'Expect A Miracle': A Pandemic And A Boiling Point

Speaker 1: 00:00 Filmmaker, Jonathan Hammond did not set out to release a pandemic documentary during a pandemic. His new film expect a miracle is about the long history of the elephant forest, nonprofit fraternity house. So hospice for people dying of AIDS. It's also a Chronicle of the AIDS crisis in San Diego. In the early 1980s, Speaker 2: 00:20 people started to get sick and die around us. Speaker 3: 00:24 Then a miracle sort of happened when she read one of the AIDS watch articles. And it was an article about this house in North County. Most of the people who had been rejected by their families, like we were, their family Speaker 2: 00:38 miracles do happen, but they don't happen unless people take action. Speaker 1: 00:44 The film was produced as part of the KPBS explore project and it premieres tonight on KPBS television at nine o'clock. Jonathan Hammond joins me now welcome Jonathan very much for having me. So now, what was it about this story that, that made you realize back then that you wanted to make a whole documentary out of it? Speaker 4: 01:05 As I went up to fraternity house to make a Grant's video. And when I walked in the doors, I didn't know. I didn't know what it was. And I walked in the doors and I was hit by this really strong, really mysterious, overwhelming emotion. And I looked at my hosts and I said, what is this place? And she explain to me, you know, this is a place where people who had AIDS and had, uh, they're rejected by their families or had nowhere else to go, would come. And it, it just really, really struck me. And I wrote to her and they were just reflexively sad, trying to make a documentary about this. What I found interesting was it wasn't so much that people came to die. It was the fact that people stepped up and like took care of them and they created a whole house for it. Speaker 1: 01:57 So it was about not just the people who lived there, but the people who chose to go there and work there. Yeah. So, so this documentary does, is it takes us really on a journey through the AIDS pandemic in San Diego. Tell us about some of the individuals that you spoke with. What do they have to tell you about life in San Diego? When AIDS struck back in the early eighties? Speaker 4: 02:19 I thought it was very important just for the context to speak with various AIDS, historians and, um, politicians and activists, just so they can, like I said, just give context and their interviews were so compelling and ended up becoming, um, a substantial part of the documentary. And I spoke to Susan and Justin. Sure. Who is the founder of AIDS walk? Speaker 1: 02:44 Yes. We have a clip here from Susan jester who was the first openly gay San Diego city commissioner. Let's hear what she had to say on your documentary. Speaker 2: 02:53 People started to get sick and die around us and quickly, all of a sudden somebody had scars on their body or somebody had pneumonia or somebody had, uh, some strange infection and then three days later, or a month later, they were dead. Speaker 1: 03:13 What were people fighting the AIDS epidemic up against back then, you know, socially and politically, and with the health, what was it like for a gay person to get that diagnosis in the early eighties? Speaker 4: 03:24 Well, I think that it pretty much would have been the worst thing you could hear. Um, because as, as what's addressed in a documentary, if you, most people weren't really out. So if you had that diagnosis, it was also an issue of coming out. And of course there was no medicine. There was no treatment. There was very, very little hope. And you knew that you were probably going to die. You're going to die soon and you're going to die badly. I'm the president of the United States did not even say the word AIDS until his last year in office. So you had the stringent concern of a religious community fighting against you. You had society fighting against you, you had basic issues of homophobia. And on top of that, you had, um, prejudices of having AIDS within the gay community. It was literally like an avalanche of awfulness. Speaker 1: 04:21 So in that context, you know, it's, it really is a bit of a miracle that fraternity has emerged. How did it come to be, to care for AIDS patients? Speaker 4: 04:30 Exactly. Well, there's a man named Ray Byerly who had a citrus farm in Texas and it went belly up. So he moved to San Diego and became a nurse's aid. And he was one of the only people who would actually treats in the facility he was working for would actually treat people HIV. And it really affected him. And so he started letting them live with him and double shifts over time to get a house where you could put young men who were dying of AIDS and housed them and give them a place to basically die with dignity and love. Eventually it became a nonprofit and he moved on to start Byerly house in San Diego, but that's pretty much how it was. He knew people who had nowhere to go and he had to take the flack himself. Speaker 1: 05:21 Right. You mentioned earlier that you were very, you found the stories of the people who work there are very compelling. Why did they tell you they do this work? Speaker 4: 05:30 I think everyone has a different story and everyone has a different reason. Lisa Lipsey, her, uh, uncle. She was a girl when her uncle had to move into fraternity house and he passed away there. Um, and I think that sort of activated, uh, I need to, uh, be part of that. So she went on to become the director of communications and it's on the board. Now, one lady just stumbled upon it accidentally. And then she would just check in and ended up becoming the, uh, the director of the board. One man had 40 friends die of AIDS. And so he just wanted to do something to help and hemming, um, the house manager, all these people have, you know, obviously really good hearts. And Speaker 1: 06:19 how was the work of fraternity house transformed now that the disease is much more treatable? Speaker 4: 06:26 AIDS has stopped being a death sentence is more of a life sentence. Um, the function of fraternity house also changed and it still wanted to give baths. So it, it started to take in, um, every once again, everyone is from different backgrounds has a different story. Um, but many of the residents, uh, are from the streets. Um, many of them are, uh, have mental issues. Many of them just need a little extra help. So it's a place where people it's still come to die, but now it's more a place where people come to live and to rehabilitate. Speaker 1: 07:06 So what can you generations learn from this pandemic and the activism that resulted from it? Why is it important to study this history? Speaker 4: 07:15 Well, um, I think there's many reasons for that. If you, if you're talking with, um, the activists, I call them the witnesses, the people who are around at the time, they were still hungry for the story to be told and to get out there because we know the generalities of what happened, but we don't know some of the details, which are just as compelling and strong. But also I think it's important for people to know this history because there will always be something there'll always be a prejudice and there will always be really, really dark times. And as we know in these times, we are living in the middle of a pandemic and what we can learn is that people actually, they stepped up, they learned that they needed to formulate a plan and they were able to, um, change hearts minds. They were able to literally move a mountain, um, to save the next generation. So that's something we always need to be reminded of that even in the darkness, there is lights and more importantly that you can be the light. Speaker 1: 08:19 Jonathan, thank you so much. Thank you very much. I've been speaking with filmmaker, Jonathan Hammond, and the KPBS explore project film expect to miracle premiers tonight on KPBS television at nine o'clock. And it also streams on the PBS video app.