David Zeitlin; AIDS Activist

David Zeitlin, who spearheaded the Los Angeles County Medical Assn.’s controversial billboard project advising use of condoms to prevent AIDS, has died of cancer. He was 72.

Bob Calverley, a friend and family spokesman, said Zeitlin died Thursday at his Brentwood home after a long battle with cancer of the stomach and esophagus.

Zeitlin had organized and defended the doctors’ 1987 billboard ads that said: “If You Can’t Say No . . . Use Condoms (Rubbers), Help Prevent AIDS.”

When a Santa Monica-based women’s group, the American Assn. of Women, objected to the billboards for undermining “traditional family values,” Zeitlin retorted that the women were “fanatics and completely misguided.”

“I’m personally proud as hell of what we did with the campaign,” Zeitlin told the Los Angeles Times.

The doctors had raised $10,000 to pay for the signs on about 100 billboards donated for a brief time by two companies, Gannett Outdoor and the Winston Group.

Zeitlin was born in Bridgeport, Conn., and began writing for newspapers when he was 12. After graduating from the University of Michigan, he enlisted in the Marine Corps the day before Pearl Harbor was bombed. He was decorated for action in the Solomon Islands and for being wounded during fighting on Guam. He later achieved the rank of colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve.

Zeitlin wrote and edited for Life magazine from 1945 to 1967, produced films for Universal Studios, and switched to public relations in 1974.

He served as director of communications for the medical association from 1978 until his retirement two years ago.

Zeitlin is survived by his wife of 40 years, Harriet, three children and five grandchildren.