FOR SOME GAYS, WINTER’S CHILL COMES TOO SOON

Gary Fifield died May 10 of pneumonia, a complication of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), in Arlington, Va. He was managing director of the Washington Opera until retiring because of failing health.

We were best friends as teen-agers and young adults in Kansas City, Mo., but grew apart and hadn’t seen each other or even communicated for 20 years. I phoned him twice shortly before he died. He was weak, and our conversations, brief.

“It’s a terrible disease,” he said.

I never thought much about AIDS until learning of Gary’s illness. Since his death at age 46, I have been thinking about it a lot. And thinking about him.

“An Early Frost” is the title of a two-hour drama about AIDS that NBC plans to air in early 1986. It could be landmark TV in the tradition of ABC’s “That Certain Summer,” a 1972 ABC drama about homosexuality.

Because of network prime time’s persuasiveness and wide reach, “An Early Frost” also could be pivotal in expanding public awareness and financial backing for research concerning AIDS, a widely misunderstood virus whose U.S. victims are mainly gay men. Spread through the transfer of bodily fluids, it attacks the immune system, leaving its victims vulnerable to a host of maladies and infections.

There is no cure.

Misconceptions abound. Some fundamentalist religious groups are convinced that AIDS is God’s wrath against homosexuals. Some people are certain that AIDS can be transmitted via osmosis or mere touching. “If that were true, we would have 11 million cases of AIDS instead of 11,000,” said Garland Kyle, director of health education at the Gay and Lesbian Community Service Center in Los Angeles.

AIDS was a focus of a 1983 “St. Elsewhere” episode on NBC. And there have been numerous news stories on the subject and some documentary coverage, including a recent “Nova” on PBS. But these had limited impact in contrast to the potential of a TV movie as heavily promotable as “An Early Frost.”

Written by Ron Cowen and Dan Lipman, but still uncast, it is the fictional story of a small-town conservative couple’s discovery that their 29-year-old son has AIDS and is dying. Actually, it is a double trauma for the couple, who also didn’t know their son was gay.

“It must be horrible to find out that your son is going to die of any disease,” executive producer Perry Lafferty said. “But if you superimpose on top of that the fact that he belongs to a group that shares certain ideas about love, well, then you have two conflicts.”

Lafferty, who proposed the story to NBC two years ago, said that it will confront AIDS stereotypes and misconceptions while emphasizing family solidarity.

“I think this will be a crushing emotional experience and the audience will learn that this (AIDS) will probably get a lot worse before it gets better,” Lafferty said. “It took a long time to get a script that wasn’t a lecture on AIDS. That would bore the audience. This reminds me of the good stuff we used to do in the ‘50s--no car chases, no guns, no knives; just people relating to each other.”

There are other avenues for combatting the hysteria and misinformation concerning AIDS. One of them is “For Our Lives,” an extremely valuable 25-minute video that was shown Friday at the American Film Institute’s Mark Goodson Theater as part of the L.A. International Gay & Lesbian Film/Video Festival.

Co-produced by Garland Kyle and Michelle Paymar, “For Our Lives” is unsensational and unsentimental, presenting AIDS prevention information and interviews with health professionals and AIDS victims.

Paymar, who also directed “For Our Lives,” has tried unsuccessfully to interest PBS in the video and is now talking to British and German TV.

“This is a non-gay issue,” Kyle said. “AIDS is not as widespread in Europe, but the majority of its victims there are heterosexual.”

He also cited the example of Helen and Jerry Kushnick, a Los Angeles couple whose 3-year-old son, Sammy, died of complications from AIDS in 1983. County health officials blamed contaminated blood Sammy received in a transfusion after birth in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. The Kushnicks are suing the hospital.

“I don’t see AIDS as any different from cancer or hepatitis--it’s a disease,” Helen Kushnick said on an AIDS-focused episode of the Lifetime cable call-in series “America Talks Back.” “The moment it started to hit kids, hemophiliacs and others, it started to become a bigger priority,” said Midge Costanza, another guest on the show.

The program drew to a close with host Stanley Siegel throwing up his hands in despair. “I’m used to cancer,” he said. “I’m used to heart attacks . . . the atomic bomb. . . . Life is so complicated. . . . Why do we have to have AIDS?”

Gary Fifield fought hard, surviving four years after being diagnosed as suffering from AIDS, more than double the survival expectancy of most AIDS victims. “His body just wore down, and he decided to let go,” said his sister, Lillene, who lives in Los Angeles. “He looked up at me, and his eyes and face were so peaceful. Then he didn’t take another breath.”

Gary was cremated. A few days later, Lillene, Gary’s mother and four friends took a boat a few miles out on the Pacific Ocean. They sang some original songs about living and loving and letting go. Lillene read some lines she had written about her brother, and she read the 23rd Psalm. Then she released Gary’s ashes into the sea.