Dear Housing Works Community,
This past weekend, we lost two people who were important both to Housing Works and to the fight against the HIV epidemic. Even if you never met them, I think it is important that you know who they were.
Dawn Grimmitt was a pediatric nurse. She was 43 years old when she died this last Sunday, in Alabama, where she lived. I met her the first year Housing Works became the beneficiary of the Braking AIDS Ride. Each day of the ride, I would accept her hugs and encouragement at two Oases and again at the hotel, and in the early morning at breakfast. She was a volunteer nurse on the crew, and she had been crewing on the Boston to New York ride since she was 29 years old, every year without fail. Each year, she took one week of vacation to crew the west coast AIDS ride, and one week’s vacation to crew ours. Those two weeks were her contribution to ending AIDS as an epidemic. If you have ever been on the ride, you know that the intense time we spend together, sharing butt butter, Advil, Gatorade and so many stories, we inevitably become a family. I certainly felt that way about Dawn. She was self-effacing, unfailingly kind, and always supportive and quick with band aids or anything else a rider might need. She would invariably invite me to sit down and chat. She would ask me about Housing Works, our programs, or clients, and our staff. She would share bits of her own story as well.
Dawn and I became Face Book friends within days of my first ride. So our friendship became a year-long thing as we went back and forth, commenting on each other’s posts and on those of other folk we shared in common from the ride. While surely cheerful, I learned Dawn suffered from depression. She also had anxiety about things like flying. She loved her family and especially adored her mother. I commented on her fibroid surgery, and she commented on my civil disobedience. In March, she complained about Spring allergies. A few weeks later, she was managing the flu. Then last Tuesday, she posted about being diagnosed with walking pneumonia. Without too much thought, I posted a short line of encouragement. And then I woke up Monday to learn that she had died. Dawn’s death is particularly poignant for me. Enough that I plan to go to Alabama next week for her funeral. To me, she represents the unsung heroes and sheroes of this fight. Ordinary people who take time out of their day to day lives to do their part. That part might seem small at first, but it adds up over time to become seriously impactful. In that process, they become a part of our community and even family. We are surrounded by people like Dawn. We could not do what we do without their commitment. In paying tribute to Dawn, I invite you to pay tribute the folk around you who even now are quietly volunteering their part to build this community and fight to end the epidemic.
The other person I want you to know is Humberto Cruz. I met Humberto shortly after he joined the AIDS Institute as the Deputy Director in 1990, when the Institute was still under the direction of Nick Rango, who died of AIDS in 1993. Humberto was one proud Puerto Rican. He was also a proud gay man and a proud person living with HIV and later AIDS. Prior to his work at the AIDS Institute, like many Puerto Ricans in health care, he got his start in self-help drug treatment, including eight years at Promesa, now Acacia. At the AIDS Institute, he helped to build its housing programs. He oversaw the development of case management. He was part of creating AIDS adult day health care. He created the Minority Service Initiative. And he and Alma Candelas, his partner in crime, built the largest syringe exchange network in the world right here in New York State. He helped to form the National Association of State and Territorial AIDS Directors (NASTAD). And he helped to found the coalition that formed to defend Ryan White Title One. In 2007, he became the Director of the AIDS Institute, a position he held until he quietly retired in 2013. He built on all that Nick Rango had put in place, and he made it bigger and stronger, such that he deserves much of the credit for the HIV infrastructure that is facilitating our efforts to end AIDS as an epidemic today.
Humberto fought constantly on policy issues with Keith and me. But I loved this guy! He just loved that we would do a protest to criticize him and then invite him out to dinner that evening. And he would send his contract managers in to audit our programs, and, when we got a bad score, which we sometimes did, he would always reach out to us, cheer us up and tell us how to fix things. But Humberto didn’t just love Keith and me. I know he also loved Gina Quatrocchi. He loved the very idea of Housing Works and Bailey House. He loved our gutsiness and our advocacy. He quietly cheered us on every time we stood up to the Mayor, or the Governor, or even the President. Often he would leak important information that would shape our advocacy efforts, but always with a promise that his name would not ever appear in our AIDS Issues Update. Humberto especially loved our Thrift Shops. He visited all of them regularly. I would go over to his Harlem townhouse for dinner or some event he was hosting, and he would spend hours walking me through every room to point out everything he had bought at our stores. The truth is, his house would have looked quite bare if it wasn’t for those shopping expeditions. As it was, it was quite crowded with beautiful art and collectables, such that he would often gather up bags of his purchases to donate back to us or give away so that he had room for his more recent Housing Works purchases.
Humberto especially loved the people we serve. He beamed when he was with consumers of the services he helped to create. Even after he retired, he and I would continue to have our arguments. And he would invite me over for dinner and insist that I take all of the left-overs home whether I wanted them or not. He knew I lived in one of our residences and figured someone there could use a good home-cooked meal. This weekend, after a brief trip back to the island of his birth, a land that he loved, Humberto passed away. Humberto was both a radical and a bureaucrat rolled into one. He was a hero in the fight. Even if you never met him, I want each of you to know his name and all that he did for us. And if you are Puerto Rican, or gay, or a person living with HIV, know that he did you proud.
Love,
Charles
