1. My Life Before AIDS 1976-1983

At 28, I sold my father-in-law’s nearly bankrupt hospital design company to American Medical International, Inc. (AMI), an emerging New York Stock Exchange Health Care conglomerate. During the subsequent decade, I traveled constantly between Washington, DC, Beverly Hills, and Europe. The mission for AMI was to setup up an international division of acute, high end, owned and managed hospitals worldwide. For fun, I also traveled to the Fire Island Pines, the Gay man’s sexual Mecca of the 70’s, where my boat was moored. At the height of the Gay sexual revolution, numerous friends were becoming ill and began to die from what was being called the “Gay Plague.” Since I was in the health care business, I was able to collect information on the detection and identification of HIV disease before it was actually named and discovered.

2. Tim 1983-1988

My first long-term, committed relationship was with a sexy, farm boy from Indiana who had joined the “A Set” of young aspiring actors and models in Los Angeles. We lived in an oceanfront, penthouse condominium in Santa Monica and spent half of each month in Europe, mostly Switzerland, opening and managing new hospitals. After Tim completed interior design school, he began to develop clients in Los Angeles and Switzerland. He, too, had swollen lymph nodes on his neck and under his arms. As Tim’s health rapidly deteriorated, the mysterious illness became known as the-then untreatable HIV/AIDS. We admitted him to Clinique Cecil in Switzerland. The physicians were prepared to deal with Tim, but the nursing and housekeeping staffs had never been trained or experienced in HIV care. “They are afraid of getting AIDS, René”, he said. “Only one nurse comes in. The rest drop supplies outside the door and run away,” he said, his eyes filled with tears. Tim’s admission changed that; but the experience further convinced Tim that he was uncomfortable in Switzerland and, faced with failing health, he wanted to return to the United States. While the International hospital division was extremely profitable, my new homophobic boss, AMI’s new CEO made corporate life as unpleasant as possible.

3. Bob 1988 - 1998

Shortly after Tim’s death, I fell in love with a remarkable clinical psychologist, Doctor Robert Mann. An exciting, romance filled decade followed as we worked together first with a national network of eating disorder clinics, then the country’s principal Gay philanthropist, who was murdered in 1994 as he began to set up a multi hundred million dollar foundation to benefit Gay causes and HIV research. Finally, Bob helped develop the largest HIV physician practice management company. We worked closely with numerous leading HIV researchers and clinicians worldwide as hopelessness led to diagnostics and treatments as well as new challenges for long-term HIV survivors. We both battled HIV disease and cancer. Bob died in my arms on August 6, 1998.

4. An Arc To Triumph

The challenges presented by significant health problems, including AIDS and cancer, combating homophobia in a conservative business world, managing loved ones illnesses and deaths, as well as adjusting to constantly changing life expectancies could only lead to either depression and possible suicide or “an arc to triumph.”