George Gordy in my kitchen, late Spring 1979

George was one of Dan's two gay friends from the Academy.  Here he is working in my kitchen, preparing dinner.

 

The Academy staff always encouraged us instructors to invite cadets over to our homes.  I had many cadets over during my first, and only, year teaching there.  Chris Keener and Vivet Mirage and her boyfriend stayed at my house over Spring break that year.

 

I feel saddened when I think of George and this picture from 1979.  A decade later I was at a party in Denver.  Dan was also there.  I had heard that George was taken off flying status because of a positive drug test for marijuana.  But at the party I also learned that, while he had married a woman--and what that was about I still am not certain--he was also diagnosed with HIV.

 

In some ways, George reminded me of myself.  I believe he was the romantic sort who was always looking for love but never really found it--perhaps that it why he married a woman, finding at least companionship.  Once when we met for lunch at the cafe in the academic building and I was talking a bit indiscreetly, he warned me that I might get in trouble because he sensed that others were listening to our conversation.

 

George would die that same Spring of 1989, as would Dick Tuttle, in April, I believe.

 

You can tell from just these few photographs just how devastating AIDS was to the gay community.  By 1989, George and Dick were dead from our little group of five men in 1979.  By 1995, Dan would also be dead.  Three out of five were gone.

 

I still have that set of aluminum mixing bowls in the photograph.  You can also see that the appliances in my kitchen were almond colored.  That was the color in the late 1970's.   

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