(gentle music) - Until a more effective drug or a vaccine is found, the main weapon we have against the spread of AIDS is education.

- If the parents are saying, "My God, "don't talk to my daughter about sex."

I'm not, I'm talking about saving her life.

- We laughed and joked and we just had to because the next phone call was gonna be someone else has died.

- This wasn't isolated anymore to them.

It was us.

(gentle music continues) - [Reporter] In the last year alone, more than a hundred men, women, and children have died of AIDS in Kansas City.

- Ryan White, he was the preteen when he contracted HIV and that was through a blood transfusion.

But he became a poster child because, you know, his family had to move.

They were ostracized from their community the strength and the endurance, and of just saying, "I'm just a kid, and it's an illness."

It was the beginning, I feel like of the shift away from, oh, this is only affecting gay white men.

(birds chirping) - [Reporter] The Good Samaritan House has provided direct care for dozens of men and women with AIDS.

Since 1985, it's been a stop gap hospice for area hospitals and nursing homes.

The Good Samaritan Project says it can't find government funding for that $100,000 a year AIDS hospice.

Instead, those government funds have been channeled into AIDS testing and education.

- In the spring of '88, Virginia announced that they didn't have the money to keep the hospice open so they were gonna close it.

- We'd opened Samaritan House and it wasn't licensed and the costs of it were overriding every other program that we had, and we had so many programs.

(classical music) We were in danger of losing the entire program to the house alone and the house could provide services for five people.

But the project had, I don't even remember, well over a thousand clients, whether it was parents or siblings or the person infected.

So, the board decided that we had to close Samaritan House and it was, as you might imagine, an extremely unpopular decision in the community.

- Because this was out of the blue and it was the only place for people to go who were sick, who didn't have a place to live.

So Sandy Berkley, the wife of the Kansas City Mayor, Richard Berkley, stepped in and secured a hundred thousand dollars in funding to keep the house open.

Part of the stipulation of this money was that the hospice had to break away from GSP and become its own separate entity.

- AIDS patients in Kansas City will keep their home.

We've told you about the problems of the Good Samaritan House.

- Well, tonight, some of those problems are solved.

- And Peggy Breit is in our newsroom with the story, Peggy?

- Well, Larry and Laurie, the house, of course, has been plagued with problems, insurance troubles, code violations, and a shortage of money.

Well, now there is a plan and it includes federal, state, and local dollars.

- We have a goal which will include short-term help and long-term planning.

- [Peggy Breit] The short-term help involves keeping the house for AIDS patients, but changing management.

- Then the remainder of the Good Samaritan Project can focus on things like counseling and client services and educational outreach and fundraising.

And interestingly, one of the first groups of people that get approached are drag queens because drag queens are good at making money.

(upbeat disco music) - You know, we're part of the entertainment in the city, and they give to us.

You know, the bars pay us, the audience gives us tips, and I know for me to give back I have to give up stuff that I make by doing benefits and helping somebody else.

So we get, and then we give.

- There was a troop of drag queens that was founded in 1986 called the Kansas City Trollops that did nothing but raise money for the AIDS service organizations that were around.

- The first time I saw them, I just fell in love with them because they were fun.

And it wasn't about being glamorous.

It was somebody needs help and this is what we can do.

When I was in my twenties, these were 70 year old, 80 year old men throwing on a wig that you know they found at a thrift store and their mumu dresses or these crazy looking prom dresses, big jewelry that, you know, you knew that all of this came from a thrift store.

And they would get up there and they would pour their hearts into these songs to raise money.

And they would stand up there and say, "We are doing this for this person.

"This home needs help."

And "They've got our brothers and sisters there."

And their tongues were quick and their wit was quick.

And I learned a lot.

- Until a more effective drug or vaccine is found, the main weapon we have against the spread of AIDS is education.

- What we're really trying to do is how do you effectively increase the level of knowledge in people, reduce the fear level, reduce the rumor, misinformation, that type thing.

- I'm not exactly sure when I started with the Gay Talk Hotline.

(somber music) It was somewhere in the early eighties.

I heard about a conference being held out in Denver, a lesbian and gay health conference.

It was at that meeting that I sort of associate the first mentions of safe sex.

At the same time, the Gay Talk Hotline was getting more phone calls about AIDS.

And it looked to me like, or we need to do more.

And that's when we started the Condom Crusaders.

(somber music continues) Typically, we would go into a bar and be there for maybe an hour or two.

I would frequently compare it to the old time cigarette girls that the nightclubs used to have with their big box of cigarettes that they would walk around the clubs in.

We would walk around with our boxes of condoms and lube and just try to get people interested.

Everybody was always telling me, you shouldn't go out at night and you shouldn't go to these neighborhoods and things like that.

And I had realized when I started going to the bars was that I was the people my family was afraid I was gonna run into.

(somber music continues) - One of the most powerful things is the gay clubs, open arms.

(somber music continues) A Mr. Alvin Brooks stopped me in the parking lot of the Linwood Shopping Center and he asked me would I like to attend a Ad Hoc monthly meeting.

And I told him "No."

He said, "Why?"

And I said, "Aren't you all those fools that march "in front of drug houses?"

And he said, "Yes."

I thought they were crazy.

He ask me again a couple of months and I left out a little part, a couple of times I read in "The Call" paper and even in the store where they had marched in front of drug housing and actually shut those houses down.

So it, that kind of impressed me.

So when he asked me again, I said, "Yeah, I, you know "I'll come to the meeting."

So one day Mr. Brooks asked me, he said, "We have a couple "of openings for board members "and would I be interested in it?"

And I said, "No."

He said, "Well, if you change your mind."

And you know, then I, as a board member, found that they had applied for a grant for HIV AIDS outreach program.

I was the program leader.

The target population was teenagers, gay males, ladies of the evening, prostitutes, you know, I don't like that word, but, and IV drug users.

Some people from CDC who came down and trained us of their program, they passed out needles.

We had strong resistance against that here in Kansas City.

But we were able to get around that.

We went into crack houses, you know, we went into drug dens but we were out there and visible.

So, you know, people began to know who we were, you know, all that Ad Hoc, you know.

"Hey can you got some of them colored condoms."

And then we started going into the schools which was another difficult problem because some of the school official was resistant to sharing with kids about HIV and AIDS.

But once we convinced them from information that we got from the health department, that teenagers having mad sex, they kinda start coming around.

- This is Jeanie Zen and Jeanie is the coordinator of the teen hotline, why a teen hotline for AIDS.

Because teens can talk to teens.

If they can talk their language.

They can say it in their words, whereas an adult necessarily might not A teen wouldn't necessarily call a hotline knowing that they're gonna get an adult because they may judge them and they may not ask the question.

They may feel guilty or feel like, oh, I better not do that.

But if they know they're gonna have a teen on the other line, they're gonna get their answers.

- Anything shock you about that?

- About teens talking to teens?

No, what shocks me is when I do AIDS education and I go out to the schools and the parents are saying my God don't talk to my daughter about sex.

I'm not, I'm talking about saving her life.

- I went to high school at St. Teresa's Academy where we were required to do a service project and I chose Good Samaritan Project.

And when I talked with them, they said "You should really be working with the Teens Tap program."

(phone beeps) - Teens Tap, this is Steve.

- [Reporter] Another source of AIDS information in Kansas City has a national scope to it.

It's called Teens Tap, or Teens Teaching AIDS Prevention.

Close to 200 Kansas City youth volunteer to man this toll free hotline.

- And that's actually where I started to get to know my buddy, Rob Black.

And Rob was a wonderful person, a volunteer for Good Samaritan Project.

He was a Teens Tap Hotline Supervisor and a very good one.

Nobody really messed with him, you know, especially, as a supervisor on the Teens Tap Hotline.

You felt like you had your leather daddy dad who was gonna take care of things if someone got weird.

Answering the phones felt good to be able to give correct information out about what we know and dispel some misinformation.

But the speakers program started to grow as well.

- I was overwhelmed with speeches.

I could not, and everybody that called wanted me.

And I finally would say, "Okay, we'll be there."

- We tried to get a teenager and a person with AIDS to go.

The one engagement, Rob and I went on to a high school in Independence and they were not having a lot of it.

They were yelling gay slurs.

They were calling me names.

And of course the staff was horrified.

It was really disturbing.

And we went back to Good Samaritan Project and we proclaimed it National Hug a Gay Man Day because I just felt that was the vitriol that was happening.

I saw it.

I saw it.

- You know that was a period when people were just so fearful, anyone that had had AIDS, people were afraid to touch them.

They were afraid to, you know, so there was, they didn't wanna hug him.

They didn't want them in the same room as them.

They were afraid to use the same dishes.

- I had a client who, his family when he learned he had HIV, they put him out in the garage.

They had a bed, they had the blankets and that's where he lived.

And I talked to the family.

I said, "Why is he out here?"

"Well, we don't wanna get, we don't want, we had a baby.

"We don't want the baby to get sick."

And they said, "Well, we'll get you some water."

I said, "No, I'll just take a little sip of his."

I said, "Do you mind if I take a sip outta your glass?"

And just, I was just showing them in my quiet way that that's not the way you're going to get it.

- The last place people wanna go and tell that they have AIDS or HIV is the church, 'cause the first question that they gonna be asked, how did you get it?

Are you homosexual, are you promiscuous?

Are you on drugs?

And I know this is outta fear because we wanna believe that if we're not gay and if we're not out the streets doing something wrong, we can't get it 'cause we're in the church and we good.

We don't do stuff like that.

A lot of black in church do not believe that it's an epidemic because the people who have it don't come forward.

- When we started to engage with this and we found the startling numbers of African-American new infections, African-American deaths as opposed to our white counterparts, the question comes, well, how do you get information to that group?

And we noticed that on any given Sunday, 70 to 80, maybe even more percent of African-Americans are attending somebody's church or they have some kind of relationship with a congregation in that area or, or within their family.

Most people trust their pastor.

They trust the information that comes from the pulpit.

And so we want arm clergy with the correct information.

- Fred Phelps, the disbarred attorney from Topeka who was virulently anti-gay picketed me personally five times.

He accused me of writing things about lesbian and gay people that was sinful.

He would send me faxes.

I took it as a badge of honor because I knew that he was just absolutely dead wrong about all of this.

- That's how he got his start, was protesting at the funerals of people who had died of AIDS, carrying their hate filled signs at the funeral and sending these hideous faxes to the funeral home and to the family.

- People are grieving, family members and close friends are coming in to say goodbye to this loved one and they were, you know, had their signs that everyone was going to hell.

- There were so many people who had so many compliments about Keith because of the worship through music that he created in this sanctuary every Sunday.

After Keith passed, the youth choir said that they would never let Fred Phelps and his gang come to Keith's service.

And I thought, what a wonderful thing for that generation, high school kids, to be so protective of him.

It was a shining moment.

During the reconstruction time of our church in 1991, the congregation was invited to write on the walls.

My son, he wrote a message.

He said, "Thank you Keith, for all you taught me "in this house."

Sorry, this always makes me cry.

"Your music will always be heard here."

(somber music) - I had this person, his name was Rodney, and he was a person that didn't have anybody coming to visit.

He didn't have any family members or any friends.

And he just kind of kept to himself.

I'd asked him one time, "Do you wanna go to church with me?"

And he said, he just shook his head, yes.

So I took him to church.

And of course the church, you know at that time they didn't accept people but I didn't ask if I could bring him or not.

I just took him in and they were very nice.

If you're gonna be a Christian, you're gonna have to have a heart to accept people wherever they are.

Doesn't make any difference.

- The disease was seen as sin.

A disease can't be sin.

Unfortunately, many of our clergy men and women had people in their family that were perishing.

Helped a discussion to start because it just wasn't isolated anymore to them.

It was us.

(gentle music) I had a great relationship with some of the funeral homes in town.

This particular day, one of our good friends called and said, "Pastor, I got a big favor I need to ask."

I said, "Sure, what's up?"

He said, "Well, look, there's a kid that passed away.

"But when his pastor found out how he died "and he refused to do the eulogy "and he refused to allow the service to go on "in his church."

I said, "Oh."

I said, "What's the deal?"

"Well, he died of AIDS."

And the kid happened to be gay.

And so that's two strikes according to this particular pastor at this particular church.

And they wanted to know if I would do it.

I met the young man's family.

They showed open love to this gay kid and at the time it was kind of okay for fathers of gay black children to disown them.

This family showed me so much the way they embraced, the way they loved, the way they were compassionate to not only their son but his friends.

It was life-changing.

And in New York, the Harlem section of New York, there's a young lady, she's not young anymore like me, that's her name was Pernessa Seele.

She started this program realizing the same thing that we were struggling with, trying to get churches and pastors involved.

She came up with this thing called the "Black Church "Week of Prayer for the Healing of AIDS".

It was very successful.

They had a myriad of congregations that marched, that put on programs that rallied support.

And Kansas City was one out of eight major US cities to try to replicate that program.

And I want to say that we had the best national observation.

So I'll go ahead and say that, we had the best national observation of the week of prayer, it's a week of activities and sessions and educational opportunities.

They gave us opportunity to just be there and to care.

(gentle music) - Those were actually the best years of my childhood was when my dad was alive.

I had just turned eight.

So, I turned eight in March and he passed in May.

I did not realize he was sick until the very end because since I had spent most of my childhood in hospitals, I thought that's what everyone did.

There was almost just because of the times two sides where he had this huge amount of friends within the gay community and the gay culture.

And at the same time, he had all these friends from church and everywhere, no matter what type of community he was like really loved.

We were very, very close.

It was very hard for me.

I have had a tantrum at the grave site.

Even now, I'll write him letters and leave them at his grave site.

And it's been 30 years because I feel like he actually talked to me and understood me.

Some people have that ability to actually listen to people and connect and that's why he had so many friends.

He often struggled, I feel, with the times and his sexuality and his own humanity.

He has all these writings about what God did for him.

And it was kind of interesting to see that with what the times were, how much he still was able to have that relationship even when the world's views might've told him that he couldn't have that relationship.

(gentle music continues) - Sister Kevin Marie Flynn was a nun who became very active I think through the Good Samaritan Project and other ways in AIDS work here.

She was a gift of grace to us all.

She was a sweet and gentle woman but there was a core to her that was just rock solid.

- I started going to the house almost every day and that's where I met a nun.

Her name was Sister Kevin that would come every Thursday and cook.

- And they'd be laughing at the table.

You would just think that you were serving a group of people that had the best of everything.

They never talked about dying.

They'd be telling jokes and around the table that's what I used to notice more.

And sometimes on my way home, you know, I would, tears would come to my eyes to think about how much the Lord had spared them of fear.

Still they were full of life even when they had a disease that was taking their lives away from them.

- She was just not only very important to my buddy, Rob, Rob Black, because he was Catholic and he very much connected with her.

- I remember I had one mother come to me at a meeting of some kind and she said, "You know "I'm really jealous of you."

I'm thinking, oh, why?

I said, "Why?"

And she said, "My son just talks about you all the time."

Well, I knew why her son talked about me because she didn't accept him really as being gay or having AIDS.

I think I was used a bit, but that was right in a nice way.

- I was with her in the room when Mark passed and I don't remember his last name at this point.

I think there's a certain point where there was so much grief.

So that was hard to be there.

But there was no one else in that room, you know, besides a kid on spring break from high school and Sister Kevin and it felt important.

It felt hopeful because he also chose to pass at that time.

I know it.

(somber music) They did nothing wrong.

You know, it wasn't because they were gay.

It wasn't, they weren't doing anything wrong, you know?

And at that time, that was a very important point to get across.

This was an illness that needed funding to figure out how to fix, you know.

There was a lot of activity, a lot of grassroots action.

All of these organizations being formed and staffed and so many volunteers, so many helpers.

- [Speaker] It was heroes in the community who did what needed to be done to effect some change and to make people's lives and people's deaths a lot easier.

(somber music continues) - We were at a wake and somebody came in with a little bit more alcohol than he should have.

(laughing) The family member was there at the coffin, you know, and so he tried to push him away 'cause he wanted to put his hand on the corpse and talk out loud, you know?

And so it was distracting everybody, I guess.

And there was another sister with me and she said to me, "Sister Kevin, do you want to leave?"

I said, "Why?"

And I said, "I'm Irish and the Irish love to fight.

"We love a good fight."

That's what I said.