AIDS crisis eventually yielded more understanding

AIDS crisis helped foster acceptance Devastating disease led to changes in society, as well as healthcare practices

by Mark Lord of the Congo, according to the site. Chronicle Contributor From there, it says, the disease spread

It was 1979 when a young nurse to Haiti and the Caribbean, jumping from Forest Hills named Ellen to New York City around 1970. Matzer was confronted with what Today, “nobody’s talking about she recently described as “the first AIDS anymore,” Matzer said, but “it’s cluster of young men who died not by any means over.” suddenly.” In the early years, besides dealing

At the time, she was employed at with the dangers of the disease itself, Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan and those suffering from it had to contend she and some of her colleagues began with the stigma that came with it, and to notice “some suspicious cases.” the potential to be outed as homosex-

With no interhospital reporting uals, as AIDS was originally looked back then, everybody assumed the ill- upon as “the gay cancer.” nesses were confined to that particu- Of course, that perspective has lar facility, she said. evolved over the ensuing decades.

What they and countless others Matzer pointed out, though, that the were dealing with, it would be dis- disease “has not really been overcome covered, was a devastating epidemic everywhere in the world. AIDS is still that would eventually take hold underground in some countries.” As around the world. examples, she pointed to Malaysia, a

Acquired immunodeficiency syn- country in southeast Asia where she drome, commonly referred to as said there remains a lack of awareness AIDS, was at first unidentified, and homophobia still runs rampant, unnamed and frequently left unmen- and to Chechnya in the southern part tioned. Despite its covert existence, it of Russia, where known homosexuals evolved into a widespread killer. continue to face brutal persecution at

Forty years later, Matzer and a the hands of the government. longtime colleague, Flushing native In the United States, Matzer sugValery Hughes, wrote a book on their gested that “most of the public persoexperiences dating to those early na of AIDS changed because of a man days, “Nurses on the Inside: Stories of named Larry Kramer.” the HIV/AIDS Epidemic in NYC.” Kramer, a playwright and activist

Writing the book led them to who died in May, was one of the “reflect back on a lot of cases,” Matzer founders of the Gay Men’s Health said. One of the earliest, she recalled, Crisis, an organization in support of was a French physician, who suffered people who test positive for HIV, from “such a strange presentation of which, according to Matzer, was first pneumonia,” which led to respiratory identified as the causative virus of failure, being hooked up to a ventilator AIDS in 1983. and, in a short time, death. Two years later, the actor Rock

“We thought back on all these Hudson died of the disease, placing it other strange cases,” she said. front and center in the public’s eye. “Young men in respiratory failure Two years after that, in 1987, a who died within days or hours.” march on Washington for lesbian and

According to history.com, health gay rights brought AIDS activists to officials first became aware of the the forefront and led many particidisease in 1981. American leaders pants to start their own lesbian and remained largely silent for four years gay rights organizations. after that, the site indicates. After an extended silence, then-

The disease originated in Kinsha- President Ronald Reagan finally sa, capital of the Democratic Republic addressed the AIDS issue that same year, after the disease had spread to more than 100 countries around the world and deaths among its victims were estimated at 20,000. The 1970s were “a very Valery Hughes, left, and Ellen Matzer are joined by Gay frightening Men’s Health Crisis CEO Kelsey Louie at a signing event for time,” said their 2019 book, “Nurses on the Inside: Stories of the Councilman HIV/AIDS Epidemic in NYC.” PHOTO COURTESY ELLEN MATZER Danny Dromm Queens Lesbian and Gay Pride Committee Co-chairpersons Maritza Martinez and Danny Dromm, front, second and third from left, and other Pride Committee board members commemorate World AIDS Day at the AIDS Quilt Memorial display on Dec. 1, 2001. Though devastating, the AIDS crisis eventually helped gay people to be seen as individuals. PHOTO COURTESY DANNY DROMM

(D-Jackson Heights), who came out to his mother at the age of 17. It was a time of sexual liberation, he recalled, when living styles were “more freestyle” than they are today.

But “everything came to a crashing end” with the emergence of the disease that was referred to as the GRID (or gay-related immune deficiency) syndrome, he said.

“No one knew how you got it or what to do,” he said.

Because of the misnomer, there was “a lot of discrimination that went with it,” he said, adding that the disease was considered by some to be God’s punishment for being gay. The public’s widespread ignorance of the disease led Dromm to become the activist he remains today.

He equated the reaction at the time to that accorded the emergence of COVID-19, leading to prejudice against the Asian community.

“I survived one plague,” the HIVnegative Dromm said, “only now to live through a second one.”

Flushing native John Brandes became a volunteer emergency medical technician at the age of 18, as the AIDS epidemic was beginning to rage.

“Back then, nobody knew how you caught it. Nobody in our organization addressed how to handle AIDS patients,” he said.

He recalled one particularly painful moment in time, one which continues to haunt him to this day.

“A woman called our headquarters, saying her son had a high fever,” he recalled. But because of the lack of knowledge, “We were told that no fevers of unknown origin should be transferred by us. We told the woman we couldn’t take the job, that she had to go through 911. She was distraught.

“Looking back with what we know, I regret having turned down that call. I wish we had the understanding to have done better.”

As information began to emerge, “Our hesitance at addressing AIDS patients began to ease,” he said.

Former Long Islander Bart KoonCosgrove, who worked for the Department of Social Services before forging a career for himself as a much in-demand hairdresser, now lives in Nantucket, Mass., where he developed an unusual perspective on the emergence of the virus.

“We were insulated from AIDS. We didn’t see any of the beginning of it,” he said, adding that “we heard about it from friends in New York.

“Nantucket people don’t put up with prejudice very well. I have never had a truly overt homophobic experience. I’m sure we have our homophobes, but they have to be quiet about it, even more so today.”

Heavily affected by the epidemic was professional actor and architect Tom Keeling, a native of Virginia who recalled being on tour in a show when he picked up a copy of a trade newspaper and discovered he had lost 14 friends to the disease in a single month.

“It was devastating,” he said. Altogether, he lost “hundreds of friends.”

He recalled one particularly tragic event. He was performing in the Los Angeles company of the musical “Cats,” and noticed that a fellow cast member had been losing an inordinate amount of weight.

“He died between the matinee and evening performances,” Keeling remembered. “You’re trying to keep people laughing and people are dying around you.”

Jeffrey Piekarsky, a retired teacher from Forest Hills, was diagnosed as HIV-positive 25 years ago.

“People were still dying” of the disease, he said. “I was lucky. Medications were first coming out. I went from being pretty sick to doing pretty well.”

AIDS, he added, is no longer the automatic death sentence it once was.

But he still recalls the stigma that often accompanied the illness. “Most of my friends were good” about it, he said. “A few cut me off. They couldn’t deal with it. I just have to accept that.”

Piekarsky sees a bright side to the AIDS epidemic. “When I was a kid, I never came out. In high school, it wouldn’t have crossed my mind to come out. Now, it’s very different. Gay marriage — go figure.”

Society, in general, is “way more accepting of gay people,” he said. “It’s become socially unacceptable to be homophobic in normal society. When I was kid, that was the norm.”

Keeling doesn’t quite see things the same way.

“It still carries a stigma,” he said of the disease. “The gay community is not embracing.” He cited as a case in point a friend who tested positive for HIV. “All his gay friends disappeared,” he said.

But he credits the disease with encouraging the medical world to do “a lot of work on the immune system.”

Brandes noted that because of AIDS, “the definition of infection control became more refined.” And universal precautions, including the use of barrier protection when healthcare providers are engaged in patient contact, were first stressed during the rise of AIDS, he said.

And Koon-Cosgrove said of his neighbors, “The majority of this community learned that it’s actually easier and better to be honest and compassionate than secretive and hateful. It brought out the best of our community.”

He also believes that “a large number of people in the general population began to see gay people as we really are: very diverse, of every color, every class, every ethnicity. We’re not uniform, homogeneous. We began to be perceived as individuals.”

What silver lining does Dromm see in the years that have followed the rise of the AIDS epidemic? “It helped gay people to realize our lives are valid,” he said. Q

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