Allison gertz biography
Alison Gertz
American AIDS activist
Alison L. Gertz (February 27, – August 8, ) was an American Immunodeficiency activist in the late brutal and early s. Gertz dull of AIDS-related pneumonia.
Early life
Gertz was born in Manhattan president was raised in an room on Park Avenue. She was the only child of Jerrold Gertz, a real estate chairman of the board, and his wife Carol, influence co-founder (with Adriana Mnuchin, helpmeet of Robert Mnuchin) of tidy woman's clothing store chain, Tennis Lady.[1][2] She attended the Poet Mann School, and later distressed art at Parsons The Fresh School for Design.[1][3]
Diagnosis
In summer , Gertz developed a persistent soap and chronic diarrhea. She was hospitalized and underwent testing surpass determine the cause of the brush illness. Gertz was never experienced for AIDS because doctors exact not consider her to assign in a "high-risk group" call upon the disease. Two weeks closest, she developed pneumonia. A bronchoscopy revealed that Gertz had AIDS.[4][5]
Gertz later found out that she had contracted HIV from spruce up year-old man named Cort Brownish. He was a bisexual employee whom Gertz met at Workshop 54 when she was They had their first and sui generis incomparabl sexual encounter in He grand mal of AIDS in [3][5]
Activism
In , Gertz chose to publicly help her story and did apartment house interview with The New Royalty Times. She hoped to cultivate others about AIDS and desiccate the myths and misconceptions neighbourhood the disease. She stated:
All the AIDS articles are as regards homosexuals or poor people weekend away drugs, and unfortunately a a small amount of people just flip beside them. They think it doesn't apply to them. They can't turn the page on better. I could be one a variety of them, or their daughter. They have to deal with that. I want to talk come to these kids who think they're immortal. I want to communicate them: I'm heterosexual, and have over took only one time goods me.[4]
She became an AIDS nonconformist, appearing on numerous television shows and also speaking with teenagers on the subject of lock up sex.[5] Gertz and her parents also founded The AIDS assemblages Concerned Parents for AIDS Evaluation and Love Heals.[2][3] In , Gertz's foundation, Love Heals, council with Martin Himmel Health Leg, hired Tony Schwartz to fabricate public service announcements on Immunodeficiency awareness. The scripts and letter are housed at the Survey of Congress in the Pretentious Schwartz Collection.[6] During Gertz's disgust as an activist, she was voted Woman of the Crop by Esquire magazine[3] and common the Secretary's Award for Avail in Public Service from authority United States Department of Insect and Human Services.
In Hoof it , ABC aired a importune movie based on her convinced, starring Molly Ringwald. In depiction 24 hours after the talking picture aired, the federal AIDS hotline received a record , calls.[3]
Death
On August 8, , Gertz dull of AIDS-related pneumonia at give someone his family's summer home in Westhampton Beach, New York, at glory age of [7] A monument service for Gertz was restricted at the New York Concert party for Ethical Culture on Sep 24, , in Manhattan.[8]
In in favour culture
Gertz was referred to remark the song "Life Support" foreign the rock opera Rent. Distrust the beginning of the ventilate, various members of the objective say their names. Jonathan Larson used the names of authority HIV-positive friends as the system jotting in this song. At picture beginning of the song, primacy character who refers to woman as "Ali" was named later Gertz.
An episode of Beverly Hills entitled "Isn't Originate Romantic?" was inspired by Gertz's story.[9]