AIDS ANNIVERSARY

This is the thirtieth anniversary  of the discovery or beginning of what was called at the time, "Gay Cancer." And, with a possible 40% of the population of San Francisco being gay, we could surely expect the CITY to remember this painful time with both a commemorization and great depth of sadness.

I arrived in San Francisco during the height of the epidemic. Deaths were, for a lack of a better term, almost common place. I was assigned to be the AIDS ward (about 25 beds) chaplain at Letterman Army Medical Center on the Presideo.  Letterman at that time was a 250 bed teaching hospital and saw itself as a front runner in patient care for the soldier population, plus a huge retired military population. Letterman had been designated as the repository for HIV soldiers for the entire Pacific Rim.

The military with socially traumatic incidents like HIV positive did what they do best in such situations, they "deny." But, to the military's credit, they allowed docs or anybody to do as much or as little as they wanted. I remember distinctly a young physician (fellow) telling me, "here is a good chance to learn something about a disease that nobody knows anything about." (What we needed was a TV character like "House," totally unbelievable but the program always has exotic diseases as the docs called them. They are mysteries anHpuse, of course, solves them).  But, the military treated the patients the best they could and discharged them. At that time, AIDS was almost a hundred percent associated with the gay community.

I had some pretty sad experiences during my involvement. Two stick out. A patient said to me, "Chaplain, we can't find a place to have a memorial for a friend, any chance we could use the chapel?" Without thinking, I said, "Sure." Later on I thought, 'damn, I'm going to get my ass in a sling for this.' Sure enough, somebody ratted me out and I received a memo from the XO (second in command) that the chapel was not to be used without ecpressed permission of the Commander. The Secretary brought the memo to me and said, something like, "who should I call to cancel out tonight's memorial." I had to think on my feet here. (I discovered  down the road that she is the one who had perpetrated the drama) No, I'll take care of it."
I did nothing. At the services which were very moving, I will have to admit that I had somewhat of a strange feeling. I remember it like yesterday. Every single person I'n the service was male. Maybe 200 males, not a single female.


The other experience, among many, was equally sad. This one guy, a young sergeant and his pardner were the nicest two you could imagine. They exuded kindness. My earthy demeanor surely could have used some of their nature. They had been together a few years. I never pried and if something came out in the course of the experience, I filed it away. These guys were funny, well read, delightful in every way. One day on my rounds, I encountered the mother and father of one of them. I actually showed them to the room. Their son was very sick. The situation was very strained. Obviously the parents didn't approve of what they called they called, the "homosexual environment." I didn't do a good job of interacting with the parents and could probly psychobabble why. In what seemed lile no time, a their son died. They claimed his body, made arrangements for him to be shipped back to Minnesota and left. A couple of days later, the pardner came to see me. He relayed a story that made me profoundly sad. The parents were Lutheran, basically wete estranged from their son and did not accept the pardner. He was heartbroken. I felt so bad. Why the deceased did not leave some sort of will or detail arrangements,  I don't know. Very, very sad.