One of my first memories of the AIDS Walk was of being there as a guest celebrity with Bozo the Clown (for those of you who don’t know, I was co-host of the show for four years).
That was at a time when people were still terrified of the disease and not a lot of people were talking about it. So to have a beloved icon like Bozo the Clown supporting the walk was a big thing. I remember Bozo holding hands with a group of drag queens and we were all crying as they played “That’s What Friends Are For.” It was a special moment.
This week I spoke to AIDS Fund executive director Robb Reichard. AIDS Fund organizes the walk each year and, as this is Reichard’s 10th year as director of the organization, he had his own batch of memories to share.
PGN: So start by telling me a little bit about yourself. RR: Oh jeez!
PGN: [Laughs.] Where are you from? RR: I grew up in the Lehigh Valley, Easton. I came to Philadelphia to attend Arcadia University, which back then was Beaver College, and never left Philly.
PGN: What was Lehigh Valley like? RR: Very rural. I could see farms from my house.
PGN: What did you do for fun? RR: Biking, hiking in the woods; we were close to the Delaware Canal so we’d skip rocks and have fun. I look around at the kids here in Philadelphia and we got to do things they could never do. You’d be outside from the time you got up in the morning to the time you went to bed at night.
PGN: Who was “we,” siblings? RR: Me and my neighborhood friends. I do have a younger sister. She lives in Florida now so I don’t get to spend as much time with her as I’d like.
PGN: Were you always close? RR: As young kids we fought a lot. We were three years apart, but in high school we were involved with a lot of the same things, theater, etc., and had a lot of mutual friends. We’ve been close ever since.
PGN: What do the folks do? RR: Mom was in sales and is an administrative assistant and my dad was in food service; he managed corporate cafeterias. I think I got some of my event-planning skills from him.
PGN: You were in drama club. What was your favorite role? RR: We did “The Three Musketeers” my senior year and I got to play King Louis, which was great. I had a fabulous brocade outfit with lots of lace and high collars and cuffs. PGN: [Laughs.] Did playing king bring out your inner queen? RR: Ha. I don’t know. But it was fun.
PGN: What was your major at Arcadia? RR: Sociology, with a concentration on social services and criminology. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with that but I enjoyed it.
PGN: I read that you initiated and conducted HIV/AIDS prevention-education programs for college students. RR: Yes, but that was after I graduated. I was working in student services at Pierce College in the late ’80s and not a lot of colleges were doing stuff. So we started the first HIV/AIDS education workshops and the first homophobia workshops. It was an interesting time to be in social services.
PGN: When did you come out? RR: I was 24. I had a mentor, he was my advisor for my college senior practicum, and after I graduated we got together one night for dinner. We were catching up and he told me that he and his partner had just celebrated their 10th anniversary. He asked me what was going on with me, was I seeing anyone, and I said no. He said, “If you were, would it be a woman or a man?” I looked at him and said, “A man? That wouldn’t be right.” And as soon as I said it, I realized that 1. He was right, it would be and 2. How much pent-up homophobia I had. The thought that I could say something like that to someone I admired and respected and loved … I looked at him and said, “I just can’t believe that came from me.” And at that moment my life changed. He got me to verbalize something I’d kept internalized.
PGN: No inkling before that? RR: Yes, I’d fooled around with boys, but never envisioned myself as a gay man. It was the summer of 1988 and I did my first AIDS Walk that fall and haven’t missed one since. I just jumped in with both feet.
PGN: What was your first awareness of AIDS? RR: I kind of remember hearing about it in college, but it wasn’t really talked about. I can’t remember one workshop or program and I went to a very liberal, progressive school. It was just kind of a nebulous thing, and no one knew what was causing it.
PGN: You work with a lot of students. What is something they need to know now that’s different from back then? RR: Well, I think we’re a lot more open about talking about sex now, which helps, and the myths and misconceptions aren’t as bad. But I was speaking to a group at Temple last week and the first question was, “Can you just tell us how it’s transmitted, because they really didn’t explain it in high school?” Education has been so gutted in order to concentrate on test scores that basic information falls to the wayside. So it’s important to make sure we’re getting this info out there so young kids have the knowledge and self-esteem they need to protect themselves.
PGN: I remember at the very beginning of the epidemic having some friends crash at my parents’ house. One of them was a girl I didn’t know and she pulled me aside and told me that she had AIDS. Though it was about 2 a.m., she said that she’d understand if I wanted her to go home. I was shocked, in part because at that time I’d never heard of a woman getting it, but fortunately I had the good sense to tell her she was welcome in my home. This was at a time when people still thought you could get it by shaking hands or touching a door handle. Part of my reasoning to myself was, “That doesn’t make sense, there would be more of us sick if that were the case and if you can catch it just from being in the same room then we’re all going to be exposed at some time, so why punish this person for being honest?” But it was scary, we just didn’t know. Thankfully we’ve come a long way since then. RR: We have, though we still have a long way to go. We are a long way from a vaccine. We are a long way from a cure. We’ve come a long way in treatment, but not necessarily how we treat people, and people are still dying from it. PGN: We had the old myths of doom but now the new myths seem to be that you can get it and be fine, just take some pills. RR: Yes, that’s one of the biggest struggles. I wouldn’t say there’s a laissez-faire attitude but the fear of it is certainly not there like it was. I tend to be the person people call when they get a positive diagnosis and they’re devastated, they’re scared, as well they should be. I had a young friend test positive last year and I reminded him that he’s one of the fortunate ones. “You have a good job with health insurance, you have good mental health, you don’t have addiction issues, you have everything you need to be OK, if you take care of yourself.” Too many people don’t have those things that help you survive. There’s too much disparity.
PGN: What was your first experience with HIV/AIDS? RR: After that conversation with my mentor, I went to a gay bar about two weeks later. I sat at the bar staring straight ahead next to a young man, also sitting alone not talking to anyone. We finally made contact and I told him it was my first night out. He told me it was his first night out since his partner had died of AIDS. Here was a guy my age, 24, and he’d just lost someone he loved. It really brought it home. I got very involved very quickly in doing homophobia and AIDS workshops. We became close friends for a really long time.
PGN: You did sensitivity trainings in hospitals; what was that like? RR: Yes, they were having issues so we were asked to step in. At that time, we combined homophobia and HIV/AIDS training because they were so closely tied. They were experiencing things like the housekeeping staff refusing to clean rooms, meals being left in the hallways, there were problems with gay couples being denied access because they weren’t legal or biological family members, there were extreme lengths with masking and gloves and all that stuff. The hospital was trying to be proactive about it. One of the things I’m proud of is that I insisted that it be all-inclusive. I wouldn’t just instruct the housecleaning staff or the nurses, everyone had to be trained, from the top docs and administrators to the janitor. And they really followed through and did it.
PGN: So this is your 10th year as executive director of the AIDS Fund. What’s the most moving story you remember? RR: Doing this work, you see the best and worst in people. One thing that stands out, I had the opportunity a few years ago to meet a young boy, 6 at the time, whose mother was addicted to crack while she was pregnant. Because she was active in her addiction she didn’t seek any prenatal care, so he was born HIV-positive and addicted to crack. It was so … so … there was just no reason for him to be born with HIV in 2007. A little care would have made all the difference; now he will live with it for the rest of his life. She died six months after he was born and he is being raised by his great-aunt who is a senior citizen with her own medical issues, yet she took him in because “if I didn’t no one else would.” I’ll never forget him or her.
PGN: I have to admit, I haven’t been to a walk in a while. What do you say to people to get them fired up? RR: Well, it’s true that the mid-’90s were when people starting not paying as much attention. Mostly because that’s when the treatments were discovered. There was a cover on, I think it was Time magazine that read, “The End of AIDS?” I think a lot of people didn’t notice the question mark. Certainly the treatments have changed things dramatically, but it’s not over. I lost a friend last year to the epidemic. It shouldn’t be happening anymore in this country, but it does. Maybe your friends are OK, because they have the best care available, but go outside of your circle and it’s a different story.
PGN: And what can people expect at the walk this year? RR: We have many traditions that we’ve done since the walk began. We always start with a reading of the names, we’ll have a portion of the AIDS Memorial Quilt. You asked me about moving stories. The first year that we had the quilt here, I had a woman ask if we would be accepting panels. We said yes and told her to bring it to the stage on the morning of the walk. I’d just done the reading of the names and we had her and members of her family come up on the stage to present it. She had the quilt in her arms and I walked over to accept the panel. As I got closer, she pulled the quilt against her body and began to cry. I stood there for what felt like an eternity as the family gathered around her. It was my first year as ED, and I had the mayor on the side of the stage waiting to speak, and everyone waiting to start the walk as she just sobbed. She finally handed the quilt to me and I laid it on the steps of the Art Museum with the rest of the panels. Years went by and we were doing a quilt display for World AIDS Day. Out of the blue, a familiar-looking woman walked in and said, “Hi Robb.” She took my hand and led me in to where the panels were hanging and said, “Robin’s hanging with her peeps now.” [Breathes.] All of a sudden it hit me who she was. I squeezed her hand and we hugged. Fast-forward a few years and she contacted me about the AIDS Walk and asked if it were possible to request the portion of the quilt that had Robin’s panel in it. I tried but it had already been requested in another part of the country. She emailed me saying that it was OK. She lives at the shore, but on the day of the walk, I saw her and all the family, cousins, nieces, etc., coming towards me. I said, “Marge, I’m so glad to see you, but I didn’t expect it since Robin’s panel is not here. [Chokes up.] She hugged me and said, ‘That’s OK, she’s out traveling the country, doing what she needs to do. Educating people. I needed to be here.” To me that summed it all up. The quilt is a great memorial, but it’s also a great way to open up dialog. Just two weeks ago, we had two panels up for the Lehigh Valley AIDS Walk and there was a woman with a young child, pointing out things on the quilts: “Oh look, that means this person was into music and this one is for a baby that died.” It was great to see a mother talking to her daughter about HIV/AIDS but in a way that was comfortable for them.
PGN: So back to you, what’s your earliest memory? RR: Probably my parents bringing my sister home from the hospital.
PGN: Three things on your bucket list? RR: A Cher concert — I’m going in April — and visiting the Grand Canyon and Ireland.
PGN: Ireland? What’s your ancestry? RR: German, French and Irish. My mother’s maiden name is McCarty. They were some of the first settlers in Bucks County back in the 1600s. They founded the first Catholic Church there.
PGN: Was your family into social activism? RR: No, they don’t know where I came from. I’m the bleeding-heart liberal in the family. Which makes for interesting get-togethers [laughs], especially since I’m not shy about voicing my opinions or confronting something I think is wrong.
PGN: What star would you want to do a love scene with? RR: Pierce Brosnan. No wait, Johnny Depp.
PGN: Ah, a pirate fetish? RR: No! No, “21 Jump Street” Johnny. [Laughs.] Me and Johnny go way back!
For more information on the AIDS Walk, visit www.aidswalkphilly.org.
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