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Gay Peoples Chronicle

Interview: Randy Gearhart

By CHARLES CALLENDER

Why are you resigning as Executive Director of the Health Issues Taskforce?

The major reason is my educational commitment. As many people know, I left a very lucrative administrative job at Mt. Sinai Medical Center for the sole purpose of returning to school to get my master's degree in social work. My eventual goal is to open my own private practice, help run therapy groups, and do gay counselling.

Then when the Taskforce job came along, after I had made this decision, it fit very well into the kind of thing I wanted to do. I also think I was well qualified for it.

The Taskforce hired me full time, but I was also going to school full time. It's been very difficult. I feel that I haven't been able to get the full experience of my graduate program because every other night or weekend I'm running off to meetings or doing paper work. All this is necessary.

So I've made a decision--a very difficult decision, because I like to fulfill my commitments--that the previous commitment to my education needs to take priority. I also think the Taskforce, which requires a lot of work, needs someone who can put in more time than I can.

I've resigned so I can fulfill my education and get out of it what I need. And this frees the Taskforce to look for someone with more time, who can give it 40, 50 or 60 hours a week, who can go out and really motivate and stir up and move along. A personal question: was burnõut involved?

Some burnout was involved. Obviously it's very difficult to deal with a life/death situation day in and day out. It's difficult constantly motivating people to help. And you stretch yourself very thin when you try to do two jobs very well. I'm sure you understand what I'm talking about. And how!

I believe I did both jobs very well. In my first semester at SASS I got a fourpoint while working fulltime. I'm now in my second semester.

We've had many compliments from the U.S. Conference of Mayors about the implementation of our grants.

But a point comes when burnout begins to appear around the fringes. I decided to stop before it became destructive, either to me or to the community. So yes, burnout had a little to do with it.

Will HIT recruit again to fill the position?

I understand they will appoint an interim director

while search.

doing a full-scale

What do you see as the main priorities for HIT?

In my opinion, HIT's main priorities will always be education, and support for patients who are afflicted with AIDS.

Education of the straight community is needed to reduce fear, hostility, anxiety, and all those adverse reactions: homophobia and all the rest. But it's also needed in the gay community. It still surprises me, even now, that in spite of all the literature, public speaking, and information that's been given out, I can give a speech on safe sex or AIDS to a gay organization and be asked basic questions that were answered years ago.

I really think it's paramount for the Taskforce to reach the gay community as a its whole, and especially black segment. As the

Pet-

AIDS Patients, through Cleveland Social Workers Concerned with AIDS.

The Taskforce Support Committee is starting an HTLVWorried Well group, cofacilitated by Nancy Wadsworth, a master's level social worker at Mt. Sinai Hospital, and Timothy LaBar, a Ph.D. psychologist. It's a small test-core group of about 10 to 15 people that will later be expanded out in the community a bit more.

Right now the Support Committee is working on the concept of Well Buddies, something we created. The Taskforce's philosophy is that to be able to support an ill person, you must learn how to support well people. You practice on them before you're let loose on somebody who is sick and cannot defend himself. That's pretty basic.

At present we have about 35 volunteers who want to be

direct support-buddies of AIDS patients. Every AIDS patient we have has a buddy, so we don't have any for them to work with. So as part of the educational process we're dividing them into small groups we call cells. They will network themselves, talking

among

As February 28, 1986, passes, so does my role as the Executive Director of the Health Issues Taskforce. Over the past year, I have had the opportunity to meet and work with many caring people concerned about the issue of AIDS. I would like to personally thank the community for the support and friendships I have experienced during this past year.

My decision to leave HIT was difficult, but necessary to allow me to continue my commitment to my education. Thus also paving the way for the Taskforce to secure a new Executive Director to provide an even further expansive role in the community.

to serve

I would also like to thank the Board of Directors and the volunteers of HIT for providing me the opportunity community, learn, and grow. I continue my support of the Taskforce in dealing with AIDS and hope you in the community will join me in my support for the new Executive Director by providing him/her with the same support and help you provided me.

Thank you again, and may all of you be safe and healthy in the future.

rarca article you ran in February indicated, AIDS statistics for Cleveland blacks are astronomical, as they are in Washington, D.C. That is changing a bit, but not much. The black community needs to realize that AIDS is not a white disease, as they believe. It's a people's disease that has no ethnic or cultural overtones.

So one priority is always going to be education, as far as I'm concerned. You can't stop the spread of AIDS unless you educate people about how it spreads: the way it's transmitted as well as the incubation period.

And it's also paramount for the Taskforce to continue its financial and emotional support of AIDS patients.

We have a number of groups that will be starting soon. The hospitals are running

Direct Support Group for

Very Truly Yours,

Randy T. Gearhart

about their own fears, about issues and concepts of AIDS, educating themselves and being

a mutual support group.. Any one of them who is assigned as a buddy to an ill person will have a support mechanism to fall back on, to avoid burnout. I'm sure that concept will continue

Another Taskforce problem is assuring the gay community that we maintain strict confidentiality. One reason we don't get every AIDS patient to work with is that Cleveland is not a transient place. Most patients were born or raised here. Their families live here. So they have a support system and don't need us as they would in New York or San Francis-

co.

The people who do need our support have to be assured that we do not spread names. Telegraph, Telephone, and tell-a-queen, you know? They fear that everything will be

March 1986

telecommunicated through the whole community. The Taskforce maintains the strictest confidentiality. All our volunteers and members must sign a statement of confidentiality before we let them work.

People may not want to be identified to the Taskforce as AIDS patients. They hope they will beat the odds and get well. We all hope that; it's a basic human hope. They are afraid that if they get hooked up with the Taskforce they will somehow be labelled and will be ostracized when they recover. The community needs to realize that we maintain confidenti-

ality by law, as well as by the ethical and moral fiber within our organization.

So these are some of the priorities I'm sure the Taskforce will be addressing after I leave.

My first friend to have AIDS didn't want any visitors. The second fell into a pattern you've already mentioned: He didn't want anyone to know, and most of us didn't know he had AIDS until he was actually dying. How common is this?

It tends to be very common. Persons who go through a death-and-dying situation tend to isolate themselves.

And AIDS is not a socially acceptable disease. It's sexually transmitted. In the early years, most people who got AIDS were labelled the gay misfits: the promiscuous ones; those who had 50 sexually transmitted diseases; IV-drug abusers, and the scum of the earth. We now know that's not true, so that kind of labelling has gone out the window. But we still have that stigma.

Ill people tend not to like strangers coming into their lives because it upsets their balance and they lose their sense of control. That's another problem the Taskforce is trying to ad-

dress.

People go through all kinds of psychological trauma about death and dying. But also, a lot of those who wind up with AIDS haven't even dealt with their sexuality. They haven't told their families they are gay. So they have not only the burden of dying, but of destroying their families' image of them and even their own self-concepts. They are also losing their independence because now they're dependent on other people. They lose their sense of control. It's very important for people to feel they are in control. When they lose that sense, they lose their identity. That's why people tend not to like visitors.

Another reason is that people don't want to have to explain what they're going through. They don't like to feel, and they don't like to talk about their emotions. Most friends who visit don't talk about the subject. They don't talk about death. They don't talk about how much they care for him, and how much they love him.

So you have a two-pronged problem here. The patient doesn't want visitors. And friends don't know what to say, so they stay away. That isolates the patient. And