Bay Area Reporter - April 30, 2009
Liz Highleyman, liz@black-rose.com

Mr. Cusick, who was on the liver transplant waiting list, died in hospice care at UCSF Parnassus Medical Center in the company of family and friends. He was 50.

"Dan was the 'Angel of Castro Street,'" said fellow activist Matt Sharp. "He saved many, many people and made lives more bearable for the living because it was the right thing to do, not for himself. He's one of those people it's hard to imagine not being among the living and the fighting."

One of nine siblings, Mr. Cusick was born in 1959 and raised in Lakewood, California, in Los Angeles County. He graduated from Lakewood High School and attended Long Beach City College. During his 20s, he worked as a banquet waiter at the Hyatt Hotel and as a bartender at Ripples in Long Beach. He was involved in the anti-nuclear movement, frequently protesting against the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in San Luis Obispo. A fan of retro cars and low-riders, he enjoyed attending auto shows.

Mr. Cusick became clean and sober at age 26, and in 1990 - at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic - he moved to San Francisco and immersed himself in activism, including fighting for wider availability and lower prices for medications for people with HIV.

Mr. Cusick joined ACT UP/Golden Gate (later renamed Survive AIDS) and volunteered with the treatment advocacy organization Project Inform, counseling people who called the group's pioneering HIV treatment hotline. Guided by the late Jeff Getty and the late Martin Delaney, Survive AIDS and Project Inform played a key role in making organ transplants accessible to HIV-positive individuals.

A long-term AIDS survivor himself, Mr. Cusick developed progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy or PML, an often fatal brain disease that he survived thanks to early access to combination antiretroviral therapy in the mid-1990s - an experience chronicled in a July 8, 1996 Time magazine article on the new HAART "cocktail" treatment.

"Dan's activism was always based on seeking truth and justice," said friend and housemate Victor Valdiviezo. "He was proud of being gay and of his Irish heritage, but he was definitely colorblind and a kindred spirit to so many social justice causes."

Mr. Cusick was active in the Long Beach and San Francisco recovery communities, and he is widely remembered for his unfailing encouragement of others. Starting in 2002, he managed the Castro Country Club (now a program of Baker Places Inc.), a clean and sober social space in the heart of the Castro neighborhood that offers an alternative to the bar scene and provides support to individuals seeking a life free of alcohol and drugs. In addition, he was a member of Mayor Gavin Newsom's crystal methamphetamine task force.

"For the past six years, Dan managed the Castro Country Club with the qualities of character that he brought to the rest of his life: generosity, thoughtfulness, absolute dedication and commitment, focus, and a resolute hopefulness in people and their possibilities," said Baker Places Executive Director Jonathan Vernick.

"Dan was an old-school activist, but it was through his daily work that he showed the way - listening to someone in trouble, offering some tough love mixed with his trademark humor, and in so many other ways," said longtime friend and housemate Terry Beswick, a former assistant editor at the Bay Area Reporter. "Dan truly gave his life for the well-being of the community, and his spirit will live on through countless others."

Mr. Cusick, along with the late Hank Wilson, was a driving force in the 1999 write-in mayoral campaign of state Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) - then a city supervisor - against incumbent Mayor Willie Brown. At the 2008 Castro Street Fair, Mr. Cusick was sainted by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

"When you look at the totality of Dan's work, he saved more lives than anyone I know," said Michael Lauro, another longtime community activist. "He had a heart large enough to save the world."

Mr. Cusick is survived by five brothers, two sisters, many extended family members, numerous friends, and his beloved dog, Ricky. On the evening of his death, a memorial shrine was created at the corner of Castro and 18th Street. A memorial service will take place May 30 at the Most Holy Redeemer Church at 100 Diamond Street. Donations in his memory may be made to the Castro Country Club.

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