Stefan Lynch Strassfeld (SS): My family were mostly gay guys,
who were my babysitters and the guys who you know,
took the pictures at my birthday parties.
And I felt like I had this amazing family.
I called them my aunties.
And it was a really wonderful, amazing world
that came crashing down.
Starting in '82, the first person I knew, died of AIDS.
Um, a young guy named Steve.
Beth Teper BT: And how old were you at the time?
SS: I was ten when he was diagnosed.
I remember, I was on the beach on Fire Island
and he was covered in these purple spots
and I remember asking my dad, like what's wrong with Steve?
And my dad said, "Oh he has this skin cancer
called Kaposi's sarcoma."
And I said, well what is that?
And my dad said, "Well, nobody really knows,
but there are some gay men that are getting it."
And within, I think, two months, Steve was dead.
And it was pretty much a succession of deaths
of my family throughout the next decade.
My stepdad Bill died in '87.
my dad died in '91, after a really grueling six months
of me taking care of him.
You know, I was 19 and I was on a break from college
and exhausted from taking care of my dad.
I called up my Auntie Eddie and I said,
"Can you help?"
And within a week, he'd organized 40 people
to do round the clock shifts.
He was the only other person in the room with me and my mom
when my dad died.
At that point, everyone had died
except for a handful of stragglers
who I now hold near and dear to my heart.
My aunties.
It was a powerful family.
There was a lot of love.
And they modeled for me how to survive an epidemic,
even if you were dying while doing it.