Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt

The death rate was extremely high.

- The best guess is that some infectious agent is--

- It's an epidemic, a disease that's a killer.

- This probably means they are dealing

with some new deadly sexually transmitted disease.

- One of the most frightening medical mysteries

of modern time.

- The man with the most publicized case of AIDS,

Rock Hudson, flew home from Paris today

on a chartered 747 jet.

Hudson's 6'4 frame--

- Rock Hudson returned to Los Angeles

and was immediately flown to UCLA Medical Center.

It was there that Hudson learned he has AIDS.

It took rock Hudson's death

to capture America's attention.

By that time, AIDS had already killed

15.000 other Americans.

Rock Hudson is the most famous name in a giant quilt,

a memorial to tens of thousands of men, women and children

who came along very different roads to the same fate.

Ron winters, Wayne field,

Ray Wright Jr., Paul Edward Richards.

Fred, Andy.

Billy, Juan Jimenez.

David.

Ron Blard.

- He hated the stereotype that the heterosexual world

had towards the gay community.

And it wasn't true, and he was a perfect living soul

as proof of that.

He is a very competitive, was a very competitive man.

And it hit a great note in my heart

because I'm a very competitive woman.

He was the sixth greatest athlete in the world

in the decathlon, and placed six.

What, 31, 32 when he was doing this, he was incredible.

But he was out to prove something.

We'd go down and we'd play racquetball,

I'd teach him how to play.

And he said, "No problem, I am a top notch athlete.

"It is nothing for me to pick up anything.

"I am great and wonderful at everything I do."

I go, "Ha-ha, we'll see."

My biggest pleasure was to be whipping him

around that court.

Every time he would be diving for a ball

and crash into a wall, with sweat pouring out,

I would almost fall down laughing.

I said, "You're not in shape, Tom."

- Every time I hear that song, I think about it.

It's what he made me feel like a special person.

I've always been involved in the church

and it was very important to me

to have a stable relationship and to commit.

And in the middle of talking, he says,

"Well, I'll marry you, you know, that's no problem."

And I said now, did I ask him or did he ask me?

It was always crazy about how it actually happened.

Three months after we married,

you could tell it was something bothering him.

He said he wanted to talk to me.

And he told me he was on drugs

and that he had been trying to get off

and he was having a problem with trying to straighten up.

And he said to me at the time, he said,

"If you want to be out of this relationship,

"I understand 'cause I don't want

"to pull you through that."

Of course I thought about it, we prayed about it.

In the prayer, I said we took vows

and it was for better or worse.

And I said to him, I said,

"Okay, we said better or worse

"but this shit better get better."

It was her going away party.

We were talking to a bunch of people

and one of our favorite movies was "Two For The Road"

with Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn.

And there was one scene in "Two For The Road"

towards the end of the film that Jeffrey and I knew

by heart and we did it, both parts.

I forget who did which one.

There was this pause right after we finished

and some guy looked at us and he said,

"I was genuinely moved."

And Jeffrey Wright burst out laughing

and I remember after that for years,

every time we would see something in the movies

that was either funny or charming or something,

Jeffrey would say, "I was genuinely moved."

He was the kind of a person I was when I was a teenager

but he still had that sort of childlike teenage innocence.

Jeffrey had favorite movie stars

and his favorites turned out in many cases

to be my favorites.

Remember "The Wedding" was probably his favorite film.

I think it was because he identified so much

with the character of Frankie Adams,

who's played by Julie Harris.

Frankie felt like she didn't belong.

I think Jeffrey identified as a person

who didn't know what he wanted to do with his life.

You know how they used to say that there are some people

who are too gentle to live among wolves?

That was Jeffrey.

- This is Marcia Pally for Our Time.

We're at the Chelsea Gay Street Fair.

It's a beautiful afternoon.

We have just about everything here today.

Gay atheists, gay Lutherans, all people, young people.

How do you feel about the gay community today?

Oh, it makes me very nervous,

but then again, most things do.

- I don't have any concept of what happens to us

when we die.

In my son's case, knowing David, I believe he's up there

right alongside the big man

making suggestions and changes and saying,

"Well God, if you do it this way,

"maybe just maybe things will work out a little better."

David was full speed ahead.

Everything about him was a forward motion.

Sometimes I would just look at him

and marvel at him.

Because watching him was like watching someone

actually eat life.

And in the back of my mind, I thought,

"He's my middle life eater.

"He really knows how to extract the most."

He's a very strong child physically, hated baths.

So when I would hold him in his little tub,

I would have to grasp him very firmly

or he was often running.

And the doctor noticed bruises on his upper chest

and upper arms much as you would take hold of a child

if you were gonna shake him,

and asked that we put David into the hospital

to see if he was an easy bruiser

or if he was being battered.

When they ran the test, they discovered

not only was he an easy bruiser,

he was in fact, a classic severe hemophiliac.

- If you were in the Navy, you had to have a wife.

That was part of the Navy career.

I spent 18 years with my ex-wife

and had a decent relationship, I think with her,

but I only spent five years with David

and they were probably the happiest five years of my life.

At the time that we met, I was taken aback with his looks.

Of course that's always a good place to start (chuckles).

And he admitted to me later that he was taken aback

by my Rolex. (laughs)

Neither one of us was particularly enthralled

with the fact that we turned out to be gay.

David had had a hang up ever since his teenage years

with the fact that he was probably gay,

and he would have become an interior designer

if it weren't for the great stigma attached

to that occupation, and therefore,

decided to become a landscape architect instead

and was doing quite well

in his landscape architecture business.

- Many of us believe that it may be infectious,

that it may be a new mutant type of virus,

a cytomegalovirus that has mutated

and it is spreading through these individuals suppressing

their immune system and setting them up for these events.

But that's just a theory at this period of time.

- I don't know how I got it, I fit the profile

of kinda typical capsules patient in my age

and that I'm gay and...

But I don't know how I got it.

- So far doctors have only documented 60 known cases

among gay men, so it is by no means an epidemic.

They are concerned that it is attacking heavily

in the gay community and they're working on theories

to explain why.

In San Francisco Lindy Yi, New Center 4.

- Do we know for certain what caused it?

No.

- Do we even know whether it's a virus, bacteria, or what?

- There are a lot of theories, but at this point,

we know nothing for certain.

Do we know how it spreads?

No.

Now if we don't know how to cure it,

it must be spreading like wildfire.

- Yes, they're growing at an exponential rate.

- Among the victims is Bobby Campbell.

The San Francisco resident describes himself

as the AIDS poster boy.

- For me personally, I've had fungal infections,

I've had warts, I've had stomatitis,

which is an infection of the mouth so serious

that I would not be able to eat, would not be able to talk

and I have cancer.

- Bobby Campbell was the 16th person

in San Francisco to be diagnosed