HIV/AIDS Crisis, 1981‒1997

In 1981, AIDS was a mystery illness—a so-called “gay plague” because of its initial appearance among men who had sex with other men in large coastal cities like New York and San Francisco. Minnesotans breathed a sigh of relief, thinking they were far enough from the epidemic to be safe. But they were wrong.

The first inkling of an emerging epidemic came in the weekly report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on June 5, 1981. The article, which reported on trends in morbidity and mortality, identified five previously healthy gay men who had contracted a rare pneumonia.

The disease had already spread to Minnesota. St. Paul native Bruce Brockway was a gay activist and the publisher of the Twin Cities’ first gay newspaper: Northland Companion, later renamed Positively Gay and then GLC Voice when it was taken over by Tim Campbell. By July, Brockway already suspected he had AIDS. He was finally diagnosed in June 1982, making him the first documented Minnesotan with the disease.

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). HIV attacks the body’s immune system. When this happens, the infected person falls prey to a host of opportunistic infections that take advantage of the broken immune system.

HIV is transmitted through blood and other bodily fluids. In the United States, it initially appeared in men who had sex with men, IV drug users, and, before the invention of a test to screen for HIV, recipients of tainted blood transfusions, including hemophiliacs.

Brockway refused to take his diagnosis lying down. In April 1983, he helped found the Minnesota AIDS Project (MAP), the state’s first grassroots organization set up to help people with HIV/AIDS. And they needed the help.

AIDS was worse than anyone could imagine. Sufferers succumbed to multiple complaints—swollen lymph nodes, oral thrush, night sweats, diarrhea, weight loss—while shuttling in and out of intensive care, fighting off yet more opportunistic infections. The end result was almost always death.

In addition to serious medical problems, people with HIV/AIDS had to deal with the stigma that came with a disease associated with homosexuality and drug use. Billy Runyon, another MAP co-founder, lost his job at a Minneapolis blood bank when his employer found out he had AIDS. He wasn’t alone. People with HIV/AIDS lost jobs, apartment leases, friends, and family. They were the subjects of accusatory religious sermons that framed HIV/AIDS as God’s judgment against gays.

Then there was the fear. Brockway and Runyon, along with their doctor, Frank Rhame, talked to print and TV journalists. Through interviews, they tried to dispel the rumors, among them the idea that you could get HIV from mosquito bites and from being in the same room as an infected person.

By the end of 1983, Minnesota had nine diagnosed cases. But that was only the tip of the iceberg. HIV has an incubation period of up to ten years. That meant that most Minnesotans with HIV didn’t know it yet.

By 1985, four years into the epidemic, people with HIV/AIDS were living longer because of improvements in treating infections. But there was still no cure. In response, a new organization set down roots: the Aliveness Project. The project’s focus was on living with HIV/AIDS, with the stress on living. While MAP helped with medical care, housing, and end-of-life needs, Aliveness provided opportunities for social gatherings. It offered tickets to concerts and plays. It hosted a food shelf and community meals.

One of Aliveness’s volunteer cooks was Bill Rowe, a chain-smoking, leather-wearing anthropology professor at the University of Minnesota. When regulars stopped showing up at the community meal because they were too sick, Rowe brought meals to their doors. This act of goodwill evolved into Open Arms, which enlisted a team of cooks and drivers to make food deliveries to homebound clients.

In 1983, San Francisco opened the first HIV/AIDS clinic in the world. Two years later, Dr. Keith Henry, newly arrived in Minnesota, opened Minnesota’s first HIV/AIDS clinic at St. Paul Ramsey Medical Center. In the same year, a test for HIV became available. When doctors diagnosed patients as HIV-positive at St. Paul’s sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) clinic, they could now immediately refer them to the nearby HIV/AIDS clinic for ongoing treatment.

The year 1987 witnessed Minnesota’s one hundredth death from AIDS. It also saw a monk retire from his work at St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville to open the first AIDS adult foster home in Hennepin County. The monk, Brother Louis (Charles) Blenkner, rented a four-room house in South Minneapolis. He lived in one room and took care of the residents in the other three. He shopped, cooked, offered friendship, and provided medical care with the help of nurses and doctors.

For most of the epidemic, the spotlight had been on New York and San Francisco, where hundreds and then thousands of men and women were dying. But the media’s focus briefly shifted to the Twin Cities. On April 2, 1989, Hans Paul Verhoef, a Dutch HIV/AIDS educator, was detained at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Customs officers had discovered AZT, the first effective HIV drug, in his luggage.

It was at this moment most Americans learned that the US Congress had passed a travel ban on foreign travelers with HIV/AIDS. Verhoef had breached the law by not declaring his AIDS status before arriving in the US. He was jailed for five days and finally let go on a $10,000 bond and a promise to leave the country in three weeks.

Incidents like Verhoef’s detention enraged communities fighting HIV/AIDS. In 1987, a group of New York activists had formed ACT UP, which staged demonstrations to bring attention to the HIV/AIDS crisis. The Twin Cities chapter of ACT UP took up local causes, like the mistreatment of an HIV-positive inmate at the Minnesota Correctional Facility–St. Cloud, and participated in national actions. An ACT UP representative was among the community members who served as a review board for doctors running the HIV drug trials at the University of Minnesota.

The university’s drug trials program was part of a national network, the AIDS Clinical Trials Group, which streamlined the movement of potential HIV drugs from labs to volunteer test subjects. AZT had only worked for patients temporarily before the virus came roaring back. New drugs were needed.

By the end of 1995, 319,849 Americans had died of AIDS and over half a million were infected with HIV. And that was only in the United States. Those numbers made the search for a cure, or at least a way of managing the disease, desperate. By 1996, Michael Reinbold, a young Minneapolis man, had been living in the AIDS foster-care home Grace House for a year. He’d suffered a number of medical complications and was expecting to die at the home.

Later that year, however, a new drug cocktail became available. Researchers discovered that using three antiretroviral drugs together prevented HIV from reproducing inside the body. People with HIV/AIDS saw their health restored after taking the cocktail. The phenomenon of so many dying people suddenly returning to life was called the Lazarus effect. In 1997, Reinbold, with the help of his drug cocktail, became one of the first HIV/AIDS patients to walk out of Grace House alive.

Minnesota’s HIV/AIDS organizations are still relevant in the twenty-first century. So is HIV/AIDS. Though the disease is now a survivable chronic condition, the virus continues to spread, with thousands infected in Minnesota and tens of millions worldwide.