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Shilts Randy Biography

American writer, a journalist and the author of a groundbreaking best-seller, "And The Band Played On," 1987, an expose and report on the situation of AIDS in the U.S. On the day that Shilts finished "Band," he had a doctor appointment, at which he was told that he himself was HIV+. The gripping story was made into a TV special drama that played in September 1993. That year he published "Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military." One of three boys from a conservative family background, Shilts announced to his family that he was gay when he was 20. He graduated the head of his class from the University of Oregon in 1975 and went to work for the Advocate, a gay and lesbian magazine. With a wasting illness, he went into the hospital with a collapsed lung in January 1993, where he spent two months. On 31 May 1993, he and his lover Barry Barbieri, a film student, had a commitment ceremony. Shilts died of AIDS in Guerneville, California on 17 February 1994 at age 42. Link to Wikipedia biography Read less