The man who ran for their lives

IN THE EARLY 1980S, AS AIDS BEGAN TO SPREAD THROUGH New York’s gay community, Brent Nicholson Earle was living openly in the city he adored.

- BY CHRISTINA RAY STANTON

Brent Nicholson Earle enters New York City's Union Square on Oct. 31, 1987

One morning, after a long night out dancing at the Saint, record executive and nightclub boss Mel Cheren stopped Earle with a challenge that would change his life. “If all you’re doing is taking,” Cheren said, “you’re not really part of us. You have to give something back. And your community is in trouble. Figure out what you can do to help.”

Earle watched helplessly as friends fell ill. Then he came up with an idea so improbable it bordered on absurd; he would run the perimeter of the continental United States—9,000 miles, roughly 20 miles a day—to raise awareness for AIDS. He called his journey A.R.E.A.—the American Run for the End of AIDS. At the time, the AIDS epidemic was shrouded in fear, misinformation, and political silence. Many Americans viewed AIDS as someone else’s problem. Earle challenged the country to look directly at the crisis and at the people being abandoned. As cuts to HIV prevention and treatment programs threaten to unravel years of progress, Earle’s story testifies to the power of courageous action.

Born in 1951, Earle grew up in Lockport, N.Y., traveling into Manhattan as a teenager for theater and the freedom of gay New York. He visited the Stonewall Inn before it became synonymous with resistance, and happened to be barhopping nearby the night police raids erupted into the 1969 uprising. “I saw the mob forming,” he recalled. “Garbage cans being thrown. I wanted to join the fight, but my friends pulled me away.” By the late 1970s, Earle was co-creating plays with composer Peter Link and studying under the famed acting teacher Uta Hagen. He embraced long-term relationships and built a tight-knit group of friends.