Few fought AIDS for so long or so well

OFF/BEAT GLIDEWELL E-mail: Click here Archive

By JAN GLIDEWELL

© St. Petersburg Times,
published June 29, 2001

I always thought of him as "the little warrior."

His posture stooped by deteriorating vertebrae in his spine, dragging a heavy oxygen canister behind him and carrying a small satchel containing the 168 pills he took daily, Curt Bleich would set forth at every opportunity to meet the world and go to war with a disease he had survived far longer than most people who have it.

"Battling" a life-threatening disease is a sometimes overused term, but Curt, by educating himself and others about the disease and serving in volunteer and consulting capacities, fought AIDS down to the last possible second before dying early Tuesday at the James P. Gills Hospice House in Dade City.

He was 47 and had spent more than a third of his life fighting to stay alive.

I have seen him get up from a sickbed -- when he needed someone to help him lift his legs into the car -- to go help, counsel or support a friend with the disease. During his frequent hospitalizations, his mother and I would conspire to hide his cell phone from him so that he would get badly needed rest.

I was linked with Curt 31/2 years ago through the AIDS Buddy Program, which was then a cooperative effort between Hernando-Pasco Hospice and the Tampa AIDS Network.

It will always be clear to me that it was I who gained and learned the most from our relationship. Curt was the third AIDS patient with whom I worked, but the other two had died very shortly after I had met them, and I had much to learn.

Curt was the person who taught me how terribly true it was that, because of their compromised immune systems, we who are uninfected with the virus present much more of a threat to AIDS patients than they do to us.

I learned to remind him (on the rare occasions that he needed it) to take the handful of pills that he took every two hours of his waking day. I got weekly reminders in what it is like for handicapped people in general loading and unloading wheelchairs and walkers and pushing them up to a half-mile because vehicles without stickers were parked in the handicapped spaces.

I learned things about opera (not an interest I would have pursued without having taken Curt to performances and seminars),about dance, about Jewish literature, gay-oriented theater and more than I had ever known before about what it is like to be gay or bisexual, and sick, in a society that can be unkind to those perceived as different.

Shortly before I met Curt in 1998 he had allowed a cast to be made of his face and upper body for an exhibit called "The Face of AIDS," put together by AIDS care coordinator and artist Maureen Kennedy at Hernando-Pasco Hospice.

A display of Kennedy's castings, coupled with testimonials from people with AIDS, is one of the most powerful statements I have ever seen among efforts to humanize the threat of the disease.

Unknown to many, Curt was nearly delirious with fever and wracked with pain the day Kennedy's exhibit was open to the public the first time.

"No way," he said, "was I missing that."

Curt was diagnosed as HIV-positive in 1984, when the scope of the epidemic was just beginning.

Married, bisexual and operating a restaurant in the U.S. Virgin Islands,he got the news after taking a routine job-related blood test.

"I knew then that other people were going to go through that moment," he told me once, "and I promised that if I got through it, I would be there for them."

He never broke his word.

"Out in every way," in his own words, Curt coordinated a speaker's bureau for AIDS education in Hernando and Pasco counties. There was no question he would not answer about his disease or his life.

The casting of his torso showed him with fists clenched, prepared for the intravenous injections that are part of an AIDS patient's life. His hands are clutching bracelets, at that time 72 of them, one for each friend who had died of the disease. He stopped wearing the bracelets when they numbered more than 100, saying the weight had grown too much for his weakened arms and for his heart.

Although we made frequent shopping excursions to Old Hyde Park and to two large Tampa bookstores when his health was up to it, Curt and I spent most of our time together talking, about life and death, about his conversion to Judaism, about the medications that were such an integral part of his life.

He devoted so much of his time to learning about and understanding his disease and treatment that I heard him, on more than one occasion, consult with physicians over the telephone,and one of his doctors told me once during a hospital visit, "Curt knows as much about AIDS and its pharmacology as I do."

He understood the sociology of the disease. He despaired when the advent of the protease inhibitor "cocktail" made people think the epidemic was over. Infection rates started to climb again as standard precautions were ignored.

"What's even scarier," he told me angrily one afternoon,puffing on a forbidden cigarette right under the oxygen canula feeding the gas into his nose (He devised and mastered a technique for it. It is NOT a recommended practice.), "is that just as those drugs make it so the disease gets less attention, they are making more of us live longer. So as the cost of AIDS increases, funding and support is going down."

AIDS never had a fiercer opponent, and people with AIDS never had a better friend than Curt Bleich.

I know I am a wiser person for having known him these three years. I think I am, also, perhaps a better person for having had that privilege.

We don't always find our role models where we expect to, but I am finding it hard to think of having met a tougher, scrappier, more courageous person in these past 57 years during which I have met thousands and many of them in adverse conditions and situations.

Curt's memorial service arrangements are incomplete at this time, but I'm sure there will be a lot of people there to honor his memory and accomplishments.

A community of persons who desperately need strong advocates and selfless friends has lost both this week.

And so have we all.

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright