I remember watching the evening news and noticing a pattern. There were stories of a mysterious disease, often accompanying an obituary. The story of Ryan White, a boy not much older than I was at the time, especially caught my interest.
In the mid 1990’s, as part of my high school’s community service requirement, I volunteered at the Boston Living Center, a community center for people living with HIV and AIDS. It was a pivotal time – new drugs and drug cocktails were changing the lives of those who were sick. I didn’t realize then what a profound impact my time there would have on my life.
Revisiting the Boston Living Center almost 20 years later, it occurred to me that I didn’t know the whole story of the AIDS crisis in Boston. I knew some names, but there were so many unsung heroes, names I did not know. I couldn’t find their stories, so I decided to search them out.
On November 5, 1982, Fenway Health Center, known as the expert in healthcare for Boston’s LGBTQ community, held the first of two forums about “the rising incidence of Kaposi’s Sarcoma, Pneumocystis, and other diseases known as AIDS.” What emerged from those forums was the creation of the AIDS Action Committee, the first AIDS service organization in Boston.
Concerned health care professionals, volunteers and community organizers worked to determine what services people dying from AIDS needed. They created nonprofits, educated, advocated, and collaborated with local and state government officials while the crisis was substantially ignored by (former) President Ronald Reagan.
This project is intended to share Boston’s response to the AIDS epidemic through the stories of leadership, compassion, collaboration and action in the words of those who fought on the front lines.