For the first World AIDS Day on December 1, 1988 the World Health Organization gave a small grant to the fledgling Names Project (its AIDS Memorial Quilt being then a little more than a year old).
After realizing I was gay in the waning years of the Obama era, it always seemed as if there were two dueling factions in the fight to ensure equality for people like me.
Thirty years ago while flying in a helicopter full of journalists to a news conference, I looked around me and suddenly knew beyond a shadow of a doubt I needed to leave my glossy magazine career to put all my awake time into helping save my community.