Credit for Rescuing AIDS Agency Should Go Where It’s Due

I first joined AIDS Project Los Angeles in June, 1983, as a volunteer and was hired as their first director of volunteers six months later. I continued with the agency until 1989 and witnessed many changes.

I must take exception to the conclusion presented in your article (Times, Nov. 24) that Stephen Bennett is responsible for bringing the agency from the brink of bankruptcy. Although I had many differences with Frank Paradise, interim director of the agency before Mr. Bennett, it is my determination that it was he, not Mr. Bennett, who pulled APLA out of the hole.

To attribute this turnaround to Mr. Bennett is, in my estimation, completely erroneous. He was after the fact. He merely built on what Mr. Paradise was able to achieve.

Credit should be given where it is due, and it is not with Mr. Bennett.

DAN MORIN, West Hollywood