Stephen Gendin (February 20, 1966 - July 19, 2000)

[reviews_and_ramblings]

Stephen Gendin (February 20, 1966 – July 19, 2000) was a prominent AIDS activist, involved with ACT UP, ActUp/RI, Sex Panic!, Community Prescription Service, POZ Magazine, and the Radical Faeries. Gendin was raised in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where he was an Eagle Scout. He attended Brown University, where he learned that he was HIV positive as a first-year student in 1985. He aggressively experimented with new medications for HIV and maintained a healthy and active lifestyle for many years, but did not survive treatment for AIDS-related lymphoma.

Gendin's death was caused by cardiac arrest while he was undergoing chemotherapy for AIDS-related lymphoma. In addition to being a columnist and contributing editor at POZ, he was co-founder of Community Prescription Service, a national mail-order pharmacy service for people with HIV.

"I have never met a man I admired more," said POZ founder Sean Strub after Gendin's death. "Continued AIDS activism, in the absence of Stephen's integrity, excruciating honesty, and deep drive for meaning, at the moment, feels impossible."

In the summer of 2000, Gendin's death was eulogized in a widely-reprinted speech by Larry Kramer:

"I remember the first time I saw Stephen at one of the first ACT UP meetings. He'd come all the way down from Brown. And he did it weekly, just to be with us, fighting. I remember the last time I saw him, just a week or so ago, looking just as much the handsome fighter, having just come through yet another awful close call, but standing straight, tall, with that same determined expression he had that first day. I remember thinking: He's going to make it through this after all."

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Gendin & http://www.thebody.com/content/art30452.html

Stephen Gendin's articles on POZ Magazine: Click Here

Comments

[shadownyc.livejournal.com]

Gendin was a strong fighter and it was sad when he lost his own fight against AIDS related illness.

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

I wondered if posting about him, I didn't want to upset even more people who probably are fighting like he was. But I think he was also someone who deserved to be remembered.