Bay Windows - February 15, 2006
Ethan Jacobs, ejacobs@baywindows.com

Larry Kessler, founder of the AIDS Action Committee, announced Feb. 15 that he will step down from his role as founding director after more than two decades with the organization.

"It seemed like a good time to retire because things are going so well here, and you never want to leave when things aren't going well," said Kessler. "I think change is always good, and when I started at AIDS Action I never thought I'd be here 23 years. I initially thought it was going to be a three-year project, and then I thought I'd stay for five.... At 20 years I thought, first chance I can I'm going to move on, and it seems like that moment."

Back in 1983 Kessler and 15 volunteers launched AIDS Action in a cramped office in the basement of Fenway Community Health Center when the epidemic was first beginning to flare up in the Boston area. He oversaw the creation of many vital services for people living with AIDS in the early days of the epidemic, from AIDS Action's hotline to volunteer outreach for AIDS patients in hospitals to housing programs for people living with AIDS. In 1986 AIDS Action launched the AIDS Walk, one of the organization's largest fundraising efforts.

In addition to overseeing the creation of some of the first HIV/AIDS services, Kessler was also willing to challenge the status quo. At a time when hospital workers would don masks and gloves before they would treat people with AIDS, Kessler and the AIDS Action volunteers refused to treat people dying from the disease as less than human, only taking the precautions of frequent hand washing, as well as masks if the patient had a violent cough. In 1987 when the state Legislature threatened to cut AIDS Action's funding because the organization had produced sexually-explicit prevention pamphlets, AIDS Action stood its ground, telling lawmakers that no state funds had been used to create the pamphlets and that the organization would continue to use sexually-explicit materials for their prevention efforts. The Legislature ultimately chose not to cut AIDS Action's funding over the pamphlets.

In 2002, Kessler stepped down from his role as executive director and assumed the post of founding director. In that position Kessler has taken on a variety of duties, from helping evaluate AIDS Action's programs by offering an historical perspective on how they were originally designed to working with major donors to doing political advocacy.

Kessler officially steps down April 30, but he does not intend to give up activism. He said he has not made any final decision on what he will do, but he hopes to do work that builds on his previous activism both during and prior to his time at AIDS Action, either on senior issues, HIV/AIDS work, advocacy within the Catholic Church, or on other causes that he has worked to support.

In Kessler's time at AIDS Action he has seen the organization grow from about a dozen clients to more than 2500. Kessler said that among staff and volunteers the dedication and compassion is just as strong as it was in the early days of the epidemic. In watching staff work with clients over the years he said "that the level of commitment to them is still there in the same way it was in 1983. The difference is, now we have more to offer. We have more answers than we did then."

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