aboutrandyshilts

Randy Shilts was gutsy, brash and unforgettable.
He died in 1994, fighting for the rights of gays
in American society.

Mike Weiss, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 17, 2004

Timing can mean everything to a reporter. To be the first to see
what's coming next is a sure path to professional distinction His
uncanny grasp of history's trajectory was a hallmark of the career
of Randy Shilts, author of "And the Band Played On: Politics,
People and the AIDS Epidemic," who died of AIDS himself.

Although he was only 42 when he died, Shilts' three books -- his
first was a biography of the late Harvey Milk, his last an epic about
the secret lives of gays and lesbians in the military -- rewrote history.
In doing so, he saved a segment of history from extinction.

The historian Gary Wills, assessing "And the Band Played On," wrote:
"This book will be to gay liberation what Betty Friedan was to early
feminism and Rachel Carson's 'Silent Spring' was
to environmentalism."

"The personal, the professional, and the political all merge at some
point," says Tim Wilson, an archivist for the San Francisco Public
Library, who is cataloging 170 cartons of papers Shilts bequeathed
to the local history collection. "Where do you draw the line?"

Shilts' friend Frank Robinson, also an author and journalist, calls
"And the Band Played On," "a seminal book. My god, it was the
loudest cry of protest from a gay man at what the national govern-
ment was doing to its own citizens. For somebody to point the finger
at the government and say they were partners in a disease/genocide
took a hell of a lot of courage."

Shilts died on Feb. 17, 1994.
He was buried in Guerneville, where he owned a home.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Randy Shilts was the third of six boys born to Bud and Norma Shilts,
of Aurora, Ill. His mother was an alcoholic, and he had "a childhood
in which I was beaten and emotionally abused," he later wrote. Yet he
loved his parents and reconciled with them, dedicating his first book to
them. He came out of the closet while he was an undergraduate at the
University of Oregon, moved to San Francisco in 1975, worked for a
gay alternative newspaper and for KQED television, and yearned to be
a mainstream journalist.

When he was hired by The Chronicle in 1981, he was as likely as a red
light on a freeway.

"With his striped shirts, flowered ties and suspenders, Randy stood out,"
wrote Susan Sward in this paper when he died. She described a man
who laughed frequently and had a halo of curly blond-brown hair -
AIDS later turned it straight.

Although he had numerous friends at the paper, even they describe him
as being difficult at times, and no more egotistical than Donald Trump.
But Shilts was usually disarmingly funny about his own ego, and his
commitment. In a television interview when he was dying, he said he
had at last put aside vanity. "But I wish I had less character," he added,
"and more T-cells."

Perhaps because Shilts remains controversial among some gays, there is
no monument to him. Nor is there a street named for him, as there are
for other San Francisco writers such as Jack Kerouac and Dashiell
Hammett. "He's one of our community's heroes," says author Frank
Robinson. "In my opinion he had as much effect on the gay community
as Harvey Milk did. Both were immensely important. Where's the street
or building named after Randy?"

Shilts' only monument is his work. He remains the most prescient
chronicler of 20th century American gay history. Before he died, he
talked often to about what he hoped would be his next book.

It was going to be on homosexuality in the Catholic Church."

Webmasters Note

I knew Randy too briefly when I was doing Gay Community work
in San Jose in the late 1970's. I assisted him with a program special
he was doing for the PBS station, KQED, about police harassment
of the Gay Community in San Jose.

Later, when I founded the Gay Community Newspaper, The South
Bay Chronicle, he offered to assist by writing articles.

He was a brilliant, deeply caring man who had a profound impact on
our history and culture.

There are no buildings in San Francisco named after him, yet.

But there is now a HIV / AIDS self help support group named in his memory.

The Randy Shilts Center of Troy, Inc.

Click Here for short Mp3 PodCast about Randy Shilts
( Colleagues from the Chronicle discussing him. )

Background Info On PodCast Here.

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