An early nonprofit leader in San Francisco's response to the AIDS epidemic, Jim Geary earned a national reputation through his work as executive director of the Shanti Project in the 1980s. Under his direction, the agency survived a fiscal crisis three decades ago to emerge as a major provider of services to people living with HIV and AIDS.

But a management scandal eight years later tarnished his legacy, and despite an investigation that cleared him of any wrongdoing, Geary left the city he loved to relocate with his then-partner, Jess Randall, to Daytona Beach, Florida.

Shortly after moving to the East Coast, Geary learned that he was HIV-positive. Then, in 1992, Randall learned he had full-blown AIDS. His health steadily declined, and in October 1998, Randall died from AIDS complications.

After grappling with his grief and falling in love with partner Jeff Allen, Geary has penned a memoir reflecting on his experiences and the tremendous loss of life he witnessed during the first 30 years of the AIDS epidemic.

The nearly 300-page book, titled Delicate Courage (iUniverse Inc.), mixes intimate letters, diary entries, photos, and spiritual encounters to weave together Geary's life journey and firsthand account of a seminal chapter in the city's history.

"The book is something I started, really, when I was back at Shanti," Geary, 59, told the Bay Area Reporter in a recent phone interview from his home in Ormond, about eight miles north of Daytona Beach. "What prompted me was the amazing people I knew I was working with. I wanted to speak about these people in the book and the lessons I learned from working with them."

In 1974, Geary followed his partner at the time from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco and landed a job as an attendant in a hospital oncology unit. While there he first learned about Shanti, which at the time was located in Berkeley, and its peer counseling programs for mainly cancer patients.

But it wasn't until 1978, having lived through the Jonestown massacre and assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and gay Supervisor Harvey Milk, whom he knew from fighting the anti-gay Briggs initiative, that Geary started volunteering with Shanti. He eventually was hired on at the agency as a volunteer coordinator.

In 1981, as gay men began to be diagnosed with a mysterious life-threatening illness, Geary helped launch through Shanti one of the first support groups specifically for people living with what came to be known as AIDS and HIV.

"I can remember in 1982 I was in a gay bar on Polk Street looking around in this piano bar. I started to cry looking around at how many people would be diagnosed with this illness," recalled Geary.

Shanti itself nearly ceased to exist as the nonprofit found itself essentially broke and near closure. Unwilling to accept the agency's demise, Geary volunteered to be Shanti's executive director on an unpaid basis and lived out of his office.

"We had just started to do outreach into the gay community in San Francisco to recruit gay volunteers to work with other gay individuals," he said. "There was no money for salaries. I decided I would try to seek funding for the project."

Looking to tap into funding San Francisco officials had earmarked for AIDS services, Geary oversaw the relocation of Shanti into the city. Within eight years Geary had not only vastly expanded Shanti's budget and staffing, he also helped the agency establish one of the first HIV and AIDS housing programs in the country.

"One of the amazing things, and I don't know if this gets talked about enough, is Shanti really showed the community a different way of looking at HIV. We walked in the Pride Parade every year and we dressed up. We did that intentionally because we wanted to communicate to the community that working with people with terminal illness is not a depressing thing but an enriching experience," said Geary.

Throughout that time Geary witnessed the deaths of countless clients and friends. A number of their stories he recounts in his book.

"The life expectancy was so different then than it is now," he said. "People were succumbing to death in a very short time."

He also fell in love with Randall. The two started out as friends and roommates and progressed to a committed couple. Randall, having gone through Shanti's training, also became the agency's finance director.

The arrangement, however, would lead to charges of nepotism and unfair hiring practices. By 1988 Geary and Randall found themselves in a full-blown scandal with the gay and mainstream press asking them about anonymous allegations of sexual harassment, fiscal mismanagement, and personnel problems at Shanti.

"It was a crazy time," recalled Geary, who briefly addresses what he considers a "difficult chapter" in his life in the book. "I had the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner at my door and calling me constantly. There was kind of a group of individuals sort of hounding me or whatnot."

In the book Geary recounts how problems arose when the health of longtime volunteers and board members who had AIDS declined and became "bothersome" to both him and his staff. He writes about dealing with one manager with a "serious cocaine problem" and how there were "serious morale problems" among some staffers.

The sexual harassment charge stemmed from an incident when Geary mooned a female employee who complained about it when she was dismissed years later. He also admits in the book that under his leadership he encouraged an atmosphere "that allowed for and treasured the occasional outrageous act as a way of balancing the work's intensity."

An investigation by the San Francisco Human Rights Commission exonerated Geary. But the damage had been done both to his professional life and the agency's standing in the community.

"It started to affect funding adversely, so I was offered by the board very generously another position as director of training. I felt I had been wronged," recalled Geary, who sought legal counsel. "I felt I had done my job well as executive director. The idea of stepping into another position was not appealing to me."

In exchange for his stepping down he was given $74,000 tax-free, which was his yearly salary, said Geary. The cash settlement allowed him and Randall to relocate to the Sunshine State, rent a much cheaper apartment, and start anew.

"There was so much negative press that the idea of immediately going to work for another organization seemed difficult," said Geary. "We decided it would be a good change for us."

While the move provided him "tremendous healing," Geary said he also "went through a period of feeling lost for several years."

In hindsight, Geary believes his only being 30 when he became executive director at Shanti led to some misjudgments.

"In retrospect, I would have done a few things differently," he writes. "Like each of us involved, I was going through my own maturing and learning process in the midst of an epidemic that had forever altered our lives."

The last third of the book details Geary's remaining years with Randall and the spiritual journey he embarked on following the end of their 20-year-long love affair. It is at times painful to read, and Geary's raw emotions spill forth in journal entries from that time.

"I didn't hold anything back in the book. I spoke from my heart," he said.

The book's ultimate message, said Geary, is love does triumph over adversity.

"It is really a love story," he said. "We need more love stories about our relationships and what we are able to manifest as gay people together."

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