Together in Tragedy : It Took 49 Years and the Death of Two Sons With AIDS to Introduce Women Who’d Been Placentia Neighbors; Now They Have a Friendship and a Cause

For two women who have had so much in common for so many years, it’s remarkable their paths didn’t cross sooner.

*

For 49 years, Clairee Tynes and Ellie Brown lived in Placentia, barely three miles apart. Both love the arts, enjoy painting and have been active in community affairs. Each has raised five children. Each had a son who loved music and attended Cal State Fullerton before heading to New York City to pursue fame and fortune in the theater.

And both women also know the pain of losing those sons to AIDS. It is, in fact, the bond that finally brought them together in July, just days after Brown’s son, Tom, died at age 34.

“One of Tom’s old music teachers came to visit him (while he was ill), and while she was here she asked me if I knew Clairee,” recalls Brown, 67, who now lives in Anaheim Hills with her husband, Bill.

“I think everyone in Placentia knew of the Tynes family. Clairee’s husband was the superintendent of schools. His signature is on Tom’s high school diploma. Clairee and I probably passed in the grocery store 100 times over the years, but somehow we never met.”

That all changed when the teacher, Carol Reynolds, mentioned that Tynes’ son Bill, who had also been one of her students, died of AIDS in 1987. She told Brown that Tynes had written a book called “The Miracle of Bill: A Family Confronts AIDS,” a 92-page paperback that chronicles her 30-year-old son’s battle with the disease and the impact it had on her family. Reynolds called Tynes and asked her to send Brown a copy of the book.

“The book really touched me,” Brown recalls. “I identified with it so much. As I read it, I remember thinking that you could just change some of the names and it would be my story. The similarities in our sons’ lives and in our own feelings and experiences were profound.”

Tom Brown died only a few days after his mother had read Tynes’ book. Clairee Tynes said she felt compelled to attend the memorial service.

“Even though I didn’t know Ellie or her son, I couldn’t not go. I just felt I had to be there” says Tynes, 75, who lives with her husband, John, in the home they built in 1950.

*

After the service, the Rev. David Baumann, the priest who performed the memorial, mentioned to Brown that he’d seen Tynes at the service.

“I thought it was so wonderful that she had come, and we tried to find her,” Brown remembers, “but she’d already left.”

The women finally met face to face a week later on Tynes’ front porch, when Brown dropped off a cassette of songs composed by Tom Brown. Tynes was helping plan an interfaith service as part of the AIDS Memorial Quilt display at Cal State Fullerton and had called Brown for permission to use the music.

“Tom’s twin brother, Jim, sat in the car while Clairee and I stood on the front porch and gave each other a big hug,” Brown remembers. “We only talked for maybe five minutes, but Clairee told me her idea of starting a support group in North Orange County for people with AIDS and those who love them. I offered to do whatever I could to help make it happen.”

Since that morning, the women have become fast friends.

Tynes has shared plenty of stories with Brown about Bill, who was the founder and artistic director of the New Amsterdam Theatre Company in New York. She’s talked about how Bill and his friends held a birthday party every year for his idol, actress Irene Dunne, and how much she enjoyed going to New York to help her son right before his productions opened, even if it only meant ironing his shirts and running errands.

Brown has done her share of reminiscing, too, telling Tynes about her many trips to New York to visit Tom, whose best-known song, “John Wesley Oliver Junior,” was performed by Joel Grey on the nationally TV special “In A New Light” less than two weeks before Brown died.

But the women have done much more than relive the past. Tynes decided to launch the support group and invited Brown to become a member of the steering committee.

That seven-member committee held its first meeting in early December. Twenty days later, the first People With AIDS, Etc.: A Place to Talk support group officially met. The group, which meets on the second and fourth Mondays of the month at the Episcopal Church of the Blessed Sacrament in Placentia, has grown rapidly. Its largest meeting was attended by 16 people, but attendance is expected to grow as word-of-mouth spreads.

“Clairee and Ellie are unlikely activists,” says the Rev. Fergus Clarke, a priest at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church and a member of the steering committee that meets twice each month. “They’re able to break down barriers and reach people that others might not. They also provide a sense of safety and support that’s very nurturing to those who attend. They have a lot in common, and they seem to provide a nice balance for each other.”

Although neither Brown nor Tynes considers herself an activist, both women say they’re committed to creating an environment of tolerance and understanding in the community.

“It seems there’s more help and acceptance in South County,” observes Tynes, who pins a large red sequined AIDS awareness ribbon-- a gift Brown made for her--on her blouse every morning. “Up here (in North County), it seems like everyone has their head in the ground. We wanted to do something to erase the stigma of AIDS and liberate people with AIDS from the isolation they often experience.”

“Silence is a prison,” Brown adds. “Providing a place to talk for people who want and need it is very important. It gives everyone involved, including Clairee and me, a sense of strength and perspective and purpose.

“I don’t necessarily want to talk about Tom’s illness and death every day, but I do think that to help other people in pain eases my own.”

*

At the group’s most recent meeting, Tynes says, the discussion focused on the benefits and risks of disclosing one’s HIV status or AIDS diagnosis to family and friends. Although it’s been nine years since Tynes learned her son had AIDS, she says she identifies with the fears and concerns of those struggling with such decisions. She says she knows from experience that the ignorance and judgment surrounding AIDS can be as devastating as the disease.

Tynes said one of her sons-in-law forbade his wife and their children from visiting the Tynes household if Bill had been there. “She didn’t come until after he died. None of the kids came. We didn’t have any kind of personal contact, and all because of a lack of understanding.”

The memories linger, and they’re still painful enough to provoke tears.

“Back in 1984, they were a lot less sure how you communicated this disease,” Tynes said. “We called our doctor before Bill came to visit and he told us to boil the towels and use different bathrooms. Everyone was so afraid. I didn’t blame the other kids, because they were concerned for their own children, but it made it very hard. I know the pain it can cause in a family. It still does.”

Now that the group has been launched, Tynes and Brown are planning some time for play. In May they will be taking their first trip together--to New York. They’ll leave their husbands behind and head East for a trip unlike any either has ever taken.

They’ll visit the theater company Bill Tynes founded. They’ll pay a visit to Tom Brown’s partner, Frank Wulf, a Methodist minister who is earning his doctorate at Columbia. They’ll also see Broadway shows and visit many of the friends each met through her son.

Despite the excitement of their pending journey, Brown says she expects the visit to be bittersweet, especially for Tynes, who hasn’t been to New York in the six years since her son’s death.

“I think it’ll be quite moving for both of us,” Brown says. “But it’ll also be a chance to just have some fun and take joy in the fact that we met and that we’re doing something in our sons’ memories that’s making a difference in people’s lives.

“Clairee and I have often joked that Bill and Tom are probably both up there looking over the banister saying ‘Look at her! That’s my mom.’ I can’t help but think that they’d be as proud of us as we were of them.”