Video Interview, Dan Meyers, November 1, 2012

KEVIN INDOVINO: There's a fine line there.

DAN MEYERS: Absolutely.

Yes.

We're really sort of conservative Midwesterners,

but we have a little progressive streak in us.

KEVIN INDOVINO: I want to say we're a big town that

likes a big world fix it.

DAN MEYERS: Yeah, yeah.

KEVIN INDOVINO: We're just a big town that likes advocacy.

If you can, pull the back of your jacket down a little bit.

DAN MEYERS: OK.

A little wrinkle there?

Yeah.

That better?

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yep.

DAN MEYERS: That good?

Yeah.

I'd better sit up, too, because sitting up is always better.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Always better.

Whatever you're comfortable with.

DAN MEYERS: OK.

CREW: We're rolling.

DAN MEYERS: You like that?

All right then, as long as we're good.

KEVIN INDOVINO: I'm looking at you.

You're looking good.

DAN MEYERS: OK.

KEVIN INDOVINO: First question is

correct spelling of your first and last name

as how you would want it to appear on the screen.

DAN MEYERS: Dan, D-A-N. Meyers, M-E-Y-E-R-S.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So Dan, the first thing I'm going to do

is start out just very generally about gay life in the 1970s.

What was it like?

If I remember from the interview we

did it was kind of period where you yourself

had just started to come out.

Describe for me, what was the gay community

like in Rochester?

What was it like to be a gay man in Rochester

in the late sixties, seventies?

DAN MEYERS: As I think about my own journey of coming out,

I chose to live in two worlds, and I'm not certain

that it was possible to only live in one.

CREW: Sorry to interrupt.

I'm sorry.

(pause in recording)

DAN MEYERS: Start over.

CREW: (unintelligible).

KEVIN INDOVINO: So let's take it from that angle.

I mean, living as a gay man in the sixties and seventies,

you're almost living a double life.

DAN MEYERS: As I think about my own evolution and understanding

and coming out, I knew that I was gay in college.

I didn't understand exactly all the dimensions of that.

And I chose to be much more active after college

and was able to find places in the community

where I could go and be accepted for who I was

and meet people and form friendships.

And actually, some of my very best friends to this day

are the people that I met as we were sort of all young

and coming out together.

You lived in two worlds, though.

You lived in your nine-to-five world.

You lived in your neighborhood world or your church

or synagogue kind of world or whatever.

And you also, then, lived in your gay-friendly world

that was mostly evenings and weekends because you had to pay

the bills other kind of ways.

My guess is I lived in that world longer than I needed to,

but there wasn't a pressure to do it any other way.

And when it became obvious that it didn't matter

or it was more important to be who I was as opposed

to quasi something or other, that, too,

happened as naturally as my evolution

from thinking I was gay to doing something about it

and beginning to live as I was gay.

The seventies in Rochester were a gay man's sort of paradise,

I think.

Was it easy and happy?

Not every minute.

But was it full of adventure?

Yeah, it was full of a lot of adventure.

And there was an energy by being something other.

And if I had to say sort of what I think might be missing today

for young gay, lesbian, transgendered, questioning,

ambivalent, bi folks and so on, I'd

have to say that we've lost a little bit of that specialty

feeling.

And the reward for that is there is general acceptance

and there is access to everything.

The loss of that is a very special sense

of community and bonding.

So while I certainly don't think anybody should go back and live

under a cloud, I think there ought

to be ways that we try to build in that sort

of special identity and connection

that there was in those days.

Way too much of it was in the bars.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah.

That's what I was going to lead to.

DAN MEYERS: Way too much of it was in the bars,

so way too much of it was about substance.

And way too much of it was about too much.

And I think things are much better today

and much more evolved in that understanding.

On the other hand, I don't know how much of that

was going to happen with sort of hormonal twenty-year-olds

and how much of that was happening

because we were hormonal twenty-year-olds who

happened to be gay.

But there was almost no other place

that you could be gay than a bar.

So the bars became the clubhouse.

The bar's social events became sort of our social events.

The bar's celebratory events became our celebratory events.

And you followed the progression of bars

as sort of a movable feast because, if one

ran into trouble or one was closed or whatever,

somebody else opened and you just kept moving along.

And you didn't really need to read

about it in the Empty Closet.

You heard about it, and it was all word of mouth.

KEVIN INDOVINO: I want to talk a little bit about alternatives

to bars in those early days.

What were the alternatives?

Were there alternatives?

DAN MEYERS: Well, there were college and university centers.

And for at least a time anyway, I

was young enough to be able to still socialize

with college folks and so on and not be unwelcomed or whatever.

So I think those were helpful.

Certainly, the beginnings of the Gay Alliance

were a place where folks could go for more serious,

but there wasn't really any health-related service.

So you sort of had to navigate that on your own.

On the other hand, the worst thing that could happen

was venereal disease.

And as traumatic as anyone's first episode with that

would be, it wasn't life threatening,

and there were things that could be done.

So that's, I think, when GRID and AIDS started

a decade later.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Let's not move to that point yet.

DAN MEYERS: Alright.

KEVIN INDOVINO: I just want to make sure we

covered all the bases here.

In the 1970s, there's the whole let

it be movement and free love, and all of that stuff.

But yet, you talk to any gay man or woman that

was out socially in that time period,

there were still challenges.

There was risks going to a gay bar.

There was a risk that a coworker might find out

or your employer might find out.

Can you talk to me a little about some of the fears

and some of the challenges that you were still

faced with even though you were in this decade of free love?

DAN MEYERS: You certainly didn't want to be out at work

unless you worked in a very unusual and supportive

environment.

You didn't want to necessarily be

out to people you grew up with.

For me, I didn't want to be out to my family

for many, many years.

So you didn't want to run into neighbors

or the kids of friends of your family or whatever.

Even though, in hindsight, I'm thinking,

so what was that all about?

If they're at a gay bar, aren't they

already part of this secret and so on?

But you were guarded, and you were maybe even

a little paranoid.

And at varying times, you were more.

And at varying times, so were the people

you were running into.

And so there was this almost chemical imbalance

of not knowing whether you were on an equal footing

with somebody or not because you didn't know whether they were

going to turn later that night or the next time

you ran into them.

And how open you could be was always a matter of negotiation.

So was it delicate?

Yeah, it was delicate.

Did you have to be smart about navigating that?

Yes.

On the other hand, compared to the life I grew up with,

the lid was off.

I mean, there were just some pretty remarkable things

that I just had never even thought might be possible.

What I haven't probably conveyed very well

is it was a damn lot of fun.

I mean, there was a lot of stuff going on.

I hope that young people today have

a whole lot of stuff going on and it's a lot of fun for them.

I hope it's smarter and safer than maybe our behavior was

because we didn't know any better.

But I hope there's still that same good energy.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Can you just briefly

maybe talk to me about some of the places that you've

socialized in, some of the bars that you went into?

What were they like?

What was it like walking into these places?

Describe for me the environment and what they looked like.

DAN MEYERS: So Jim's was the very first bar

that I walked into.

And I think I drove around three or four different nights.

I think I even parked by Washington Square.

And I couldn't get out of the car.

And I don't exactly remember how I got out of the car the night

I did, but there was a wonderful big bookstore

right next door that was sort of the best

bookstore in Rochester.

And I think I just stayed till closing and went next door

and thought that that might be comfortable.

Jim's had an energy about it.

Around the corner and down a dark alley was Dick's.

That had an acceptance to it, but not an energy.

It was almost the generation before's kind

of expression of a bar.

And there was an understanding of what

the code was if police were thought to be around

and what happened.

And Martha would give the word, and everybody

would start talking about the football game

instead of whatever it is they were talking about.

Jim's moved several times.

The crowd moved with him until he wound up

on what's now Liberty Pole Way, and that

moved the center of gay life over into that direction.

It was probably eight, nine years later

that Friar's opened.

And Friar's was a very different experience.

Friar's really was the clubhouse.

It was Cheers for gay men mostly,

and mostly young gay men.

And while there was a little tiny dance area,

it was really about this great big bar

area and the conversation and the being

with your friends and meeting new people

and a good energy, a really good energy.

And you didn't feel like you had to slink in the side door

at Friar's.

I think some of that was just the social evolution

and awareness and probably my own age and the age

of the people that were going.

But I think some of it was the energy and the environment that

sort of made this nice.

It was a really nice place.

I have many friends who say they'd love to have it

back again because they'd still be going out.

They don't go out anymore.

I think about how good this would

be for younger, professional folks

to have that kind of spot.

They've found that in other places, I suspect.

KEVIN INDOVINO: What are your thoughts in regards to the fact

that most gay men's coming out experiences started at a bar?

What were the bars offering other than just a place

to go get a drink?

DAN MEYERS: It was home.

It was a place you could be yourself.

It's a place where it didn't matter who you were

or what you did or whatever.

You could be that sort of essence of yourself

that was a gay man or a gay woman.

And there was almost nowhere else you could do that,

except maybe in the shower.

I mean, it was that sort of intimate.

It was safe, and it was fun.

It wasn't like going to church.

It was just a place you could let your hair down.

And it was the only social expression.

So how lucky are we today to have so many other expressions

to create that opportunity.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Well, then we got into the eighties.

Things changed a bit with the social scene

and the onset of AIDS.

Talk to me about first time--

not only the first time that you heard about AIDS,

but really the first time that you realized that Rochester was

going to be impacted by this.

DAN MEYERS: I had colleagues through my work who were very

active socially in New York.

And as good as Rochester was, the New York City gay scene

was sort of remarkable.

And I remember visiting them in the early eighties,

and there was this sort of quiet talk at dinner about friends

going to this or that hospital and having this pneumonia-like

set of symptoms and not coming out--

and people dying in days, weeks.

And I remember on a subsequent visit somebody saying GRID,

the Gay-Related Immune Disease.

And I thought, well, thank god I live in Rochester.

This is clearly something that happens in New York.

That probably was a matter of months

before you started quietly hearing that somebody was sick

and they didn't know exactly what it was and they weren't

getting better.

And it pretty clearly sort of just

rolled over us that something was different,

something had changed.

And I don't think any of that thought process prepared us

for the just avalanche of sickness and loss and death

and just the rawness of this.

As exciting as those early days were, this was so devastating.

And we were still young.

These were young, beautiful people

that were just being torn down in the absolute--

I mean, they weren't even in their prime.

They were just getting started.

They were just blooming.

And there was so much talent that was just being lost.

It was heartbreaking.

And you didn't know whether you were next.

And it happened randomly, and it happened like that

with no pattern.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Rochester's response to it, I think,

in some ways is unique.

I mean, we could have easily put the blinders on and said,

oh, this isn't a Rochester problem.

But we, particularly the gay community,

didn't let that happen.

AIDS almost, kind of in a way forced gay men and women out

of the closet.

DAN MEYERS: Yeah, it did.

It absolutely did.

And, you know, the women led the way.

I often say that I think women are better people than men

just sort of generally.

We certainly give women all of the big responsibility

in our social structure.

But I mean, Jackie Nudd and the people that

put AIDS Rochester together were watching the same thing

and seeing the same thing and said, dammit,

somebody's got to do something about it.

And thank god, you know?

Now, the boys came along.

But it took one of the girls to get it going.

And while I think there's always been a good relationship

between the gay men and lesbian women in Rochester.

AIDS sort of pulled that tighter.

And then, Bill Valenti identified

that there were things that could be done

and that there could be a clinic in the infectious disease

area at Strong.

And so you didn't have to think about flying

to New York or a major city to find out

about what was going on.

You could at least get to talk to somebody here and get

some care.

And even though many people had to seek

that treatment with a veil over them, that was very powerful.

And it was really that that led a group of us

to say there's treatment available here.

We need to raise some money to make that more available

and to try to advance that.

And it was that simple an understanding and awareness

that led to helping people with AIDS.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So let's pick it up there.

DAN MEYERS: All right.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Talk to me about the beginnings of HPA

and the core mission behind it because it

was a little different than what AIDS Rochester was doing.

DAN MEYERS: Yeah, it was.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Tell me what the clinic was doing.

DAN MEYERS: Yeah.

It was clearly the idea that we needed

the outreach and the sort of social service and the advocacy

piece.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Set it up for me.

DAN MEYERS: OK.

KEVIN INDOVINO: A couple of us came up

with an idea for helping people with AIDS.

DAN MEYERS: So Bill Valenti, Jerry Algozer, and I

sat in a booth having breakfast.

And Bill said, "You know, we really

need some money for the clinic at Strong."

And Jerry and I said, "So why are you talking to us?"

And said, "Well, I thought maybe you

could help figure out something that we could do."

And there had been small fundraisers for AIDS Rochester.

There was a need for that kind of support

for the advocacy and the outreach effort

and the social service beginnings of a response there.

There certainly needed to be some more attention paid

to the clinic, and that needed to expand and so on.

And those were happening.

What wasn't happening was a mechanism

to sort of mobilize community support.

And so Helping People with AIDS--

and we probably took two or three meetings

to come up with that name.

And in the end, it was let's just

call it what it is, Helping People with AIDS.

And it was nothing more than we couldn't stand by and not

do something to help.

And I think it was that simple.

So we called a group of friends.

Some of those friends called some more friends.

There were probably ten or twelve of us

who sat around a table every Monday

or Tuesday night for several weeks

as we were trying to think what we could do.

We came up with eight million ideas.

We were probably a little attention deficit disorder

folks, and we were probably a little bit disorganized

in finding our head.

But we came up with auctions and raffles and events

at bars and cocktail parties and all that sort of thing.

After we did a couple of these and realized

how much time it took and how much energy it took

and how little results there were, we said,

"You know, we've got to come up with something bigger,

and it's got to be something that's a big enough wrapper

to get a lot of these ideas working together to really do

something sort of more significant than raising

five hundred or one thousand dollars at a time."

So that's where Dining for Dollars came from.

There was a ridiculous TV show called Dialing for Dollars

that had a very long life on daytime television

with Ann Keefe.

She was terrific, but it was a really simple kind of premise.

And I think it was Ron Andres who said, "You know,

we ought to call it Dining for Dollars."

And he went on to design the logo.

And then, everybody just fell in step

as to who was going to do what piece of it.

So we decide to have a party.

What else would we do?

And we decided that we weren't going

to spend any money, which was a big step in our evolution.

Because, you know, one of the things that fundraising support

organizations quite often do is get

sort of all caught up in the razzmatazz of the event,

and the only way to make an event bigger usually

in your thinking is to spend more money.

And of course, the more money you

spend, the less money you raise.

And so we started off being really,

pretty conservative folks saying we

weren't going to spend a penny that we didn't have to spend.

We set the goal of not spending any money to raise this.

So how do you save on food costs?

You ask people to host dinners and let

them take the cost of the food.

So that's what we did, and that was really the premise that

Dining for Dollars.

I don't know whether--

I think the Community Foundation had done their evenings out

at home, and so we might have piggybacked on that idea.

But it was all going on at about the same time.

And then, we thought about having a big party afterwards,

and that party needed to have dessert and drinks

and entertainment and dancing.

And we knew how to do that, and we

had people that were good at all of those sorts of things.

And so we begged, borrowed, and stealed desserts

from all the best bakeries, many of whom

were either run or staffed by our friends.

Gary Sweet from the Avenue Pub took on the bar.

We told them that this was going to be

a la-di-da kind of evening and we

needed to have after-dinner drinks because people

were going to come from these nice dinners

that people were hosting.

We got a really good DJ, and Jerry Algozer

put the best entertainment package together.

He was running the downstairs cabaret.

Nunsense had not premiered yet, and so

didn't the good sister appear on the stage in a promo

for Nunsense and didn't the house just fall apart

with laughter.

And all the good drag queens came

to do their very best work.

And we didn't know how many people might show up.

KEVIN INDOVINO: More than you expected?

I would--

DAN MEYERS: Way too many people showed up.

I mean, the room was like this.

It was just-- and the poor bartenders and bar I mean

got just hammered because people weren't

coming for a little after-dinner cordial.

They were coming to have a really good time because they

didn't know where they were going

and they didn't know who else was going to be there.

And it was like, oh my goodness, isn't this sort of wonderful?

And memory clouds things, but I think

we wanted to raise ten thousand dollars.

And I seem to remember that we raised closer to twenty.

And we had to knock it out of the park,

successful event on our hands.

And it just kept getting better.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So I want to kind of get in your head

at that moment with that first Dining for Dollars event

at Village Gate.

And you stand back and see these throngs of people.

What were you thinking at the time?

And when did it click with you, OK, we've got something here?

DAN MEYERS: I think it was, you know how parties sort of start,

and the beginning of a party is sort of that Neverland of is

this going to work, are people really going to show

or whatever?

And of course, gay folks aren't going to arrive early.

I mean, this is going to be backloaded and late.

And so it was especially slow, especially because we didn't

go to dinner because we were the committee

and we were all working.

So it seemed like this baby was just never going to get born.

And then, the parade started through the door.

And I don't think it was more than forty-five minutes

into it that we were all looking at each other saying,

this is really, really good.

And then, I think several of us started fussing about some

of the arrangements that we hadn't prepared for.

So they weren't going to be just sort of perfect.

And after a short time, it dawned on us

that it didn't matter.

People were having such a good time that it was just fine.

Let it go, and have a grand time with it.

Neil Paracella took this warehouse kind of room

and made it into a supper club.

There was more black plastic than probably any fire marshal

would allow because he had to cover the walls with something

to mask the cinder block.

I mean, it was an awful spot in Village Gate.

And honest to god, with that and some uplighting

and a focus on the stage and a black-and-white tile floor

that we put down to be the dance floor,

the place looked terrific.

But that's the magic of, you know.

KEVIN INDOVINO: What does it say about Rochester in general

that you can get a community energized

like that for something like AIDS, which at this point

it was obvious how tragic was going to be, or was.

Not every community responded to it like Rochester did.

DAN MEYERS: And not as soon either.

I mean, we responded like the big cities.

And while the impact was extraordinary for us,

it wasn't like it was in the big cities

and the metropolitan areas.

This worked because it was a network of friends.

And not everybody knew everybody,

but everybody knew somebody.

And that's what sort of created that natural kind of network.

So I think that's how this community works.

The gay community reflects how the greater community works.

We're small enough that you really do connect

and you really do know people.

And if there is something worthy and something

that needs support, you can mobilize folks.

And the first year, it was clearly

the gay men and some good women who made this all happen.

There were a few community friends, but not many.

By the next year, there were a lot more community friends

because people were concerned about what AIDS was doing.

And by the third or fourth year, this was a community-wide party

that people couldn't wait to get to because they knew

the gay community was going to throw a good party

and this wasn't going to be another sort

of fuddy duddy gala.

And we delivered and had a great run, just a great run.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So then, talk to me about how the funds

you raised doing these events, how did those funds

help this community?

What were kind of some of the programs that were

being supported by those funds?

DAN MEYERS: Well, the first couple of years, everything

went to the AIDS clinic at Strong.

It was the major health care provider,

and we felt that's what this needed to be.

When the clinic was formed, the event went to the clinic.

And sometime around there, we also gave some money

to AIDS Rochester.

And then, there became some more events,

and there was another fundraising organization.

And things became a little bit more dispersed and diverse,

and then things came back together again,

as you would sort of expect.

So the clinic at Strong, the AIDS Community Clinic,

got established.

AIDS Rochester grew.

And there were, on occasion, grants

to other organizations for outreach or special initiatives

or whatever.

The Quilt came a couple of times during that time.

The AIDS Show came to Rochester, And there

was great corporate support for that.

This little town performed, and performed in a way

that was remarkably admirable.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So let me throw some names out at you.

DAN MEYERS: OK.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Just some of the people

that you had to work with.

These names come up with everyone that I interview.

Obviously, the first person that comes up

whenever you talk about HPA and AIDS

awareness, and that is Tony Green.

Talk to me about Tony.

DAN MEYERS: You know, he was the town crier.

He was the court jester.

He presided over the bar at Friar's in a way

that sort of made it clear to you that you were either

in the right place or that you needed

to get your act together and come

in the door a different way so that you could be your best

self.

He treated everyone with a remarkable openness

and acceptance, and people returned that to him.

And he was a real good confidant.

He was a real good judge of character.

He was a real good connector.

He was probably a confessor for an awful lot of people.

And all of that, some of it pretty serious stuff,

done with great humor.

You couldn't take yourself too seriously

around Tony Green for more than a second.

And he wasn't afraid to use that connectivity

that he had to mobilize folks and to make something work.

So when he got behind something, hundreds of people

just followed right along.

So in lots of ways, he was the Pied Piper

for the growing success of the AIDS-related events.

KEVIN INDOVINO: John Washburn comes up often.

And if I remember right, you were actually

good friends with him?

DAN MEYERS: Very.

One of my dearest friends in the whole world.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Tell me about John a little bit

because John being a public figure basically

took a great risk coming out with his HIV status.

DAN MEYERS: John Washburn came to this town in the early 1980s

to be superintendent of the Brighton schools.

Brighton has always been a leader in education,

and the new superintendent bore watching

is what the word on the street was

because this was a smart guy who was going to change things.

And you watch him and watch Brighton.

There was an underground report that

said the new superintendent might be gay,

and so the word was out in the gay community.

This man bore watching as well.

John and I served on the Arts Council board together

and I think sort of looked at each other a little bit

out of the side of our eyes.

And didn't take us too long to meet at one of the bars.

And with John, it was sort of electric.

He had a terrific, terrific mind.

He had a terrific sense of joy in life and wanting to have fun

and wanting everyone else to have fun.

And when he was out, he was fully out.

But when the darkness disappeared,

he went back to being the superintendent.

And even though he wore cowboy boots,

he didn't really ever drop a hairpin, as he would say,

in that circumstance.

He was one of the folks that helped start HPA.

He was one of the folks to really start

mobilizing the community.

I don't know exactly when he knew that he was sick,

but I suspect he suspected sooner

than he let on to any of us.

I remember when he first got sick and had

to be hospitalized, and he almost died.

It brought it all home for me in a way that it just hadn't been.

He was also one of those people who

understood that he had to take control of his illness

and he had to manage it even though he

relied on some very good doctors,

and he had fabulous doctors.

And in that way, I think he helped an awful lot of people

understand what you have to do to be as well as you can be.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Hold that thought.

(unintelligible) Unfortunately, there's nothing

we can do about it except (unintelligible).

DAN MEYERS: Sorry.

This has got to be a long day for you

listening to all these stories.

CREW: (unintelligible).

DAN MEYERS: Yeah?

CREW: It's fascinating.

It's a history that not many gays have actually heard.

DAN MEYERS: Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

CREW: (unintelligible).

KEVIN INDOVINO: (unintelligible).

We'll give it a second there.

(pause) (unintelligible).

CREW: Obviously, a math class.

(pause in recording)

DAN MEYERS: Are we?

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah.

We're rolling?

CREW: Yeah, we're rolling.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Let's pick it up with John.

We picked it up somewhere around he was out at night,

but when the sun came up--

DAN MEYERS: Yep.

So as the episodes with his illness

became more frequent and affected more of his life,

he had to make a decision about whether he

was going to continue to function as the school

superintendent or not.

He had a very powerful experience

of talking to the school superintendents

group about AIDS.

And it made it clear to him that he could give up

one platform, if you will, and that there

would be other ways in which he could

work with society for its good.

And so he evolved this presence that he took around the country

to educational forums to be sort of the first person to speak

out about what AIDS is.

And with his Harvard PhD, with his school superintendents,

with his national consulting role in education,

he had access to platforms that most people just didn't.

And he was a respected peer.

And he couldn't have been a better spokesperson

for putting a face on this disease

that everybody wanted to pretend was something else

and there was a demon somewhere.

And it was really hard to demonize this man.

So I don't think it ever occurred to him that that's

where he was going to maybe make his greatest contribution,

but it's really clear that he put a face on AIDS in Rochester

that people couldn't ignore.

And he put a face on AIDS in the national educational forum

that people had to pay attention to.

I went with him to speak to the National School Boards

meeting in New Orleans.

He was pretty sick.

This was probably a year and a half or two years

before he died.

And he had a terrible episode of a fever while we were there.

And it was really not clear whether he

was going to be able to make it onto the stage or not.

And Bill Valenti worked some magic.

And this was an auditorium of eight to ten thousand people.

And he started telling his story.

And I don't think there was a sentence of more than five

words, and I don't think there were any words bigger than two

syllables even though this man had a fabulous vocabulary.

It was a human story.

And he was crying, and so was everyone else in that room.

And the applause was thunderous.

That applause alone probably added months or years

to his life.

KEVIN INDOVINO: I had a question,

and it's just kind of flew right out of my head.

I remember.

So he came forward with his HIV status, his illness.

And he didn't retreat.

He just got up in the forefront.

Rochester's reaction to it--

and I'm trying to just recall from my own memory of what

I read in the newspapers at the time--

it was kind of two-fold.

There were some pretty strong criticism of him.

It was the Brighton school superintendent, scandal.

DAN MEYERS: And it was front page Sunday paper.

I mean, you couldn't hide from this.

KEVIN INDOVINO: But on the flip side,

the community eventually embraced him, I think.

Talk to me a little about it.

Talk to me about the two sides of the reaction

that Rochester had to his situation

and how he brought it to the forefront.

DAN MEYERS: Well, it's a whole lot easier

if something bad can be other and it

can be about someone else.

And it's even better if you can blame somebody for it.

And there was a whole lot of that side of the column going

on with AIDS.

And so initial reaction from some people

was trying to get that over into them,

and they did this and this is, and so on.

And yet, you couldn't stay over in that column very easily.

You had to begin to see that this

is about disease and illness, and disease and illnesses--

are there some contributing factors?

Yeah, there are.

But the fact of the matter is this is a virus,

and it's going to do--

and you know what?

It's not safe for anybody I mean,

this can happen to anybody, and this can happen

in lots of different ways.

And this isn't them.

It's us.

And I think there was a lot of work building up to it,

but John Washburn was the crossover

that this became us instead of them.

And it was a remarkable gift to the gay community in Rochester

and to the community of Rochester

that AIDS found a place at the crossroads.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Again, we can't speak to him, obviously,

but can you share any of those early conversations

with regards to this journey that he was going to be

embarking on and becoming--

I hate to say this, but becoming a poster child for AIDS?

You know, some of these concerns initially?

I can't imagine that he didn't go into this without some fears

and some apprehension.

DAN MEYERS: He was scared to death of it.

But this was a very smart man who

put his plan together well in advance

of the implementation of it.

And so he needed to line up his family.

He needed to line up his friends.

He needed to line up the school board.

He needed to line up his staff.

And this is somebody that worked through every one of those

in a very clear-headed, proactive, and advanced kind

of foresight way.

His thought process had so much integrity that, by the time

it happened, he was way far ahead

of where everybody else was because we were

all just catching up to him.

But I remember saying to him, "You

know, you've got to think about your own health in this

if you're going to use all of this energy to do this."

And he said, "I can take care of that."

And he said, "And besides, I don't know

how much time I've got anyway.

I've got to get this done."

And he was taking care of himself.

I mean, he not only arranged for an orderly transition

in the Brighton schools, but he sold everything here

and he moved to Santa Fe because that's

where he wanted to be eventually in his life,

and he decided he better go now.

And so he had a terrific year in Santa Fe living the life

that he had always wanted to do.

He happened to be forty-nine and fifty instead of sixty-five,

but he made that happen as well.

So not only did he share the pain and the understanding

and the education of this.

He shared the good life of this and said, "Look folks,

it's not over.

I'm going to get on with my life."

And that's pretty powerful.

And that's my friend that taught me that.

KEVIN INDOVINO: You know, we're thirty-plus years

since AIDS appeared.

Late eighties into the nineties, we had pretty strong troops

gathered here in Rochester, confronting this, educating

people, increasing awareness, taking care of people.

Not so much today.

I mean, we still have organizations.

We still have care facilities.

It's a different beast today than it was twenty,

thirty years ago.

But when you look back at what you

were doing at the height of this and what

we're faced with now, what are your thoughts about what

our greatest challenges are right now, particularly

with AIDS and still keeping people safe?

DAN MEYERS: I remember Bill Valenti talking to a group

saying that AIDS could become a chronic illness that people

would manage through an extended period of life.

And as awful as that might have sounded

as sort of a sentence for people,

I remember feeling such hope that this

wasn't going to end up with these awful final days

and these funerals one after another.

I mean, funerals, there was a time

in the eighties, early nineties when funerals

were our major social events.

And there were just way, way, way too many.

So the idea that this could be managed

and that, even though this probably

wasn't going to be easy or pretty,

that folks could survive was just remarkably hopeful.

And those first drugs were just awful things.

They did terrible things to people.