SHABAZZ-EL: Okay, so this event is now being recorded. We are screen-sharing. I
just want to make sure that we're being recorded. Let me just check. Yes, we are being recorded. Perfect. Okay. So—and this is our first event, and so we're pretty, we're pretty pumped, like, for us to all be here. Great. So what we're going to do, we're going to—and so let me say this, this is—we want to keep everybody's confidentiality. When you introduce yourself, if you don't want to use your name, if you have a nickname or a pet name you'd like to use for yourself, you're more than welcome to do that. You don't have to say your full name unless you want to use your full name;and when we get to the people that we're remembering, there's another set of parameters for that. We'll talk about that. But I'm going to model this right now. My name is Waheedah. I'm here in Philadelphia, my pronouns are she, her, and beautiful. The 00:01:00communities I identify with are African American, heterosexuals, LGBT, faith-based. I identify with a lot of communities. And, and one thing that I've learned from COVID is, yeah, is that just how vulnerable we are as a, as a world population, how vulnerable we are, and how little control we have over things that are going on in our environment. Yeah, and so that's the kind of, I'm hoping people can model that. And we can say our names, where we are, our pronouns, the communities we identify with, and one lesson that we learned from COVID. And then we'll go ahead and get started.LOWRY: I'll go.
SHABAZZ-EL: Okay, great.
LOWRY: My name is Ed. I'm in Philadelphia. My pronoun is him, and he;
00:02:00The communities I identify with is, wow—every community, really. I identify with all of them because I work with so many different people. And what I've learned from the COVID is—that we need to be more mindful of what's going on around us, man. You know, you never know what's going to happen, you know. We have to be more conscious of protecting ourselves, and the places we go and the things that we do. That's very important, man, you know, to understand what we're, you know, connecting ourselves to or places that we're going. Because you never know what you're going to find. But I'm excited about this. This is something that me and my wife been doing for a long time. 00:03:00This is something that we really want to do, because remembering the people in the beginning of this epidemic, you know, it's very important.SHABAZZ-EL: Thank you. Thank you so much.
LOWRY: You're welcome.
SHABAZZ-EL: Okay. Does anyone want to go next?
OLSHAN: I could go.
SHABAZZ-EL: Okay, Arleen.
OLSHAN: My name is Arleen. My pronoun is she, her, butch. The communities that I
identify with are LGBTQ, the arts community, Mount Airy, Philadelphia, and lesbian feminist community. What COVID brings to mind for me 00:04:00is my mortality. I have an underlying health issue, and my wife has been really good about trying to protect me, but it's so weird to be protected. I'm not accustomed to, you know, somebody else helping taking care of me and—but at the same time, people are inconsiderate out there and they're not wearing masks. They're not keeping safe distances—and this is even family members. You know, I mean, it's just amazing that we're just so accustomed to certain intimacies, and then, we can't have them right now. And that's a very peculiar situation to be in, you know? Like, yes, I'd love to hug my niece or be close to my sister. But I know I can't right now, you know? And 00:05:00I just hope everybody gets through this. You know? It's really crazy.SHABAZZ-EL: Thank you so much. It is—it's difficult. It's challenging. We have
another question later on about COVID. We're going to go ahead and let Ain—before Ain comes on, I want to say Ain is also working on the project with us. And I'll let him say, you know, just how he's connected with the project, but would you like to introduce yourself, Ain? Oh, you're muted. Let's unmute you. Okay, there you are.GORDON: Hi. I'm Ain and I'm a playwright and a director, and I'm part of this
project about eventually writing a play kind of inspired by the process two years from now, so—still trying to figure out what that means. I'm he/his and, communities—well, I'm in New York. That's where I was born and raised. 00:06:00And I'm a Jew; I'm an artist; I'm a gay man; I'm a father; I'm a husband; I'm a son—all of which I'm having to be a lot right now, full time, including—my parents are over 80, so I have them on lockdown and kind of delivering food to them and trying to keep them healthy. COVID-19 lessons: just—which is relevant to today's conversation—how quickly humans become numbers in death and how much work we need to do to remember who are behind those numbers.SHABAZZ-EL: Thank you so much. Thank you everybody for introductions and for
telling us just what we're learning from COVID. We're going to move on, I believe, and—okay, this is not cooperating. 00:07:00I need to stop sharing for a minute. Bring this back up. Okay, so we here's the overview of how it's going to go. We just did our introductions. We're going to do an introduction to Remembrance. Ed's going to help with that. Then we're going to ask you to share what you remember. We're going to try to give each session about 12 minutes per person, and that's based on, like, five people being here. And then we're going to ask some input from you, some questions for you, about what a Memorial could actually look like here in Philadelphia, and then we're going to complete our compensation form. So it's real, real, clean and crispy. And so, Eddie, you're going to take this one?LOWRY: Yes. Yes, I have it. Remembrance—what is it? Remembrance is a multi-year,
multidisciplinary memorial to Philadelphians 00:08:00and the HIV community. [pause] I can't see the rest because y'all on the side.SHABAZZ-EL: I can pull that over. Here you go.
LOWRY: All right, by the William Way, LGBT Community Center—and I still can't
see—and the John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives, in partnership with art, activists, and community leaders.SHABAZZ-EL: Yes. Thank you. And I think there's another one here.
LOWRY: There are several components to Remembrance. One of the components of
Remembrance is a community listening tour, to gather untold accounts of community members living with HIV and AIDS, who have passed, unnoticed or uncelebrated. The collected stories we gather will be added to 00:09:00the John J. Wilcox Jr. Archives in a dedicated portal on the William Way LGBT Community Center website. The input we receive from community members will be vital to shaping a memorial to HIV and AIDS here in Philadelphia.SHABAZZ-EL: Thank you so much. And so this program, our team includes program
coordinators, of course; we have grant writers for this program; we have a faith leader as a part of our team right now and we are here with our community engagement team. The Gatherers of Accounts and Legacies, we call ourselves the GALS. We also have artists for this team and we also have the playwright for this team and the playwright is here with us today: Ain. So now we want to stop to see if there any questions.OLSHAN: Who are the artists that are involved?
SHABAZZ-EL: Great. So the artist is
00:10:00Alex Stadler. He actually did some work in the—Stadler, S-T-A-D-L-E-R, Stadler. He did some work in the Reading Terminal. He's done some work, he's got—he has an award-winning portfolio—he's really done some good work around the city and across the nation. He's our artist. And he's actually created our logo, which we're not using today, because I couldn't—the PDF didn't—I wasn't able to get it on here. Yeah, but when he's creating the logos, we're going to have lots of swag: shirts, cups, ink pens, hats, things like that with our logo is on. And he's also going to do some other stuff as we get into the second year of our program. And he may join us at some point, you know. Any of the team members can join in at any point. Ain was just—he's just the first one that wants to join in, but all of our team members may be on any given 00:11:00session that we give. This is session one. Any other questions, Arleen? Feel free. Okay, do you know Alex?OLSHAN: No, I don't. So, I'd be curious to meet him one day, too.
SHABAZZ-EL: Absolutely, I'm sure you will. Okay, so now we're gonna go on to the
storytelling part, and Eddie's going to be our timekeeper. So I think he's going to jingle something, like, at about 12 minutes. What are you gonna jingle, a whole bunch of keys? Can you even hear that? I can't even hear it. But we'll keep ourselves on. We'll keep looking at the screen. So what we're asking is, um, let me see, let me be clear about this. If the person you're going to share about was not open about their HIV status, then maybe you may want to use a pet name for that person. We're not here to out anybody that wasn't already open with their status. But we do want to know, but we do—we want to know what you want the world to know, and what you want the world to 00:12:00remember about that person. So feel free to use a pet name for that person, if the person wasn't out about their status. Talk about their hobbies, what they're like. Talk about their struggle. Talk about their relationships with their families, around sexuality, around their diagnosis. The stigma: did they face violence? Their resourcefulness: how did they triumph? Or did they ever triumph? Those are the kinds of things that we want to hear about. And so, this is where we bring you in, Arleen, and tell us, do you have anybody in particular you want us to remember today?OLSHAN: Yeah, I have a couple of people. Yeah. Okay?
SHABAZZ-EL: Yeah, sure.
OLSHAN: All right, the first person. The first person I want to remember is
Gilbert Foreman. He was from Philadelphia, 00:13:00and lived in New York most of his adult life. He was a balletomane, a male ballet dancer. He was my first romance. I was 17 and he was 20. And we were neighbors. And he really brought culture into my life by going to the ballet, going to the theater, spending time in New York, and eventually he moved to New York to dance, and I moved to New York to become an artist. And we remained friends throughout his life. He passed away when he was about 56. He was a wonderful entertainment guy 00:14:00that just loved going dancing. We went to all the gay clubs in New York in the early years, before Stonewall. And he traveled the world. Some of his things were: that he was curious and he wanted to see and do everything. And he did. I mean, he had numerous lovers. He—his triumphs. [pause] He was happy. He was a happy person. Now, unfortunately, I felt he had internalized homophobia. And once we were both out and being gay, he still had this 00:15:00fantasy of, one day we would get married and have children. And I had to say, "No, we're really not going to do that," you know. "I like being a lesbian now that I'm out." And he liked being gay, too, but there was that stigma that he did live with. His family was very accepting of him. His mother was a great friend. And she came dancing with us at the clubs. I mean, we had great relationships with almost everybody in the family. And, so, there were parts about his life that were difficult. He definitely was drinking too much, doing drugs too much back in those days, and, and sexually 00:16:00wild. I mean, you know, there were all the places that men could gather, and he was there, you know. And it felt terrible losing him at such an early age. I mean, it's a good 15, 20 years since he died, and I miss him terribly. He was a blast when he was there. When he was out, he was out, you know? So he's my first story.SHABAZZ-EL: May I ask just a couple of questions?
OLSHAN: Sure.
SHABAZZ-EL: He sounds like a delightful person; I wish I had known him. You said
two things. You said that he had, he carried internal stigma. Was that around his sexuality? Or was that around the HIV?OLSHAN: Oh, it was around his sexuality. You know—
SHABAZZ-EL: How was his family? Did he have good family relations, or his
00:17:00family—did he have a, what we call the family—you know,we have the family we're born with and then the family that we become a part of.OLSHAN: He had both. He had the family that he was born with, and the family of
choice. And his greatest supporter was his mother. And he showed signs of wanting to dance in his childhood. And she did not stop him from feeling that way. She encouraged any creativity. He was also an actor. In our high school, he was in all the plays; and he was tall, dark, and handsome; and I went after him. You know? Because that was the world we were brought up in. It was the values that we were brought up with. And then I realized that we were both gay, you know? 00:18:00And it took a few years for me to actually accept that even in myself, but he had, he definitely had that yearning to have, like, a normal life—whatever that was.SHABAZZ-EL: Did he have any pets?
OLSHAN: Oh, yeah. He and one of his lovers, when they lived in the art museum
area [in Philadelphia], had Afghans. And they were incredible. And then when he was in New York, he had these little black bulldogs that he walked, and yeah. And he had a snake; he had a boa constrictor.SHABAZZ-EL: Very colorful.
OLSHAN: Yeah. I don't know if you're familiar with the book, The Little Prince.
But I think he really related to that snake in The Little Prince. 00:19:00And, so he had one that was full grown.SHABAZZ-EL: Wow.
OLSHAN: That he fed mice to, you know, on a regular basis.
SHABAZZ-EL: Great. I just had one last question to ask you about Gilbert. Did
Gilbert ever recover? You said he drank and did a lot of drugs during that time. Did he ever recover from that?OLSHAN: He went to meetings. Yeah, he did go to meetings.
SHABAZZ-EL: Oh, great.
OLSHAN: Yeah, he did learn about that. It was really disruptive to his HIV
status to continue using the drugs. Yeah.SHABAZZ-EL: Thank you so much. Does anybody else have any questions for Arleen
about Gilbert? Gilbert was the life of—Eddie, did you have any? I'm sorry, Eddie. Just a minute. Eddie. You're muted. I'm sorry. Did you have any questions for Arleen?LOWRY: Yeah, well, he sounds like he was a real fun guy, you know what I mean?
That's just a blessing that he, you know, learned about the ropes, know what I mean? A lot of people don't get that opportunity, man, you know? 00:20:00I'm in recovery, too, and I'm just blessed, man, that God allowed me and, you know, showed me my way there, because that lifestyle ain't no joke, man, you know.SHABAZZ-EL: It's progressive, we all know that. Yeah. So, Gilbert: we will
remember Gilbert. Thanks to Arleen. Thank you so much. Did you want to remember somebody else?OLSHAN: I have a question. When you do the portals, do you want pictures of people?
SHABAZZ-EL: Yes.
OLSHAN: I have pictures.
SHABAZZ-EL: Perfect. Perfect.
OLSHAN: Yes.
SHABAZZ-EL: Perfect. Great. So I'll make a note that we're going to get the
picture from you. Okay. So we have time for you to do another story because you only used, looks like about, nine minutes. But you get another ten minutes on the next story. And then we're done here, okay?OLSHAN: Yeah. Well,
00:21:00I guess I—there's a lot of people, but I'd like to bring up Joseph Beam. Now he's had a lot of coverage over the years. Are you familiar with him?SHABAZZ-EL: Not sure.
OLSHAN: He was the author of Brother to Brother [Joseph Beam's first book was In
The Life; his second book, Brother to Brother, was finished by Essex Hemphill]. And he inspired the movie. And actually, I think I have his book here, too.SHABAZZ-EL: Was he from Philadelphia?
OLSHAN: Yeah.
SHABAZZ-EL: Oh, perfect.
OLSHAN: Yeah, he worked—I guess, when I first met him, he worked for us at
Giovanni's Room [Bookstore].SHABAZZ-EL: Okay.
OLSHAN: I was a co-owner of Giovanni's Room from 1976 to 1986. And he was one of
our staff. And during that time, 00:22:00he surveyed gay Black men from throughout the country, and put out the first anthology of Black men's writing. Yeah. And he was beautiful. He was fun. He was very smart, and really intelligent. And he kind of took Giovanni's Room by storm, you know? So, he came in and created all kinds of new window displays. He was very much involved in reading the work of Black women authors, and being inspired by that. And he said, 00:23:00"there's no books by Black male authors, and we really need to have this. We need this for ourselves." And he was an incredible personality.SHABAZZ-EL: So was, was he one of the first Black people to work at Giovanni's
Room, would you say?OLSHAN: He may have been. We had a lot of volunteers, but he wasn't putting up
with that. He needed to get paid. You know, he was one of these people that came in and said, I love this store, but I have to get paid. And yeah. I mean, we're rolling all on, like, a pittance of a salary, you know, because we're just trying to make the store flourish and survive, really. When we bought it, 00:24:00when Ed and I moved it and bought it off of South Street to Spruce Street, there was like, no, there were hardly any books out at all. And then as time progressed, we bought the building at 12th and Pine, with loans from people all over the community, and it became an international bookstore. We were selling and buying from all over the world. And, you know, and Joe was like, "Well, I gotta get paid." And he was absolutely right. And we agreed with that. He had some struggles, I think, about being gay. But, and he, I think he really wanted a relationship with his father. And his father was a very quiet man from the islands, you know, and he 00:25:00didn't know how to have that kind of relationship with a son. It wasn't that he was gay. It was just that he didn't know how to have that kind of closeness with a male child. His mother Dorothy was fabulous. And when Joe passed, she did everything to keep his name in the public eye to honor his intelligence and his work. And, and in fact, she brought Essex Hemphill, another Black male author, who went into her house to finish Joe's second book. And so he had a home while he was finishing that book, and they, you know, they just loved Joe and took good care of his writing. 00:26:00And I think that he really yearned to have a Black male lover, that—SHABAZZ-EL: Who doesn't?
OLSHAN: It was very hard.
SHABAZZ-EL: I'm very sorry, that came out.
OLSHAN: No, but he was like—white men were always attracted to him.
SHABAZZ-EL: Yeah.
OLSHAN: And he wanted to have that communion, that heart to heart with another
man; that they came from the same culture and understood one another from, you know, from deep down. And so he, I think that was one of his struggles. Let's see. Yeah. 00:27:00And I think other people will talk about Joe too. You know, he was a major personality in our lives. And Christmastime was always a difficult time for him, and New Years. And it was his birthday time. He was also born around—oh, am I, am I over talking?SHABAZZ-EL: Yeah. I think you can get two more minutes.
OLSHAN: Okay.
SHABAZZ-EL: Yes. Thank you, Eddie.
OLSHAN: I mean, and he died, like, the day after Christmas. And on his birthday.
And he was only in his 20s. You know, he could have done so much.SHABAZZ-EL: Yeah, yeah.
OLSHAN: So he definitely needs to be remembered. And I'm sure other people will
remember him.SHABAZZ-EL: You have sent this
00:28:00listening tour on the right direction. You are an amazing storyteller. Thank you so much for the memories.LOWRY: What was his name? Joseph what?
OLSHAN: Beam, B-E-A-M.
LOWRY: B-E-A-M. Okay, got you.
OLSHAN: Yeah, like sunbeam.
LOWRY: Yeah, right.
SHABAZZ-EL: I was thinking Jim Beam, like, oh, no, not the guy who made Jim Beam.
OLSHAN: Joe's father was named Sun Beam.
SHABAZZ-EL: Oh, wow.
OLSHAN: Yeah.
SHABAZZ-EL: You know so much. You are so full of our history, and we are so
pleased to have you take this tour with us. I'm sure we're going to be calling you back and inviting you to other sessions, Arleen, because I know you know a whole gambit of folks. Because you were—you took care of a lot of people in hospice and stuff like that, too.OLSHAN: Yeah, I worked at Betak [Nursing Home].
SHABAZZ-EL: Yeah.
OLSHAN: Back in the day, and also, I worked at We the People.
00:29:00 Yeah.SHABAZZ-EL: Okay, so we're going to—we have a few questions for you if that's okay.
OLSHAN: Okay.
SHABAZZ-EL: And the first question we want to know was, do you remember the
first time you heard about HIV and AIDS? And what was that like? I mean, you, if you don't care to answer, that's fine. But yeah.OLSHAN: I think it was probably in the late 70s—1970s—when it was being
publicized as the gay disease and the frustration of the lack of respect and understanding for people who were living with the virus, and the fact that they weren't doing any testing and there wasn't 00:30:00any, you know, it feels real similar to what's going on right now. And they blamed it on gay people. You know, and that was really painful, really painful. And so many people had to pass before they finally got it, that it wasn't just the gay disease, that it was spreading throughout the world, you know? So.SHABAZZ-EL: Thank you so much. My next question I want to ask you is, do you
remember the first funeral or memorial service of someone who died from AIDS? Can you describe that?OLSHAN: Well, I can tell you about Joe's funeral.
SHABAZZ-EL: Okay.
OLSHAN: The church that Dorothy Beam attended would not bury Joe. They were
judging him, 00:31:00and she was so ashamed of her church. And they found another church in West Philly, and hundreds of people showed up, you know? From the gay community, from the African American community, throughout the city. People from all over the city. And it was very dignified, and very fine.SHABAZZ-EL: Thank you. How would you memorialize those lost to AIDS in
Philadelphia? What would a proper AIDS memorial look like to you?OLSHAN: You know, it would probably have to be
00:32:00maybe like a large stone, with people's names on it, in a public place, you know. Hopefully somewhere in the gayborhood or along the water. Maybe in one of the parks, you know, where people could see it. And maybe there could be some pictures in it, too, you know? Yeah. You know, kind of like the Vietnam War Veterans Memorial or something like that. Like a real memorial.SHABAZZ-EL: That's awesome. Thank you so much. I can already see that happening.
Yeah, thank you so much. The last question we have for you, just a question that actually came from the Pew Foundation [The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage], who funded this project. They want to know, has the current COVID health crisis brought back any memories? And you 00:33:00already alluded to that.OLSHAN: Absolutely.
SHABAZZ-EL: Has it brought back any memories for you similar to the HIV crisis,
and if so, what are those, what is that like for you today?OLSHAN: Well, like I said earlier, the fact that the people who had HIV were
blamed, you know, as being sexual perverts and stuff like that; whereas COVID, it's similar in that our government didn't believe it would happen to us, for some reason, you know? Like, it was happening all over the world, but it wasn't gonna happen here. And we weren't prepared for it. You know, and we're still not, you know, like, we're still not following any kind of set 00:34:00parameters, you know, like: everybody just wants to break free, and go out there and run on the beach and pretend like they're not going to get it, you know, which is very scary. You know, and it's—but this is even more insane in that our economy is suffering. You know, that, with all the businesses closing, and although, I guess—SHABAZZ-EL: And that didn't happen with the HIV crisis.
OLSHAN: Yeah. I guess it's similar in that the baths were closed.
SHABAZZ-EL: Right, okay.
OLSHAN: There was all kinds of actions around that, too. But yet, the comparison
is a little difficult in that this is a worldwide pandemic.SHABAZZ-EL: And there's no standard of care—yet.
OLSHAN: Yeah. And we, yeah, there isn't enough tests out here
00:35:00for the populations.SHABAZZ-EL: Correct, right.
OLSHAN: So we're all potentially walking around with it.
SHABAZZ-EL: Okay. Thank you so much; you've been a dream. And we want to thank
you—we did have a thank you slide here. We appreciate your open, honest sharing. And we do appreciate your contributions to this project, to Remembrance. And please spread the word for us if, you know—you've already sent some great names and contacts for us to continue to work with, so we really appreciate you. And now we want to just—I'm going to share a link with you in the chat box, that will take you—I think I—let me stop sharing. I think I kind of already put it in there; I don't know if you see it. If you follow this link and just fill out this form—this form is just asking for your mail—it's asking for your legal name and mailing address. And the William Way—this will generate a payment to you directly from the 00:36:00William Way LGBT Center.OLSHAN: Well, thank you.
SHABAZZ-EL: And so this link is only going to be live for about a day. They're
going to change them like a couple times a week, they'll change the link. So you probably want to just go ahead and fill that out. And then, we wish we could thank you in a lot of ways, but we least wanted to compensate you for your time and for your emotional labor. And I saw a lot of labor—labor of love in what you were doing for us. We really appreciate you.OLSHAN: Well, thank you for doing this, too. It's really important. You're doing
good work.SHABAZZ-EL: Thank you so much. I appreciate that—hearing that from you.
OLSHAN: Yeah, you take good care of yourself, alright?
SHABAZZ-EL: Have a good day here.
OLSHAN: Yeah
GORDON: Thank you so much.
OLSHAN: Thank you.
GORDON: Thank you.
SHABAZZ-EL: All right, now. Eddie and Ain, can we stay on for just a few
minutes? Arleen, you can go ahead and disconnect yourself. I'm gonna end the recording now.OLSHAN: All right.
00:37:00