41) and included the works of 20 Bay Area playwrights.  "The AIDS Show" became the first work by a theater company to deal with the AIDS epidemic. In 1987, "The AIDS Show" and its touring company became the subject of a PBS documentary by Rob Epstein and Peter Adair and brought the Rhino national attention. When Estes died, his friends and collaborators vowed to continue Theatre Rhinoceros as a monument to their fallen leader. * * * * * * * * Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt

May 21, 1984

San Francisco Dancer Charlie Butts Dies

Bay Area dancer Charles "Charlie" Butts, who performed with Carlos Carvajal's Dance Spectrum from 1876 to 1980, dies of AIDS-related illness at the age of 31. Learn More.

Butts also danced with Xoregos Dance Company in San Francisco, Ballet Trocadero de Monte Carlo in New York, and Valerie Huston Dance Company in Santa Barbara Born in Mississippi, Butts grew up in Los Angeles and studied dance at the University of California Irvine. He performed both locally (in San Francisco and Santa Barbara) as well as in company tours to South America and Japan. * * * * * * * * Source:  San Francisco Examiner, December 7, 1986

June 13, 1984

Portugese Pop Star António Variações Dies

Singer-songwriter António Variações, Portugal's first gay superstar, dies of AIDS-related illiness in Lisbon, Portugal at the age of 39. Learn More.

Variações made his TV debut in 1981 during the Sunday variety show on Portugal’s sole broadcaster, recounts Pedro João Santos in his Guardian profile. "He sang a punk metaphor about pills while a dancer dressed as a giant aspirin threw Smarties at the dumbfounded audience," writes Santos.  "Nothing so transgressive had ever graced Portugal’s airwaves."

His 1983 bestselling debut album, Anjo da Guarda (Guardian Angel), features Variações' Portuguese folk-style singing set to new-wave music.  His follow-up album, Dar & Receber, fused disco-rock with synthpop.

In May 1984, Variações was admitted to hospital due to illness, according to The AIDS Memorial. Except for his family and close friends, he received few visitors during his hospital stay. A month later, the media reported that his health had deteriorated and rumours began to circulate that he had AIDS.

The initial cause of Variações' death would be reported as bilateral bronchial pneumonia.  At his funeral on June 15, 1984, the coffin would be sealed shut by order of the Portugese government.

June 25, 1984

French Philosopher Michel Foucault Dies

Michel Foucault, one of the most influential and controversial scholars of the post-World War II period, dies of AIDS-related illness at the age of 57.   Learn More.

A day later, French newspaper Libération would include in the obituary the rumor that the cause of Foucault's death was AIDS. In response, Le Monde would issue a medical bulletin cleared by his family that makes no reference to HIV/AIDS. On June 29, Foucault's la levée du corps ceremony would be held, during which his coffin was carried from the hospital morgue to the cemetery at Vendeuvre-du-Poitou. Hundreds attend, including activists and academic friends, and French philosopher Gilles Deleuze gave a speech that included excerpts from Foucault's ground-breaking work The History of Sexuality.

The son and grandson of physicians, Foucault was born to a bourgeois family.  He enrolled at the age of 20 to the École Normale Supérieure in Paris in 1946, and established a reputation as a sedulous, brilliant, and eccentric student.

After graduating in 1952, Foucault travelled Europe, issued monographs of his work and, in 1969, published L’Archéologie du savoir (The Archaeology of Knowledge), which won him attention as one of the most original and controversial thinkers of his day.

A year later, he was awarded a chair position at the Collège de France, the country’s most prestigious postsecondary institution, and began conducting intensive research.

Between 1971 and 1984 Foucault wrote several works, including Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison (1975; Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison); three volumes of a history of Western sexuality; and numerous essays. Foucault continued to travel widely, and as his reputation grew he spent extended periods in Brazil, Japan, Italy, Canada, and the U.S.  He became particularly attached to San Francisco, where he was a visiting lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley for several years. Although Foucault reportedly despised the label “homosexual,” he was openly gay and occasionally praised the pleasures of sadomasochism and the bathhouse.  Foucault died while he was working on the fourth volume of his history of sexuality. Foucault's partner Daniel Defert would go on to found the first HIV/AIDS organization in France, AIDES; a play on the French language word for "help" (aide) and the English language acronym for the disease.  In 1986, two years after Foucault's death, Defert would publicly announce that Foucault's death was AIDS-related. * * * * * * * * Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt

August 1, 1984

Charley Miller, of Turtle Creek Chorale in Dallas, Dies

Charley Miller, a tenor with the Turtle Creek Chorale in Dallas, becomes the first of many in the group to die of AIDS-related illness.  He was 30 years old. Learn More.

Charley Miller first performed with the Turtle Creek Chorale in July 1981 and he continued to sing with the group through June 1984. During that time, he was featured in the following productions: Showtime '81 (July 1981) – “Tomorrow Belongs To Me” from Cabaret as part of a Quartet The Music of America (July 1982) – Texas Medley in a Septet and “I’ve Got Rhythm” as a member of the Showstoppers Wintersong (December 1982) – “Cantata 142 – Un ist ein Kind geboren – Air” as a solo Sing Gloria! (November 1983) – “Satin Doll,” “Java Jive,” “Dream,” “Georgia On My Mind,” and “Save the Bones for Henry Jones” as a member of the Turtle Creek Jazz Sing We Nowell (December 1983) – “The Three Kings” as a part of a sextet Of Three We Sing (June 1984) – “Credo” as a Duet, “Agnus Dei” as a solo Miller was the first AIDS-related death for the Turtle Creek Chorale or, possibly, the first acknowledged AIDS death, according to the Chorale's memorial website. The Turtle Creek Chorale was founded in early 1980 by Don Essmiller, Phil Gerber, and Rodger Wilson over drinks at The Crews Inn, a gay bar in Dallas, according to Michael Sullivan in The Dallas Way.  They named the group after the small stream that passed through the queer-friendly Dallas neighborhood of Oak Lawn. "In some cities, the newly-formed choruses boldly chose to use the word 'gay' in their name, but in the buckle of the Bible Belt, the founders of just such a chorus in Dallas decided against it for what seemed obvious reasons," Sullivan wrote in 2017. Chief among those reasons was the fact that many of the singers were public school teachers, and the local superintendent was a notoriously homophobic man who threatened to fire openly gay teachers. The group first rehearsed in February 1980 with 39 singers.  On June 24, 1980, 70 members of the Chorale gave its first formal concert at the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas.  By the end of its first season, the group had grown to 83 members. By 1985, the Chorale was heavily impacted by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. As members began to get sick and die, the group transformed to become a space for its members to grieve and heal through performance and community, according to the University of North Texas' 2017 exhibit Threads of Remembrance. In its 1987 holiday performance, the Turtle Creek Chorale placed a poinsettia on the piano to honor the memory of those who had died of HIV/AIDS.  When the number of fatalities reached 20, the tradition evolved into having a poinsettia placed at the front of the stage for each individual. In April 1994, PBS would televise the documentary After Goodbye: An AIDS Story, which looked at the impact of AIDS on the Turtle Creek Chorale.  The film followed the group through rehearsals and performances of When We No Longer Touch: A Cycle of Songs for Survival, a choral rendition of the stages of grief that was composed by composer-in-residence Kristopher Anthony. At the time it was filmed in 1993, the Chorale had already lost more than 90 members to AIDS.  Among them was Anthony, who died on June 26, 1992 at the age of 38. By 2013, the AIDS death toll at the Chorale would reach 197.   Still to this day, during its holiday performances, the group places on the stage a field of poinsettia plants, one for each Chorale member who has passed. * * * * * * * * Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt

August 5, 1984

Calvin Hampton -- Organist for Calvary Episcopal Church -- Dies

Calvin Hampton, the organist and choirmaster at Calvary Episcopal Church in Manhattan's Gramercy Park neighborhood from 1963 to 1983, dies of AIDS-related illness near his parents' Florida home.  He was 45. Learn More.

Known nationwide as a leading organist and sacred music composer, Hampton presided over the popular “Fridays at Midnight” organ recital series, which ran from 1974 to 1983.  He also composed music for the church and the concert stage.

In 1974, he composed music for Walter Leyden Brown's production of Herman Melville's Pierre, or the Ambiguities, which was produced at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York City. Erik Routley, an authority on church music, called Hampton "the greatest living composer of hymn tunes."

"An iconoclastic performer with distinctive ideas, he often incorporated organ transcriptions of 19th-century orchestral music into his programs," wrote Tim Page of the New York Times.  "Mr. Hampton was a prolific and eclectic composer, utilizing such diverse elements as rock, gospel hymns, synthesizers and quarter tones in his works."

Hampton stopped working at the church in 1983 to concentrate on composition and organ consulting for several important classical organs in the U.S.  He contracted AIDS but remained active until the final few weeks of his life, composing the massive Alexander Variations for two pipe organs while largely bedridden. * * * * * * * * Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt

August 15, 1984

Early AIDS/KS Activist Bobbi Campbell Dies

AIDS activist Bobbi Campbell dies of AIDS-related illness in San Francisco at the age of 32. Learn More.

Just one month earlier, Campbell spoke at the National March for Lesbian and Gay Rights at the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. Campbell told the crowd that he had hugged his boyfriend on the cover of Newsweek, “to show Middle America that gay love is beautiful.”  He held 15 seconds of silence for the 2,000 who had died of AIDS at that point “and [for] those who will die before this is over.” He then laid-out a series of concerns for politicians to address — including increased funding for both research and support services and a warning of the potential for discrimination with the advent of a test for HTLV-3 (now known as HIV) — and appealing to all candidates in the upcoming elections to meet with people with AIDS. Two weeks after his DNC speech, Campbell appeared on CBS Evening News with Dan Rather. While the rumors and fear of AIDS had reached a mainstream audience, the facts had not, so Campbell was placed in a glass booth, with technicians refusing to come near him to wire up microphones for the interview. At noon on August 15, 1984, exactly a month after his DNC speech and after 2 days on life support in intensive care, Bobbi Campbell died at San Francisco General Hospital.   His parents and his partner Bobby Hilliard were by his side.  Bobbi Campbell was 32 years old and had lived for over 3½ years with what was by then called AIDS. His partner Bobby Hilliard would succumb to the deadly disease not long afterwards. * * * * * * * * Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt

December 6, 1984

Lawrence 'La-La' Beach -- Owner of SF's Balcony -- Dies

Lawrence 'La-La' Beach, one of the founders and principal owners of the San Francisco bar The Balcony, dies of AIDS-related illness at the San Francisco Hospice at the age of 42. Learn More.

In 1977, Beach opened The Balcony on the north side of Market Street with co-owners Lee Harington and Terry Scott.  Commonly referred to as "The Baloney" after the "c" in the signage was dislodged, the venue earned a reputation as one of the most outrageous gay bars on the west coast, according to the Bay Area Reporter. Born in Oneida, New York, Beach was born in 1942.  He received a Bachelor's degree from Bowdoin College and a law degree from Duke University.  He joined the Navy and was stationed at Treasure Island, where he served as a legal adjutant. After being discharged from the Navy, Beach held a series of corporate jobs, and then changed the course of his career when he took a job as floor manager of The Ambush Bar on Folsom Street.  It was at The Ambush where Beach met his future co-owners, Harington and Scott. The Balcony would close in March 1982.  Beach would become an early casualty of the AIDS epidemic.

January 28, 1985

Dennis Parker -- Disco Star & Soap Opera Actor -- Dies

Dennis Parker, a New York actor who performed on the daytime television show The Edge of Night after starring in several adult films in the late 1970s, dies of AIDS-related illness.  He was 39. Learn More.

Parker joined the cast of The Edge of Night in 1979 as Police Chief Derek Mallory, and he appeared in more than 500 episodes before he became too sick to continue with the show. Born Dennis Posa in 1946, Parker grew up in Freeport, Long Island and attended the Philadelphia Museum College of Art, where he had his first taste of acting.  He left college and returned to New York to pursue a career as a stage actor. Becoming frustrated with the difficulty of landing good roles, he took on work as a carpenter and also as an illustrator for Jiffy Simplicity, a company that sold sewing patterns.  He also started posing nude for art classes. In the mid-1970s, he met the love of his life in another aspiring actor, Joey Alan Phipps.  Eleven years Parker's junior, Phipps soon moved into Parker's rent-controlled apartment on Manhattan's East 38th Street and introduced him to a new career path as a model for gay porn magazines, according to "The Story of Wade Nichols and Dennis Parker" in the Rialto Report.. In 1975, Parker appeared in his first adult film, Boy ‘Napped, under the name Wade Nichols, created from his middle name and his father’s first name.  This was followed by 26 additional adult films, all released between 1976 and 1979. Around this time, Parker met Jacques Morali, a French music producer who was about to become famous for launching The Village People. "Jacques was instantly attracted by this sexy and handsome guy," said Henri Belolo, Morali's creative partner.  "He was always attracted to a good-looking mustache." Parker moved into Morali's luxury apartment in the East 50s, but continued to see Phipps "when he could," said Parker's friend Tip Sanderson.  Morali initially offered Parker a role in his new music group -- The Village People -- but then decided to change direction and wait until he could arrange for Parker a career as a solo act, Sanderson said. In 1978, Morali made good on his promise by securing a record deal for Parker with Casablanca Records.  He assembled a selection of songs, singling out the two strongest, "Like an Eagle" and "New York By Night."  Morali's partner Belolo became the executive producer of the singles. "Before the recording sessions, Jacques made Dennis prepare intensively, taking singing lessons and practicing a lot," Belolo said.  "He really made Dennis work hard." Parker went to Sigma Sound to record the album, which was titled Like an Eagle after the song they thought was the most likely to become a hit.  According to Belolo, he and Morali tapped their top creative resources for the project. "We had the best musicians and arrangers," he said. "In fact, we used the same rhythm section that was featured on the Village People records." "Jacques Morali contacted me, and told me to come down to play on his boyfriend’s record," said bass player Alfonso Carey, who remembered Parker as easy-going and friendly.  "I’m the bass player that played on all the Village People hits, from 'YMCA,' 'Macho Man,' and the rest.  I also wrote the song ‘Why Don’t You Boogie’ for Dennis." Like an Eagle was released in 1979 under the artist name "Dennis Parker" to sever ties with his adult film career and his other identity, Wade Nichols. Parker's brother, Richard Posa, said that he remembered asking Parker if the new album release meant that he would stop making adult films. "Dennis said yes, but he was pleased with the work he’d done nevertheless," Posa said.  "He also mentioned that Screw magazine had voted him ‘Man of the Year’ in 1978 – and he got a kick out of that." Parker went to Europe to promote the album.  Afterward, Parker and Morali's’ relationship started to cool, according to "The Story of Wade Nichols and Dennis Parker" in the Rialto Report.  Ultimately, Parker returned to his apartment on East 38th Street and invited Joey Alan Phipps to come back. Parker also returned to another old love - acting.  He leveraged his disco fame to land him auditions for mainstream parts.  On a casting call for a role as an extra on the crime-themed soap opera The Edge of Night, Parker caught the eye of the producer and was offered a recurring role as the local police chief. He would play the role of Chief Derek Mallory in more than 500 episodes between 1979 and 1984.  He settled easily into his new life as a television actor and embraced all that it entailed, performing at fundraisers for local non-profits and scoring points for The Edge of Night softball team. "There were a lot of very athletic guys on the crew and in the cast," said castmate Sharon Gabet. "Dennis would show up in these tight shorts … and an ascot.  He would be there swinging a bat – with his ascot. It was hilarious." In the spring of 1984, Parker told his brother that he was experiencing night sweats and prolonged bouts of fatigue. He took some time off The Edge of Night, and when he returned, it was apparent to the cast and crew that he had lost a lot of weight and could not move well. "They were careful to shoot around his frailty," Parker's brother said.  "They had him sitting at desks. They did their best to cover up his physical deterioration." Meanwhile, Phipps tended to Parker throughout his illness and took him to appointments at Cabrini Medical Center in mid-town Manhattan. "Now when I look back, it’s pretty evident to me that the man was dying," said castmate Sharon Gabet.  "He would just have enough energy to give his lines, and then you would find him asleep in the chair or laying on one of the couches. He just couldn’t do it anymore. They kept cutting his part back." His last episode aired on October 18, 1984, just 12 days shy of his fifth anniversary on the show. After Parker's death in late January 1985, Phipps moved to Palm Springs, California. In the early 1990s, he contracted AIDS and tried to manage his illness with new treatments that had become available.  Unfortunately, Phipps had an additional health issue that caused his body to reject the new drugs, and he died of AIDS-related illness on December 6, 1996.

March 20, 1985

Musical Director James Thomason-Bergner Dies

James Thomason-Bergner, musical director and conductor for the San Francisco production of Beach Blanket Babylon, dies of AIDS-related illness on his 40th birthday. Learn More.

Thomason-Bergner was also a vocal coach and headed the musical theater program at Lone Mountain College.  He had been musical director for the Theatre of Music in Santa Fe, as well as for the Santa Fe Community Theater. Originally from Austin, Texas, Thomason-Bergner graduated from the University of Texas and then moved to San Francisco to attend Lone Mountain College. His younger brother, Charles "Charlie" Bergner, had died in late 1983 of AIDS-related illness at the age of 34.  Both James and Charles were valued members of their local churches, James attending the Santa Fe Unitarian Church and Charles attending Washington Square United Methodist Church in New York City. "I knew that Charles was interested in healing and prayer and meditation," wrote fellow congregant Nancy A. Carter in 1985.  "I asked if he would like me to do healing work with him.  He said, 'Yes.'  I explained therapeutic touch, a type of laying on of hands that I would use with him." Carter recalled that when she worked on Bergner, he experienced "vivid, colorful imagery ... in the form of a windmill." "He said that the windmill was standing on parched land, but the wind was blowing and the windmill was drawing up water from beneath the earth and was nourishing the dry land," Carter wrote.  "The image of the windmill became very important to us. Most every time I worked with Charles, the windmill appeared to him." As she provided care for her friend, she said she realized that if his death was inevitable, at least she could assist with his spiritual healing. "Charles suffered with AIDS, but he did not suffer the way that some do.  He had love and he had courage which sustained him.  God was with him.  Charles reached out to friends and friends reached out to him," she said. On Sunday, December 25, 1983, the congregation telephoned Bergner to sing Christmas carols to him as he lay in a hospital bed, battling pneumocystis carinii pneumonia.  He died the next day, with his partner David and his sister at his side. Carter recalled how in 1983, Washington Square Church began providing pastoral services to all persons living with AIDS.  The church also made available space for support groups affiliated with the Gay Men's Health Crisis to use for meetings. "We were one of the first churches to go into HIV/AIDS ministry," Carter said. * * * * * * * * Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt

April 8, 1985

Chicago Theater Actor J Pat Miller Dies

James Patterson Miller, a Chicago actor known professionally as J. Pat Miller, dies of AIDS-related illness in Chicago at the age of 39. Learn More.

Miller was nominated for Jefferson Awards for playing the title role in Peter Handke's Kaspar and for his performance as Antonin Artaud in the Victory Gardens Theater production of Artaud. Miller made his theatrical debut in Whores of Babylon, the debut production of the Godzilla Rainbow Troupe, cofounded by Gary Tucker and Tommy Biscotto. "Most vividly, I remember the actor whose performance [a theater critic] praised without naming the artist who delivered it.  He was J. Pat Miller, making his Chicago stage debut," wrote Albert Williams in the Chicago Reader. Miller went on to become one of Chicago’s most popular and respected actors with performances at the Goodman, Organic, Victory Gardens, and Wisdom Bridge, as well as a celebrated European tour of Waiting for Godot. In May 1985, Season of Concern would launch the Biscotto-Miller Fund, named in memory of Miller and another luminary of the Chicago theater world, Tommy Biscotto. The fund was created in tandem with the benefit performance event, Arts Against AIDS at Second City to raise money for medical care, food, housing, and other basic needs to Chicago theater artists with HIV/AIDS. Over the next few years, this volunteer effort expanded into Season of Concern — a full-time, professional operation that raises money for local direct-care organizations serving community members fighting AIDS and other catastrophic illnesses. The Biscotto-Miller Fund continues as an emergency fund, offering direct cash grants to individuals in need. * * * * * * * * Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt

May 10, 1985

AIDS Infections Reach 10,000, per CDC Headcount

The Center for Disease Control reports that as of April 30, 1985, the number of AIDS cases in the U.S. has increased substantially.  Of the 10,000 reported cases, 9,887 are adults and 113 are children. Learn More.

Since the initial reports of AIDS in the spring of 1981, the number of cases reported each half-year has increased significantly, with more than half of the 10,000 cases being reported within the last year. Of the 10,000 reported AIDS cases, 4,942 are known to have died (49% of the adults and 69% of the children).  About 75% of patients diagnosed before January 1983 are known dead. The CDC report states that 90% of adult patients are 20-49 years old, and 94% are men.  The racial breakdown of the cases are: 60% white; 25% black; and 14% Hispanic. The report also notes that the proportion of AIDS cases in transfusion recipients has increased significantly. At this point, AIDS has been diagnosed in patients from 46 states, the District of Columbia, and three U.S. territories.  Among cases reported before May 1983, 47% of the adults were residents of New York.  As the virus spread geographically between 1984 and 1985, the proportion of adults reported with AIDS from New York decreased to 34%. Among the 113 pediatric patients, 58% percent were under 1 year old at diagnosis; and 72% came from families in which one or both parents had AIDS or were at increased risk for developing AIDS, 13% had received transfusions of blood or blood components before their onsets of illness, and 5% had hemophilia. Pediatric cases were reported from 17 states; 82% were from New York, New Jersey, Florida, and California.  Of the 81 pediatric patients with a parent with AIDS or at increased risk for AIDS, 69 were residents of New York, New Jersey, or Florida.

May 27, 1985

Mark Spaeth, Austin Councilmember and Ex-husband of Gunsmoke Actress, Dies

Mark Spaeth, an Austin City Councilmember who was the former husband of Gunsmoke star Amanda Blake, died of AIDS-related illness at Brackenridge Hospital in Austin.  He was 45. Learn More.

Mark Spaeth is remembered most as the politically ambitious Austin City Councilmember who married "Miss Kitty" of Gunsmoke. As a Florida teenager, Spaeth left high school before graduating to join the U.S. Coast Guard.  He began working in real estate in Miami, and then moved to California to continue working as a real estate developer.  He moved to Austin, Texas in 1971 and opened a rental agency.  On a plane trip in the late 1970s, Spaeth befriended Amanda Blake, who starred as Miss Kitty on the long-running television show Gunsmoke (1955-1975).  They began a friendship, even though Spaeth lived in Austin and Blake lived in Phoenix. In 1983, Spaeth decided to run for Austin City Council, campaigning on the promises to provide tax breaks for the elderly, improve local traffic flow, and improve childcare options for working families.  He was also known as a champion for human rights and a supporter of the gay community, according to This Week in Texas (TWT). Although he did not seek an endorsement from the Austin Lesbian/Gay Political Caucus (he sent his campaign manager to ask the group not to endorse him, fearing backlash), Spaeth courted votes by visiting Austin's gay bars and his campaign was ultimately a success, according to activist and writer Troy Stokes. At his inauguration, Spaeth presented Blake with a dozen red roses and said, "It's not often that a man can publicly say 'I love you' to his best friend." On April 28, 1984, they were married at Cisco's Bakery & Bar in Austin.  According to TWT, it was Spaeth's third marriage and Blake's fifth.  TWT editors and others in the LGBT community speculated that Spaeth's marriage was "the beginning of laying the groundwork" for his plans to run for Austin's mayoral seat. But Spaeth did not publicly disclose that he had tested positive for HIV and he was, in fact, experiencing the early symptoms of AIDS (fevers, malaise and dizziness, which he attributed to "a mystery virus" that had confounded his doctors).   As his health deteriorated, he spent long months in Dallas seeking treatment, which caused him to miss his council meetings, according to United Press International.  He announced that he wouldn't seek a second term. Spaeth also decided to end his marriage, filing for divorce from Blake on the eve of their first anniversary.  By that time, Spaeth was living full-time in Dallas and Blake had returned to Hollywood to pursue television projects. Spaeth's cause of death was initially reported by hospital officials as pneumonia, but later reports indicated that the pneumonia was AIDS-related.  About five years later, Blake would die of AIDS-related illnesses at Mercy General Hospital in Sacramento.

June 22, 1985

David Goodstein, Publisher of The Advocate, Dies

David Goodstein, former publisher of The Advocate who missed the chance to turn his national publication into a much-needed resource during the early years of the AIDS crisis, dies at Sharp Memorial Hospital in San Diego of colon cancer.  He was 53. Learn More.

Goodstein published The Advocate from 1975 to 1978 and again from 1982 until 1985. He was the owner of Liberation Publications, the parent company of The Advocate that also distributed other magazines.

Because Goodstein was slow to understand the seriousness of the threat posed by AIDS, he missed an opportunity to use his popular national magazine as a clearinghouse of information for a population starved for information about HIV and AIDS, according to the LGBT Archives. In a letter to his readers in 1983, Goodstein wrote: "So far, no one knows with certainty what causes the fatal 'new' diseases. Heterosexuals, one person in a monogamous relationship and not the other, even infants have succumbed. Yet many cases are centered in the gay men's community, especially in New York City. Most of us who know a lot of gay men also know one or more who have died. Living with this situation feels a bit like it must have felt to be alive when the plague was decimating the population of Europe." Born in 1932 into a wealthy Denver family, Goodstein was afflicted with scoliosis and was subjected to a lonely childhood.  He received his undergraduate education at Cornell University and then earned a law degree from Columbia University.  He practiced law as a criminal defense attorney for several years in New York City.

In 1970, he moved to California, and in 1975 he bought The Advocate, which was then a small publication that served the Los Angeles gay and lesbian community. He moved the magazine to San Mateo, near San Francisco, and under his ownership, transformed The Advocate into the most widely-read LGBT news magazine in the country.

Goodstein's tenure as publisher began with the firing of the entire editorial staff, according to Lionel Biron in the literary magazine Gay Sunshine (1976).  Among those who Goodstein fired was columnist Arthur Evans, one of the founders of the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) in New York.  The GAA would become a frequent critic of The Advocate over the years, accusing Goodstein of making the magazine "a show place of white, middle-class gay America. Goodstein forbid the mention of certain LGBT activists and organizations that he believed had undermined him in some way.  When in 1978, Los Angeles-based activist Morris Kight challenged Goodstein's control of the Committee for Sexual Law Reform, Goodstein assigned Randy Shilts to do an exposé on him, according to the LGBT Archives.  Realizing that there was nothing to warrant a negative story on Kight, Shilts decided to resign from The Advocate, and famously went on to become the first openly gay reporter for the San Francisco Chronical. Goodstein also leveraged his power in positive, constructive ways.  In 1977, he was among the founders of Concerned Voters of California, an organization formed to oppose the Briggs Initiative.  Named after California State Senator John V. Briggs, the Briggs Initiative sought to bar gay men and lesbians from teaching in public schools. In a major victory for the gay rights movement, the Briggs Initiative was defeated in November 1978, thanks largely to the campaign coordination by the Concerned Voters of California. Also, shortly after Anita Bryant's successful 1977 campaign to repeal the gay rights law in Florida's Dade County, Goodstein met Werner Erhard, founder of Erhard Seminars Training (better known as "est"). "The meeting convinced Goodstein that the real problem facing the gay movement was not political but emotional," wrote John Gallagher in The Advocate in 2001. "Goodstein complained that there was 'an awful lot of a syndrome I have defined as toilet mentality -- that is, a willingness to accept second-rate status as human beings, expecting to lose rather than win, and a constant involvement in petty right-wrong games.'" In March 1978, Goodstein launched "The Advocate Experience" with about 100 people at the Jack Tar Hotel in San Francisco.  With  psychologist and author Rob Eichberg, Goodstein articulated a vision that by the year 2000, homosexuality would be accepted by everyone in society, and this would happen by raising the self-esteem of gays and lesbians. . Over the next 23 years, about 50,000 people participated in Experience workshops; the program was discontinued in February 2001. The Advocate remains a leading national source of LGBTQ+ news.  Goodstein's legacy also includes the 1988 founding of Cornell University's Human Sexuality Collection, which was funded by a generous gift from Goodstein.  The collection includes Goodstein's personal papers and memorabilia.

October 2, 1985

Film Legend Rock Hudson Dies

When movie star Rock Hudson dies in Beverly Hills of AIDS-related illness at age 59, the media attention causes public perceptions about the epidemic to shift. Learn More.

As the first major U.S. public figure to publicly acknowledge AIDS diagnosis, Hudson brought attention to an epidemic sweeping the U.S.  Hudson’s public disclosure also helped to dismantle the stigma associated with the disease. Hudson would inspire Elizabeth Taylor, who became friends with Hudson on the set of the film Giant, to become an AIDS activist like none other, rallying the Hollywood community to raise millions for research.  Upon his death, Hudson left $250,000 to help set up the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR), which was chaired by Taylor in the organization's early years. Tall, dark and handsome, Hudson was one of Hollywood's most popular leading men during the 1950s and 1960s.  Making more than 60 films during his career, Hudson presented the image of a "lady-killer" before the camera, but he had a sexual preference for men.  According to People magazine, his friends and often his colleagues on film and TV knew that Hudson was gay. “We all knew Rock was gay, but it never made any difference to us,” actress Mamie Van Doren told People in 1985. She said that she often accompanied Hudson on studio-arranged dates.  “Universal invested a lot of money in Rock."

Fearing exposure in Hollywood, Hudson would often visit San Francisco to frequent gay discos unrecognized, according to People.  While in Los Angeles, he maintained a low public profile, preferring instead to entertain friends at his Beverly Hills home.

In the 1970s, Hudson moved from film to television to star in McMillan and Wife.  From 1984 to 1985, he had a recurring role on Dynasty.  Hudson was diagnosed with AIDS on June 5, 1984. In July 1985, Hudson agreed to appear as the first guest on the new talk show of Doris Day, his friend and frequent co-star in 1960s romantic comedies.  Day said afterward that she was shocked by how steeply Hudson's health had declined since she had last seen him a few years before, according to the Los Angeles Times.  Despite needing rest, Hudson insisted on taping the show, Doris Day’s Best Friends. Later that month, Hudson traveled to France to seek AIDS treatment that wasn't available in the U.S. and was hospitalized there.  In response to rabid media speculation, Hudson issued a press release on July 25 stating he had AIDS. With that announcement, Hudson became the first major celebrity to go public with an AIDS diagnosis, according to A&E's History. Doris Day’s Best Friends would premiere in October 1985, just days after Hudson's death was announced in the media.  The episode opened with an introduction by Day, her voice emotional as she relayed something that Hudson told her: “The best time I’ve ever had was making comedies with you.”  Day told her audience that she felt the same way. * * * * * * * * Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt

October 12, 1985

B-52s Guitarist Ricky Wilson Dies

New-wave rock musician and founding member of the B-52s, Ricky Wilson dies of AIDS-related illness at the age of 32. Learn More.

The B-52s become popular for their dance tunes — "relentless, rhythmic songs built around Ricky Wilson’s scratchy, one- and two-chord guitar riffs, Kate Pierson’s throbbing keyboard bass lines, and Keith Strickland’s propulsive drumming," writes James Henke in a 1980 feature in Rolling Stone. Wilson’s musical inspirations were children’s music, The Mamas & The Papas, and Esquerita, writes Stephen Rutledge in The WOW Report. "At first, The B-52s did not have a bass player, so Wilson invented his own tunings on a guitar, grouping the strings into a bass course," Rutledge says.  "It was quite an original sound. It was a sound that I still continue to really dig.  I had some major fun on the dance floor in the late 1970s-early and 1980s, courtesy of the B-52s." In the beginning, the Athens, Georgia-based band would scrape together the resources to take trips to New York City to perform at Max's Kansas City, CBGB's and Club 57. “My parents lent us their station wagon,” Ricky tells The Rolling Stone in a 1980 interview, “and we borrowed Keith’s parents’ charge card.” By the winter of 1978, The B-52s would become the hottest club band in New York, and everyone would be trying to get a copy of their independently produced single, “Rock Lobster." "At a time when an overwhelmingly straight, male punk scene ruled, The B-52s’ knowingly kooky aesthetic, along with their hilariously surreal lyrics in songs like 'Quiche Lorraine,' read as queer to those with the eyes to see it," writes Billboard reporter Kera Bolonik. Much of queer aesthetic came from Wilson’s songwriting. “I remember seeing him write some music and laughing to himself,” says band member Cindy Wilson, who was Ricky's sister.  “I said, ‘What are you laughing at?’  He said, ‘I just wrote the stupidest riff.’” It would be for their first single, “Rock Lobster,” which became an instant hit with East Village audiences but wouldn't reach mainstream listeners until the mid-1980s.  Wilson would go on to become the principle songwriter for the band's first four albums. “We were writing [fourth album] Bouncing Off the Satellites, and Ricky just got thinner and thinner," band member Kate Pierson recalled in an interview years later.  "And we suspected, but we didn’t know.  One day he wasn’t there at rehearsal.  The next day, Keith [Strickland] called me and said, ‘Ricky’s dying of AIDS.’” Wilson had confided in band member Strickland about his illness, but wanted to keep it a secret -- even from his sister Cindy -- so no one would worry about him or fuss about it.  Just a few days later, Wilson would die, Kate says. “We were all mourning Ricky, and I was in a deep depression,” recalls Cindy Wilson in Classic Pop magazine. The band would wait almost a year to release their fourth album.  In 1988, still mourning the loss of his close friend, Stickland isolated himself in the upstate New York countryside and began working on new songs. "Eventually, he called Kate and me to see if we were interested in working on new music," Cindy Wilson would tell Classic Pop.  "When we started jamming, it felt like Ricky was in the room with us. I was having a really hard time with the grieving and sorrow, but creating this music was such a wonderful thing. Ricky’s spirit was there and it was amazing.” For Cosmic Thing, the first album without Ricky Wilson, band members reject the idea from industry professionals that they find a new guitarist.  Instead, Strickland would learn how to play guitar in Wilson's unique style. Inspired by Wilson, the band's song "Roam" is "a beautiful song about death," Cindy says.  "It’s about when your spirit leaves your body and you can just roam.” * * * * * * * * Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt

December 13, 1985

Infant Dwight Burk Dies

Dwight Burk , aged 20 months, dies of AIDS-related illness in Cresson, Pennsylvania. He was the first child of a hemophiliac known to be born with AIDS. Learn More.

Dwight’s case prompted the National Hemophilia Foundation in April 1985 to advise hemophiliacs to postpone having children until scientists can develop a technique to kill the AIDS virus in blood clotting concentrates.

Dwight's father, 27-year-old Patrick Burk, was infected with HIV from his hemophiliac treatment of blood clotting concentrates. More than a year before learning he had HIV, he passed the virus to his wife, Lauren, who became pregnant with Dwight.  Doctors believe Dwight most likely contracted the disease in utero.

Patrick Burk told the Associated Press that an autopsy was to be performed at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and that the body would be used for medical study.  Patrick Burk would die on March 18, 1987.

After the death of her son and husband, Lauren Burk would continue to stay informed about the latest developments in HIV/AIDS research and treatment.  She would manage her own condition, which was diagnosed as "AIDS-related complex," according to the Los Angeles Times. “When Dwight died, there was somebody here. We were here for each other," Lauren Burk told the LA Times.  "When Patrick died, you go to bed and you cry and there’s just nobody to hold you or say it’s OK.” * * * * * * * * Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt

December 1985

Global Scope of Epidemic Becomes Evident

The United Nations announces that at least one HIV case has been reported in each region of the world, indicating that the epidemic is becoming a global issue. Learn More.

By the end of 1985, there were more than 20,000 reported cases of AIDS, with at least one HIV case in every region of the world.  The CDC would report that 1985 saw an 89% increase in AIDS diagnoses in the U.S. from 1984, and predicted that the number will double in 1986. By the end of the decade, the World Health Organization would estimate the number of reported cases to be more than 400,000 AIDS cases worldwide.

January 6, 1986

AIDS Hospice Founder & Publisher Charles Lee Morris Dies

Charles "Chuck" Lee Morris, former owner and publisher of the San Francisco Sentinel, dies of AIDS-related illness in Denver at the age of 42.  Morris is also the co-founder of two AIDS hospice programs in California. Learn More.

Believed to be one of the longest-living victims of AIDS, Morris reportedly had been seriously ill since April 1978, but he wasn’t diagnosed with AIDS until 1982 Morris was a confidant of Dianne Feinstein, often advising the then-Mayor of San Francisco on issues affecting the city's gay community.  Elected officials such as Senator Edward M. Kennedy, President Jimmy Carter, and Vice President Walter F. Mondale sought out Morris' political endorsements. In the early 1980s, Morris helped found two hospice programs in California for those dying of AIDS. Morris and his partner moved to Denver in the spring of 1984.  Dr. Charles Kirkpatrick, Morris’ physician and an AIDS researcher at National Jewish Hospital, said Morris survived four to five times longer than most AIDS patients. He said at the time that the average survival time of someone with full-blown AIDS was 12-18 months. * * * * * * * * Photo of quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt

March 4, 1986

Award-winning Lyricist Howard Greenfield Dies

Howard Greenfield, the 20-year songwriting partner of Neil Sedaka, dies of AIDS-related illness in Los Angeles at the age of 49. Learn More.

The first Greenfield-Sedaka hit would be ''Stupid Cupid,'' recorded by Connie Francis in 1958.  Later collaborations with Sedaka included ''Calendar Girl,'' ''Oh! Carol'' and ''Next Door to an Angel.'' Greenfield would write the lyrics for ''Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,'' ''Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen,'' ''Love Will Keep Us Together'' and more than 450 other songs throughout his career. Born in 1936, Greenfield grew up in the same Brighton Beach apartment building as Sedaka, who was three years older than Greenfield. "After Howie's mother Ella had seen me, he came ringing my doorbell," Sedaka would tell Goldmine magazine years later.  "I was playing Chopin, and he said, 'My mother heard you play and thought we could write a song together.'" Greenfield was openly gay at a time when it was particularly courageous to do so. His companion from the early 1960s until his death was cabaret singer Tory Damon. The two lived together in an apartment on East 63rd Street in Manhattan before moving to Los Angeles in 1966.  Damon would die of AIDS-related illness just 26 days after Greenfield's death. Greenfield's and Damon's bodies are interred side-by-side at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles.  Damon's epitaph reads: Love Will Keep Us Together..., and Greenfield's epitaph continues: ... Forever.