Dear FAM Friends:

I hope all of you enjoyed the holidays and are off to a fresh start in 2023. FAM’s 4th quarter of 2022 featured the following:

STORIES Circles

On October 13, FAM held its fifth STORIES Circle at Glendale Library’s auditorium, in partnership with the Library, Glendale Community College and glendaleOUT. Ingrid Gunnell honored her late mother Marilyn Gunnell, who founded the Glendale Leaders for AIDS Awareness and was well-known as a local advocate for the HIV/AIDS community in the early years of the epidemic. Please take a look at the videos of the event on our website.

On World AIDS Day, December 1, 2022, FAM’s sixth STORIES Circle event took place at Soulmate restaurant in West Hollywood near the future site of the AIDS Monument. The event had been scheduled to occur in West Hollywood Park but we moved it inside due to the rain. We gathered with storytellers and supporters from co-host Minority AIDS Project (“MAP”), co-sponsor The City of West Hollywood, and participating organizations Unity Fellowship Church, Being Alive, The AMAAD Institute, and Antioch University.

MAP CEO Russell Thornhill gracefully delivered closing remarks about remembering the angels we’ve lost and sharing our stories in our communities where they can help another person on his/her/their journey. All participants were invited to stay for dinner so that the storytelling and community-building could continue over a delicious meal. Funding for our World AIDS Day event was provided by a generous grant from Gilead Sciences. We invite you to watch our videos of the event:

• Highlights (7 minutes)
• Longer video with speeches (26.5 minutes)

In 2023 FAM intends to host STORIES Circle events focusing on HIV/AIDS stories from women, members of the trans community, young people and members of the Asian Pacific Islander community, plus our annual World AIDS Day STORIES Circle.

Social Media

We posted four audio stories on our Instagram and Facebook pages with accompanying visuals. Those stories are:

• Guy Berube’s recollection of his 5-year romance with Jamie Jesus Jimenez
• Judith Cohen’s tribute to her friend, lesbian activist Joan Baker whose public funeral showed the face of lesbians with AIDS
• Jessica Lange’s memories of Oscar-winning director Tony Richardson who directed her Oscar-winning performance in “Blue Sky” and whose film “Tom Jones” won multiple Oscars for himself and others
• Richard Phibb’s emotional elegy to his late best friend Lawrence Baker Wilkins

In his audio recording, Shears talks about how Liberace’s flair for spectacle influenced his own work.

Go Figure!

Figure skating champion and FAM supporter Randy Gardner hosted a screening of the documentary about his life, Go Figure: the Randy Gardner Story, at Mother Lode bar on November 17, 2022. The event benefited STORIES: The AIDS Monument and raised $1,000 for FAM. Randy did a similar benefit screening for FAM in 2018. Randy and his skating partner, Tai Babilonia, attended the event and agreed to record a story for FAM’s HEAR Our STORIES project about the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS on the figure skating community. We are so grateful for Randy’s continuing support of our Monument.

Please be sure to follow us on Instagram and FaceBook, where you can see and hear videos related to our HEAR Our STORIES audio recordings project.

We at FAM wish you all a happy and healthy new year filled with purpose and prosperity.