Shilts announces he has AIDS
Here is a look at the past. Items have been culled from The Chronicle’s archives of 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago.
1993
Feb. 16: Randy Shilts, national correspondent for the Chronicle and prominent writer of books and articles on issues relating to the gay community, has AIDS. Shilts said in an interview last week that he decided to disclose his condition because he has been besieged by inquiring phone calls from members of the gay community and the national press. “I want to talk about it myself rather than have somebody else talk,” Shilts said.
Shilts, 41, learned in 1985 that he was infected with the AIDS virus but has not discussed his illness publicly until now because of concern that it would jeopardize his effectiveness as a reporter. “Every gay writer who tests positive ends up being an AIDS activist,” Shilts said, “and I don’t want to end up being an activist. I wanted to keep on being a reporter.” The author of “The Mayor of Castro Street,” a book about Harvey Milk, the gay San Francisco supervisor killed by Dan White in 1978, and a history of the AIDS epidemic called “And the Band Played On,” Shilts completed work Sunday on a third book, “Conduct Unbecoming,” about gays and lesbians in the military.
— Leah Garchik
1968
Feb. 12: A U.S. Navy jet trainer with two men aboard crashed into the fog-shrouded Bay Bridge, exploding in flames before plummeting into the waters of San Francisco bay. There were no survivors. The plane, a T-33 jet trainer which had just taken off from Alameda Naval Station glanced off the upper level of the double-decked eight-mile-long span. It hit a gasoline truck and then soared 500 yards past the bridge, exploded in flames and crashed into the bay. The truck’s cab was smashed but the driver was unhurt. Traffic on the upper level was halted temporarily as engineers checked for structural flaws.
1943
Feb. 17: Joseph Paul DiMaggio, the famed Yankee Clipper, whose baseball records form an imperishable history of diamond might and glory, becomes “just another Joe in Uncle Sam’s army” today. He will be inducted formally tomorrow and sent to the reception center at Monterey Presidio, where his life as a soldier begins, his life as a Gotham idol and greatest outfielder in modern day baseball ends. Parked nervously in the office of his friend, Maury Moskowitz, the insurance man, the great DiMag’, his giant World Series ring glistening gave out the story yesterday that brought to a climax six months of nationally written pieces about Joe, his wife Dorothy, their son, their divorce proceedings, their reconciliation and DiMag’s enlistment.
“I’ve wanted it this way for a long time. This desire to join up isn’t anything recently born. I seriously entertained the thought after the World Series last fall, but private and domestic troubles curved my mind a little away from the army. That’s all over now, my personal business has been cleaned up and I’m ready to become a $54 a month private ... and like it.” The two-time American league batting champion, holder of the consecutive game hitting streak at 56, and spark plug that shot the Yankees into six World Series in seven years will be happy to become a common soldier. Last year, the magnificent DiMag earned in excess of $50,000.
— Bob Stevens
1918
Feb. 16: Pressed hard by a band of killer whales, the fiercest creatures of the deep, the sea lion herd at Año Nuevo point has again invaded the domestic precincts of the lighthouse keeper and is overrunning his house. Sea lions in the closets, sea lions under the bed, sea lions in the cupboards, sea lions tripping him up in the dark and knocking him down in wild rushes about the house, is the complaint of Lighthouse Keeper John O. Becker. A year ago, Becker made an official complaint that young pups of the fast-growing rookery on Nuevo Island had become so numerous that he could not keep them out of his house. He reported that they overran his garden and gathered in such droves around his kitchen at meal times that he could not open the door without having a troop march in upon him.
He petitioned the Lighthouse inspectorate to have the surplus shipped away but nothing was done. Becker then built a stout wire fence around his reservation and lived in peace until last week when a killer whale, or orca, arrived and so harried the sea lions that, crazed with fright, the lions smashed down his fence and swarmed his lighthouse. When Becker opened his door to see what the trouble was, a drove of young pups bowled him over in a wild drive for safety in the house. Becker said he saw an orca catch a big sea lion and throw him thirty feet in the air. The killer whale, it is said, is not often seen so far south. They get their name from their ferocious attacks on larger species of whales, which they kill for the purpose of eating their tongues.