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Learn more at charner.com/marozo.

(expressive piano music continues) And Julia V. And Reuel M. Jordan.

(gentle music) - I live with ghosts.

I think there are several ghosts in my building to begin with, and then I've created my own.

I'd lost 25 friends during those 20 months.

I lost that many again every year, and more, up until 1991, which was the highest personal fatality year.

I lost 42 people in one year, and '92 wasn't much better, I lost 37 that year.

Whenever I mention any of these numbers to anyone who didn't live through it, I can see the look of disbelief in their eyes.

You know, they can't begin to comprehend it.

And if you haven't lived through a plague or a war, I guess it's really hard to imagine it.

I mean, I've lived through it, and I can barely imagine it.

(slow tense music) October 14th, 1984, I have decided to leave New York and embark upon a run around America for AIDS.

Today I also smoked my last joint, (chuckles) at least until after the Olympics.

(chuckles) - Now, let's talk a little bit about what inspired you to do this.

- He said, "I had a message from my father," and Brent really never talked about his dad.

I said, "Oh, really?

(laughs) What did he have to say, Brent?"

He said, "You know, Anita, I've been trying to figure out what to do about all my friends who are sick and how to respond in a positive way, 'What can I do?'"

- [Dave] He was running sometime in Central Park, and he got this idea.

- This vision or this dream that he had that he's supposed to run around the country to fight the AIDS epidemic.

- And I didn't get what he meant, of course.

Who would get what he meant?

He just woke up one morning and went, "I'm drowning in grief.

All my friends are dying.

No one seems to care.

I'm gonna do something about this."

- We had all lost people to AIDS, and in the 80s we had really no other way to respond to the epidemic.

And I think his response was, "Why not run?"

- I could run from New York to San Francisco.

That's not gonna do much good.

Back in '84, the entire country thought it was only New York and San Francisco's problem.

Some gay guy running for AIDS is not gonna cut it.

It's not gonna get people's attention.

I've got to run something unprecedented.

I have to run the furthest distance ever attempted by a human being, right?

No one had been insane enough to think of running the perimeter of the US.

- It's really 10,000 miles around the United States, and parts of Canada.

I'm running around the country to hopefully circle the country with a net of concern.

To try and send a message to the country that you may not think that AIDS is in your community, but it's on its way.

- And I said, "What?"

- Did you have a lot of training?

Are you having a lot of training before?

- There's one little problem here, you're not a runner.

- He had never run a day in his life.

I'm sure he told you that, right?

- And he was gonna run 20 miles a day for 20 months.

- I don't think he ever really put two and two together, how many miles he would actually run and how long it would take.

- Usually you would hear people running shorter distance, maybe over a few weeks or a month, but not around the perimeter of that massive country, knowing it would take almost two years to do that.

- And I thought it was just an idea, and that he would come up with a more practical idea.

Silly me.

(chuckles) - Brent Nicholson Earle has already raised $600,000 to fight the disease AIDS, and now as Magee Hickey reports, he's running for someone else's life.

- This is a run to save lives, but it's also a run to honor lives.

- [Reporter] The 35-year-old antiques dealer and playwright has lost 20 friends to the disease in the past four years.

So now he's fighting back, A.R.E.A., as it's called.

He hopes to run 10,000 miles in the next year and a half.

- This felt as much like a finish line as a start because of all that we had gone through over the year and a half it had taken to get us to this point.

- [Reporter] His mother, a retired school teacher from the Buffalo area, will be with him all the way, driving the car in front that will set the pace.

- I am thrilled beyond words.

I think he's doing one of the finest things he could possibly do.

He's standing up for the rights of people.

- I remember calling her up and saying, "Well, you'll never guess what I'm up to now."

She didn't miss a beat.

She said, "Well, I guess I'm gonna have to go with you."

I said, "What?"

She says, "Well, who's gonna take care of you while you're doing all this running?

I mean, who's gonna make sure you're eating right?

Who's gonna do all that laundry?"

I went, "Mm, she's got a point there."

(chuckles) So from almost the get-go, mom was part of the project.

- Let's sing "Amazing Grace" together.

♪ Amazing grace ♪ How sweet - [Reporter] So, on this clear, crisp Saturday afternoon with some friends for support for the first few miles, Earle started his journey by heading north up the West Side over the George Washington Bridge, and then up towards Maine.

Earle hopes to run 20 miles a day across the upper United States in warm weather, with a target of getting over the Rockies by late summer and reaching the Pacific Northwest in early autumn.

What are you gonna be thinking about as you run?

- The spirit.

The spirit that drives all of us to to do something for a cause, to care about each other.

I'm gonna be thinking about a lot of my friends who I've lost.

♪ I see (cars whooshing) Allan Sobek, (tab clicks) Keith Haring.

- Raul Martinez.

- One of the ideas that I'm playing with is just start with names of people who've died.

I want to connect the run with "Why?"

Why the run?

Right from the top.

It could just be a one man show, Brent.

But for many reasons, I didn't think that was the best idea.

I'm thinking of it as a relay race of performers that take the baton from you- - Cool.

- to help tell your story.

So, there's opera singers and dancers and musical theater singers, pop singers, who literally step into Brent's shoes.

(upbeat piano music) - I play Brent.

- I'm playing Brent.

- I'm playing Brent.

- Among others, including Marion, his mother.

- And Brent is also playing himself.

- I don't have a very strong ticker anymore.

I feared that, you know, I might not make it, and I didn't know if the story would ever be told otherwise.

(pensive piano music) Is that too fast?

- Yeah, I think it's too fast.

Let's try it again.

Let's try it again.

Let's go back to the beginning.

- But then doing a theatrical piece was very exciting to me because I'm a man of the theater.

(gentle upbeat music) Every Christmas, every Easter, I went to New York by myself for these theater junkets, you know?

And also to try and figure out who I was sexually.

The best I could even pick up at all, it was like, you know, Andy Warhol films in the Back of "The Village Voice."

Of course, there was a whole subculture going on that I was not aware of.

That all changed When I was 17 I went to see a Tennessee Williams bomb called "The Seven Descents of Myrtle."

I met this fellow at intermission.

I count him as my first encounter because it was the first man that I got horizontal in bed with.

It was Easter weekend, and he said he was having friends over the next day on Easter Sunday, and did I want to come over?

And so, not only did I have my first encounter, I had my first experience of being part of gay culture.

And, of course, we watched "Easter Parade," with Judy Garland and Fred Astaire, and then ordered in pizza.

And then they said they were going to the bar, did I wanna go with them?

And I went, "Mm, okay, sure."

And, of course, that bar was the Stonewall Inn, my very first gay bar.

It was as divey and seedy as everybody describes it as being.

But the second room had a dance floor, and it also had the most bizarre, incongruous wishing well, and leaning against that was the most gorgeous thing I'd ever beheld.

He was a junior at Carnegie Mellon in architecture, and I thought he was the cat's pajamas.

And don't you know, he approached me and asked me if I wanted to dance.

And this was, where you could literally slow dance with another guy, it was pretty much unheard of, and you're risking arrest by doing so.

- So, how are you going to run 10,000 miles across the United States?

- One step at a time and one day at a time.

The first month was kind of a free-for-all, problems arose with one of our road managers, cruising too much in the gay bars, and then hooking up and then not showing up.

This was not going to work.

- A friend of mine, says, "We need another road manager out on the road."

(chuckles) And so I was like, "Well, what do I need to do?"

They're like, "Well, you live in a Winnebago with his mother."

I'm like, "Okay."

(chuckles) "He runs a marathon every day, six days a week.

You have to help set up press conferences, you have to keep everyone on schedule."

And I was like, "Oh, I can do that."

And so I showed up in Vermont.

They were running when I got there.

Dove right in, and that was the first time I met him or his mother.

- The first thing was to get up early in the morning.

He had his routine of getting ready to do the run, stretching, eating a little bit.

- And then while Brent would kind of be doing his thing, we'd just lay out the bread and make sandwiches, have water bottles with electrolytes in them too.

And sets of clothes, 'cause he would sweat, right?

And so when we'd break for lunch, it'd just be salt encrusted, right?

So he would change.

And we always had an extra pair of shoes, and the band-aids, whatever he needed.

So we'd get the car packed.

- The pace car was challenging because you could only go about five miles an hour, which her Buick was not designed to do.

Plus you had to be on the side of the road with your lights flashing.

- We would try to take two people in the pace car 'cause you'd get tired, right?

Driving... And if you could switch, it was helpful.

And also just helpful to have someone else talking.

- I had my Walkman, and I had made inspirational mixtapes for myself that would invariably bring up a lot of emotion, especially as the death toll started to mount with the miles.

I would often plan my breaks between those 45 minutes and turning the tape over.

The rest of the time when we were in a community, we would be outreaching.

Sometimes they organized potlucks, or we were visiting AIDS hospices.

- Wherever he went to a community meeting or a gay bar where the local gay community had organized something, he was welcomed with loving arms.

And I don't know how they did it, but at the end of the day, at the end of the run, they sold t-shirts and buttons there.

- So you were constantly tired.

Not as tired as Brent.

(chuckles) - [Cara] And let's go on.

- Although I'd arrived in New York on the crest of the first wave of gay liberation, I wasn't involved in social causes.

I was pursuing my dream of having a career in the theater.

(upbeat music) In the wake of "The Boys in the Band" having opened, and there was just these series of what I dubbed "gay male nudey cuties," plays that were nothing more than just a framework for guys to take their clothes off on the stage.

And that led to my first job in the theater, what was a play called "And Puppy Dog Tails."

I was house manager and understudy.

I did go on, yes.

(laughing) And the clothes came off.

Fortunately, I auditioned and got accepted by Uta Hagen.

She is the greatest acting teacher I've ever known.

- I was obviously destined to a life in the theater.

(all laughing) I did my first puppet performance at the age of five on my front porch and I directed "H.M.S.

Pinafore" in the third grade.

- [Cara] Tell me about some of the challenges being an actor in New York.

- The greatest challenge is that rejection.

You know, that feeling of nobody wants you.

And I think that's what led me to starting to write.

When you don't get the part, it's your ability, it's the way you look or whatever is not making it, is not measuring up.

If they reject the play, it's your baby, but it's still not you.

At an audition, in 1971, I met Broadway dancer, Allan Sobek.

He was resisting me for quite a while, but I finally won him over.

The early years with Al were really, really terrific.

- Brent and his partner, Allan, at the time, were probably our best friends.

We were living in Manhattan Plaza, which was a high-rise for performing artists.

It was a really fun time to be in New York City.

It was almost like the show "Friends," although we didn't have a coffee house.

We had a gay couple thrown in there, which is probably a more authentic friends in New York City.

They would always come over to our house.

We would go on vacations together, we'd go out dancing together.

We were not disco people, but Brent said, "You gotta come to The Saint!

The Saint's the best place to dance!

Oh my God, you just get lost in your dancing!

You gotta go!"

- When I walked in there, my mind was blown, totally blown.

Immediately, there were these two like electronic coat checks, like on conveyor belts.

(guitar strums) ♪ Two electronic coat checks (guitar strums) ♪ Like conveyor belts (guitar strums) ♪ World's biggest mirror ball (guitar strums) ♪ Spinning above us Bruce Mailman had had seen this in a dream, people dancing under a planetarium dome with the stars over their head.

And that's what he created.

♪ Stars over head ♪ The Saint changed my life - When Brent started talking about The Saint, I really couldn't imagine what it was like.

When he said, "We danced for four or five hours," I thought, "No, he's exaggerating," because, you know, Brent can exaggerate.

(laughing) You might not know that yet, but you'll find out.

♪ The Saint changed my life - The orchestra of the theater, all the seats had been taken out.

It was just these banquettes and hydraulic in the middle.

And then they kept the proscenium arch.

♪ In this old theater (indistinct) ♪ ♪ The orchestra of the theater ♪ All the seats taken out - So Jackie and Anita Ross, and several other friends would meet with Brent, and we would dance till four o'clock in the morning.

♪ Banquettes and hydraulics - Some great dancers.

Oh my God.

I learned a lot about how to dance better, (chuckles) you know, from going to The Saint.

- Kind of no boundaries, no holds barred.

- You didn't feel inhibited at all.

- You just go out on the dance floor, and you just got lost.

- Unlike Studio 54, a whole different vibe.

The energy was not about being seen, it was about being included.

♪ The balcony!

They called it heaven ♪ (gentle music) ♪ Until it wasn't - I love that line in The Saint song that you came up with about "They called it heaven until it wasn't."

- Oh.

(chuckles) - I went, "Oh boy, that's the truth."

♪ The Saint changed my life ♪ The Saint changed my life - It really is this joyful, but bittersweet memory when times were really great before we lost a lot of people that we love.

- The Saint, really, it changed everything.

I mean, it became part of my lifestyle.

And by then I'd met my mentor, Mel Cheren, who was known as "The Godfather of Disco."

And Mel ended up mentoring me into gay night life and into AIDS activism because he was part of that original group of gay men that started Gay Men's Health Crisis.

♪ Ultimate dance palace - Brent and tambourine.

It's like, you know, kids and their cell phone now.

That it was part of his.

Like Darth Vader and his saber, it is Brent and that tambourine.

(chuckles) - [Man] You can do whatever you want.

(all laughing) You're the tambourine man.

As long as you do it with flair!

- None of my friends from Bethany, Missouri, would ever believe that here I am on the dance floor with 200 gay men.

- And I said, "All my fantasies are coming true."

- It was magic.

It really was.

- It was just a joyful time to dance and to be together.

♪ The Saint changed my life!

- How it was done, "The Logistics of the Run" by William Konkoy, executive director A.R.E.A.. - [Bill] My name is Bill.

- [Crowd] Hi, Bill.

- I loved Bill.

Bill was always so calm, because sometimes it was like nuts on the road.

Brent would be having a meltdown.

Marion would be having a meltdown.

(laughing) I would be like, "Bill?"

(laughing) "Bill, I need help."

(laughing) - But I remember I found Bill through a friend of mine who had said, "I know this guy who is just retired from managing the Big Apple Circus."

"Well, hell, if he could manage a circus, he could do this, right?"

"Since the work of the run required the run crew, three to four people, to be in a community for several days, the motor home would be parked and would remain in place for five to seven days while the run progressed toward, through, and out of the town.

This method allowed A.R.E.A.

to become a presence in a community and greatly enhanced our effectiveness."

- And back in those days, we didn't have cell phones, we didn't have email, we didn't have internet.

- I would just be in phone booths, sweating profusely, throwing money in, and I would call New York, talk to Bill Konkoy.

He'd tell me, "All right, you have a press conference," you know, here, here, here, and here.

I'm writing it down.

"Here are your press contacts.

They're expecting to hear from you."

And I would just sit there with change and throw it in and call the press.

I mean, it was very different.

And when we were on the road, there was no having a cell phone as backup, going, "If we're in trouble," you know, "we can call 911."

We would be in the middle of nowhere, going, "Our car is our weapon."

And we just thought if there was anything that we thought would ever be a threat for him, we were like, "We'll just put our foot on the gas and run over (chuckles) whatever was..." You know, that was our solution.

(chuckles) That was our plan.

(chuckles) - [Cindy] Lights.

- Have you ever been afraid out on the road?

- You mean, besides all the snakes?

- Brent was kind of fearless, and that's both a blessing and a curse, because sometimes I think that he didn't understand what some of the dangers, you know, might have been.

I used to always say it was very easy to be a homophobe at 65 miles per hour.

You know, like faggot!

They're cowards.

You know, these bigots, they're cowards.

You know, I'd like one of them to just confront me with their views.

- But those were the days where people were very afraid of anybody that talked about AIDS, so there was that constant danger.

- I thought to myself, "He's gonna have to be running through some conservative communities where AIDS in the middle 80s was a very, very, you know, we had a White House that wasn't even recognizing it.

- I mean, we got a couple of close calls where people, you know, obviously tried to run us off the road, stuff like that, but nobody ever threw anything at me.

- But that was really part of his deal.

He wanted these people to find out, "Yes, we are dealing with this particular disease, and we have to find out more about it.

We do need funding.

We do need a lot of research, we need a lot of education."

He knew that that was gonna go in the face of a lot of adversity as he went around the country.

- We also took our safety very seriously.

So no one ever knew where our Winnebago was parked.

You know, but when we drove, we had these magnets on the side of the car that said "The American run for the end of AIDS."

Like, we were very visible, and he always wore the shirt.

We weren't trying to hide during the run, that's for sure.

- In the beginning, I was more worried about the reports I had to give Brent than the reports I was getting back.

His friends were still dying here, and I had to tell him.

And that was very hard.

(gentle melancholic music) - The fun times with good friends within a matter of two years just changed.

And we're going, "What is that?

They've got it too."

- There was a lot of unknown going on, you know, there was rumor, you know, of what this illness was going on and how to protect yourself and not protect yourself, and if you could get it from kissing.

So I became kind of sterile to the world, and afraid.

Deathly afraid.

- Even those of us who were comfortable in the gay community, I think were scared.

We didn't know.

Nobody knew.

You know, how did you get it?

- In the initial years, a lot of fear and paranoia set in, because there was very little understanding of transmissibility.

You suddenly felt like people, "Oh, you're not gonna hug me hello?

You're not gonna... Where's my kiss?"

- We'd belong to this wonderful health club.

We'd all go and hang out on weekends at the pool.

And you'd start to see some of the gay men, beautiful men who would start to get the big purple Kaposi's sarcoma, and then you'd start to see them wither away.

And I'd forgotten how tragic that was.

- And then there was talk of certain people I was working with.

Some teachers that had this sickness, it wasn't even a disease yet.

And then all of a sudden people just started dropping away and disappearing.

And we're talking like 30 people, you know, would just disappear in like a two-week span.

You just would be gone.

- After I did a show called "The River," I think 5 of the 10 men in the show died of AIDS.

It was nonstop horror.

- I lost over 100 friends, and I watched many, many wonderful, wonderful artists of my generation just go.

- Actors, designers, choreographers, playwrights, directors.

- At that time, living in Manhattan Plaza, whenever anybody in the building passed away, they'd put a little bouquet of flowers with a little card, so-and-so's name and their birthdate and the date they died.

And before the AIDS epidemic, you'd look at those dates and it was always, you know, they were born in 1915 or 1925 or 1930, and they'd lived 70, 80, sometimes 90 years.

And then all of a sudden, they're born in the 1950s, 1960s, when they were dying in their 20s.

- It was after like a double-header where we'd gone to The Saint for several hours and then ended up at the garage.

And Mel called me up that Sunday night and said, "Well, did you have a good time last night?"

I said, "Yeah, I had a ball."

He said, "So, do you enjoy being part of the gay community?"

I said, "Yeah, I do."

"Well, you're not!"

I said, "What do you mean?"

He says, "Well, if all you're doing is taking, you're not really part of the community.

You have to give something back."

He says, "And your community is in trouble, so you better figure out what you can do to help."

Well, I didn't have a clue.

I mean, the thought of becoming like a GMHC buddy for somebody who was sick and dying, I just didn't think I had it in me to be able to do that.

May 5th, 1986, many thoughts fill my head as I head for the area from whence I came.

Fantasies of being welcomed by family and friends.

But what will really happen, a prophet is never accepted by his own people.

- Do you have AIDS?

- One of the questions that was always asked of him was, "Do you have AIDS?

Almost every time that question was asked.

In those days, people were afraid of people who had HIV or AIDS.

- They always asked this.

As if it would be a better story if I was running while I was dying.

- When I would call press, they'd go, "Oh, we did an article on AIDS a year ago," right?

They just didn't see it as an ongoing issue or a problem.

- And sometimes the local papers wouldn't print anything about the run, which was frustrating as all hell.

- One town, the pizza parlor every Friday night became the gay bar, but they would paper all the windows, so no one could see in.

And I remember thinking like, "Wow!

They didn't want anyone to see who they were."

- It was pretty early on I realized, I knew I was gay by the fifth or sixth grade and switching between terror, fear, anxiety, denial.

- I remember very vividly having a crush on him that first year.

There was somebody I could talk with, who was wild and crazy, but already passionately committed to being an actor at that age.

- And trying my darnedest to be a heterosexual.

- Because we were still boyfriend and girlfriend.

- But you know, these sort of things just don't work out.

- Broke my heart.

I cried a lot in that Volkswagen in the bitter winter cold in Michigan that night.

But then I discovered myself, so, you know, it's all good.

- So in the late spring of 1984, I really shook things up in my life.

In spite of the fact that this was definitely not the best time to be getting out of a relationship, will I ever have sex again?

Even so, I severed my emotional and physical ties to Allan.

There were a lot of reasons for our splitting up, but I also had the feeling that there was something waiting to emerge in me, something that couldn't come forth within the safety and comfort of my life with Al.

That same weekend that I was splitting from Al was the gay pride weekend.

I'd heard about the Gay Pride Run, New York Road Runners, and entered the race.

I had never run a race in my life.

And I got my very first race number back.

It was number 605.

To this day, I don't remember what prompted me to do this, but the night before the race, I put the names of five friends that I had already lost to AIDS on that race number.

All of them young fellas, most of them actors.

And while running the race, I couldn't help but think about them.

But at the same time, I felt incredibly grateful to be alive, to be able to experience the glory of Central Park in the summer and to be passing all these hot young guys.

(chuckles) I ran that race in nothing but walking shoes.

They weren't running shoes.

I still look at that photograph of me crossing the finish line, and I go, "I was wearing those?!"

(chuckles) you know, kinda thing.

October 13th, 1984.

Today I ran the Front Runner's Benefit Run for GMHC.

I ran 12 miles, the farthest distance I've ever run.

As we were getting towards the end, I was finally finishing my second loop, shadows were already starting to fall, and the wind picked up and blew all these dead leaves across my path.

And I suddenly had a presentiment.

I suddenly realized, I saw, I saw it, that this was not gonna just devastate the gay community, AIDS was going to take millions of lives.

It still gives me the creeps just thinking about it.

I don't know how, but I saw it.

And not long after, I finished, and I thought I'd die.

(chuckles) I've never felt pain like that in my life.

I mean, every muscle in my body was just screaming.

But at the same time, when I tallied up my pledge sheet, I realized, with the generosity of my friends and the 12 miles that I'd just finished, I'd raised over $500 for GMHC.

And for the first time in my life, I felt empowered around AIDS.

I had a different response to AIDS.

- And it's so remarkable the way Brent chose to fight it.

Brent chose to hop right into it and deal with it and try to recognize where the need was and go do it in a really crazy way.

(chuckles) - I got a call from Mel.

- I need to talk to you.

- Well, why?

- Well, West End Records isn't doing very well, and I've changed my mind about the building.

- [Sarah] What?!

- I'm not gonna do condos anymore.

I'm gonna turn it into a gay bed and breakfast.

Your apartment's no longer viable.

- So I go back to this apartment that I didn't even have a clue of how long I'm gonna be able to hold on to it.

And I'm having what is classically referred to as a dark night of the soul.

I was broke down, and I'm sobbing my eyes out and feeling as lost and confused as I've ever been in my life.

And I found myself reaching out to my dad, who had died of cancer four years before, speaking to him in a way I never could have spoken to him in life.

Coming from his generation, it was all about stoicism.

You didn't express your feelings.

I don't think my dad even never told my mom that he loved her.

Certainly never told me or my sister that he loved us.

Just wasn't done, you know?

Or at least, it wasn't done by him.

But I asked him for help, for guidance, for a sign, and I got a very specific message back.

And that message was "Follow in Terry Fox's footsteps."

That was it.

Well, I dunno if you know who Terry Fox is, but he was a young Canadian lad who had lost his leg to cancer.

And he began something in 1980 called the Marathon of Hope, in which he attempted to run across Canada to race funds for the Canadian Cancer Society.

And he managed to complete more than 3000 miles.

And then unfortunately, his cancer returned, and he subsequently died about a year later.

So I wasn't confused about the message.

I had just run my first benefit run for GMHC.

It was as if my dad was saying, "Do what Terry Fox did for cancer, for AIDS."

I wasn't too happy about this message.

(chuckles) I have to tell you.

(laughing) I'm thinking, "Are you sure you got the right address?"

It's like, you know, I mean, I'd never run a marathon even.

I've just run, the furthest distance I've ever run in my life, 12 miles.

And that hurt like hell.

(laughing) I wished it would go away, but it didn't.

(shoes thudding) People think I'm a little crazy when they hear I'm running 10,000 miles, 20 miles a day for 20 months.

I'm circling the country to deliver the message.

Together, we can stop the spread of AIDS, now!

- [Cara] Who did you tell this idea to?

Who's the first person you said it to out loud?

- Well, it was probably my mom.

I can't remember if it was in news coverage of the run or she'd read it in a newspaper, but it referred to the runner's feisty mother.

(chuckling) And she said, "Feisty, I am not feisty!"

(laughing) - The story goes that his mother was in a laundromat.

- [Cara] One time she was doing laundry in Texas- - [Brent] Oh, great.

- [Cara] I took this story, I stole this from Dave and Tomé.

- Well, I can give you the actual quote.

- [Cara] Oh, good, yeah.

What is it?

- Some Texan there, a nicer old man wanted to strike up a conversation.

- He was a retired army colonel.

- [Cara] Oh!

(chuckles) - He says, "Hey, have you read the newspaper about this crazy guy that's running around the country?

- This damn fool idiot.

(Cara laughing) - To raise awareness about AIDS.

- For AIDS, of all things.

- [Dave] And Marion turns to the fellow and says, - "Would you like to meet the damn fool idiot's mother?"

- Marion, you know, was like this tall, and her personality filled up a room.

She was a big personality, who was a fierce protector of her son.

- They bickered constantly.

You know, obviously, Brent is a very, very strong-willed person.

And I remember him, you know, having the flu or pneumonia or some terrible moment with his health midway through, and he said, "I gotta get up.

I gotta go.

I gotta gotta get ready."

And she said, "You are not getting out of bed today."

And it was one of the few times that he missed a day.

- She was his mother.

You know, at the end of the day, she was his mother.

So she would see his feet in pain.

She would see how exhausted... Brent and Marion, all right, they were a duo.

- They were best friends.

That was always true.

- During the hot weather, it's good to have a spritzer bottle to soak him down.

- She admits that she thought she'd be of most service by, you know, helping with meals and being able to drive her own car (chuckles) behind me.

But then she realized that she had a very particular, very important message for parents during some of the darkest days of the AIDS crisis.

- She was a person of causes, as well, an activist at heart, I would say.

- Marion was quite passionate, 'cause, you know, through all the men that she knew through Brent, she was also fueled by grief to be out there.

- And she would do this at every presser she was in, "Now, I wanna speak directly to the parents of America."

- If parents are having a difficult relationship with their children, whether because of their children's own goals or their lifestyles, or even their sexual orientation, I wish they would stop and think about this, what their children do not need is judgment and rejection, what they do need is support and love.

- And Brent would turn around at a press conference, and there'd be some young man who had never been able to come out and certainly was, you know, not able to talk about being HIV positive, and Marion would be standing there, you know, hugging him.

So she became like a mother to so many young men.

- Some of these men would open up to her because they just were missing a parent.

- And Mom, I believe, reached a lot of people that I was never gonna be able to reach.

- She was a draw, that is for sure.

There'd be especially men going, I can't believe, you know, you are so accepting of your son.

So it was really hopeful to see Marion, you know, at 70, accepting everyone, going into the gay bars.

She'd be like the belle of the ball surrounded by all these tall men.

And she loved it!

- October 24th, 1984.

I ran with the Front Runners tonight.

I mustered my courage and spoke to the group, asking for help and advice on the run.

- We were all serious runners, and all of a sudden, this guy comes in we didn't know from anybody, and he says he wants to run around the country.

- You could have cut the attitude with a knife.

It was like, "Oh, who does she think she is?

He's never even run a marathon, for god's sake!"

(chuckles) - Some people in the Front Runners clubs really didn't believe that he could do it.

- There were a few that took me at my word and stepped up and started coaching me.

- I could see the dedication and the stubbornness, or the persistence.

- And basically the advice, "No one had ever run this far," right?

(chuckles) "So, train to run marathons and keep running them."

So that's what I did.

I ran 3000 miles in 1985 and six marathons and several other races, running constantly to keep in shape, and now I'm ready to go.

- The very next step was setting up a meeting with Rodger McFarlane, the first executive director of the GMHC.

So, I going to Roger.

- Absolutely not!

We couldn't possibly-do an event like that?!

Are you kidding?!

No, we could not!

No, forget it.

- So, I left, and I'm thinking, "GMHC is the first and the largest community-based AIDS organization.

If they can't do it, don't waste any more time looking for somebody to pull this off for you."

And the only way this is going to happen is if I start from scratch and make my own organization.

And that's what I did.

- Eventually, I said, "Well, if you're gonna do it, we gotta get it together because you need an organizer, and I'm a stage manager, and I'm not letting you do this by yourself.

- We all jumped on board and started talking it up and planning it out.

- What are the logistics?

What's the route going to be?

How is he gonna live?

You know, where is he gonna sleep?

And you don't recognize how many pairs of sneakers a person goes through.

(chuckles) - How many shoes did you use?

- [Reporter] How many shoes have you run through?

- I could almost tell to the mile when I had run through those shoes.

Once the shoes wear out, you'd start to take the punishment.

- You know, and good sneakers are expensive.

- We had to raise money.

That was the first thing.

- And we made up t-shirts.

And we thought, "Let's sell the t-shirts."

And every night, we'd have six tables around New York City selling Brent A.R.E.A.

t-shirts.

That's what basically sustained the run.

You know, we would send our t-shirt money out to the Winnebago every week.

I remember standing on the corner, and I was hawking this t-shirt, and just an enormous guy comes up to me, and he said, "Do you think I'm gonna support that?"

And then went into, you know, every foul thing you could possibly think of and just went on and on right in my face, you know?

And I don't know where I got the chutzpah, but I just looked back at him, I said, "Does this mean you're not gonna buy a t-shirt?"

(chuckles) And the guy like just softened, and he bought a t-shirt.

- The level of panic over AIDS in this country was palpable.

So it wasn't surprising that people tried to run me off the road.

It wasn't surprising when the guy with the shotgun, you know, got it out and pointed it right at me.

And, of course, I was terrified, but at the same time I thought, I was thinking about mom more than myself, I thought, "He's gonna shoot me dead, and then he's gonna shoot mom because she's a witness to his killing me, and nobody's ever going to know who killed us.

And then I remember the thought came to me, "Do not stare a wild animal in the eye, they'll only attack."

So with every fiber of my being, I kept my eye on the road ahead.

I did not look at him.

I just kept running.

Nothing surprised me in that way.

What surprised me was the kindness of people, of people that you wouldn't expect it from.

That was surprising.

July 13th, a beautiful day to celebrate, uplifted by the loving support of the people here in Milwaukee.

Like coming home to a hero's welcome.

I want to give that back to people, especially people with AIDS.

- We would visit hospices that were in the middle of nowhere and talk to people who they hadn't seen their families since they were kind of dropped off at the hospice, just left there to die.

And I think those stories fueled all of us.

- I realized early on that the real work of the run was not all running, not even all the speaking at press conferences.

It was in those one-on-one moments in which a dialogue was created with people.

It always was very meaningful for me to be able to go and visit people who were very sick and were probably going to die and be able to provide them with a (sighs) a champion.

So they knew that there was somebody out there that was, you know, fighting for them.

(gentle music) Here's July 15th, I will say what I have to say, whether they listen or not, simply because it must be said.

- The first time I came over to his apartment, there was a map on the wall, and it had little pinpoints on it.

And I asked him what that was.

And he told me those were pinpoints of cities that he had run through, talking about AIDS and safe sex and spreading the gospel of this thing.

And he used the word gospel.

And I went, "Oh, so tell me more about that."

- I think we brought a lot of hope to those communities because we were able to be very visible.

And so we were being right out there.

That's what the organizations wouldn't do.

Many times we couldn't even say the name of people involved in the organizations we were working with.

We're able to do that for them, which helps all of those other people in the community who are isolated, who are living with AIDS, you know, or have a family member that's living with AIDS, and they have no idea where to go.

Like, we're able to make the invisible visible.

- The real enemies in the fight against AIDS are indifference and denial.

But, you know, and people can really, it's very easy for them to, you know, say, "Throw the newspaper in the trash.

Turn the TV off.

That's happening out there, it's happening to somebody else.

It's not gonna touch my community, it's not gonna touch my life."

But it's very hard for them to deny that I ran down their main street.

- He put a face on AIDS as he ran around the country for people to come home from work, farmers to come in from the fields, come home from school, and to watch the news and to see him.

That was so important.

You know, if he hadn't done that, they wouldn't have gotten that.

You know, they wouldn't have seen that face.

And you can't resist Brent.

- We had a young man who just joined us from nowhere.

We didn't know where he came from.

He had heard about Brent from the media.

He was a young gay man who was a runner, and he was just so thrilled.

- Running around the country, it's a circle.

He's uniting people.

- So many wonderful stories about people came up and shook his hand, and people that you'd never expect to do that.

- And I remember some people even saying, you know, "Why don't you wait?

Why don't you wait till the climate is more receptive, you know, to having someone like you running around America?"

I said, "No, I can't wait.

You know, I have to...

I'm late already."

And point of fact, I was late already.

- That was still a time when we were like, "That vaccine is around the corner."

We didn't realize we were at the tip of the iceberg of the people who were gonna get sick and die.

You know, it went on for, you know, it's still going on.

- November 1st, 1986.

Today is the beginning of our ninth month on the road.

And I had another challenge to face, Mount Siskiyou.

I reached the summit at Sunset for a total of 25 miles today and looked down into California.

Soon I will see Tom again.

Today is his birthday.

- Brent was very, very in awe of Dr. Tom Waddell and very thrilled about the Gay Games.

- They're open to anyone.

You don't have to be gay to participate.

And it's not according to ability.

Tom wanting to recreate that Olympic experience that he'd had for everybody, especially in the gay community.

Seeing him had been like kind of like the carrot, if you will, for the run.

I was gonna get to see Tom.

The day we ran into San Francisco, it was a beautiful day.

We didn't have a police escort, we had lesbian and the gay motorcycle club as our escorts.

Mom, she says, "I wanna ride a motorcycle."

(laughs) And there's this mistress Kathy, and she goes, "Come on, Marion, you can ride on the back of mine."

She says, "But you're gonna have to put on more makeup."

And I remember coming to that big hill that goes down into the Castro, and it was thrilling to think that I was running into the Castro.

This was like running through Greenwich Village, you know, the equivalent.

But there were no crowds applauding my run.

I guess I imagined there might be.

If I wasn't getting it here, where was I going to get it, right?

Certainly not in Alabama, (chuckling) you know.

But I said to myself then and there, this is not about any of that.

I'm not doing this for that.

It helped to have that experience to get my head on straight, right?

- Being with Tom and his home was like a dream come true, only a shadow was passed over us.

An inescapable sadness seeping into us and coloring all of our time together.

- But it was an ill-fated love affair for sure.

He'd said he needed to talk to me, but he wanted to wait till we were face to face.

And he told me that he had been diagnosed with AIDS.

It came in the worst way.

He gotten pneumocystis, and he'd been hospitalized.

But leave it to Tom, he got out of his hospital bed and threw the javelin in the games (chuckles) and won a gold medal.

You know, it's incredible.

- There's nowhere near enough space to even encapsulate the feelings and experiences of the Gay Games II Marathon and closing ceremonies, the bittersweet intensity of this day.

- On the one hand, it doesn't feel possible that it ever happened.

You know, it's like a dream or a fantasy.

It was so unreal.

The entire time, it was, "How many nickels and quarters and dimes do we have, you know, to put in the bank to send the money?"

You know, "Or how many are they gonna collect tonight?"

And it was literally buttons and t-shirts.

- [Dave] There was actual fundraising going on during the run.

- When we sell t-shirts, there'd always be a percentage that went right to the local organization, right?

Like, but then there would be some that we would take back that would cover our campground costs and our food.

Like, we ate, really, we lived on like peanut butter sandwiches and Denny's.

We went to a lot of Denny's.

- The whole 20 months was funded solely by private donations in the sale of our t-shirts and buttons.

There was not a penny of corporate sponsorship for the run around America.

There was not a single grant.

- We were competing with all sorts of other organizations at that point.

And the Gay Men's Health Crisis was massive, and they were providing massive services, so people really wanted to give to that.

- It was really a shoestring operation.

We never had full funding.

There was no corporate sponsorship at all.

- Nope, we could not get a shoe sponsor.

We tried, but a gay guy running for AIDS around America in the middle 80s, no, there wasn't support for something like that.

I mean, when I look at the kind of corporate sponsorship that World Pride just garnered, we couldn't raise a dime from corporate America.

- We obviously didn't know if we would be able to make it all the way around the country because we didn't have funding from the start for the whole thing.

So there's that constant worry, "Are we gonna have enough money to make it around?"

I mean, there was a point, Southern California, we were running out of money, and I just, I was so determined, I said, "If we can still keep going, we're not stopping this event because we don't have the money or the funds to keep going."

And we did keep going.

I remember Bill actually putting some of our expenses on a credit card.

(gentle upbeat music) When we ran into San Luis Obispo, there was no AIDS organization, there wasn't even a gay organization.

But the community had managed to pull a little reception together for us.

And that night we met Robin and Judy Thomas and their little boy Ryan, who had contracted AIDS when he was two weeks old from a blood transfusion.

They had to sue the school board to keep Ryan in school.

People that Judy had known all her life, walked to the other side of the street rather than confront her.

There were kidnapping attempts on Ryan's life.

There were shots fired on their home.

I mean, they had been through hell.

- He ran through everything.

He ran through everything.

Seriously, there would be snow or sleet, it could be pitch black lightning around him.

Like, "Brent?"

- We never took the day off because of weather.

I didn't think I was going to encounter snow again.

But we did.

Horrendous blizzard.

A blinding blizzard, so bad that mom kept having to honk the horn 'cause she was afraid she was going to run me over.

That she couldn't see me.

- He'd go, "Okay, I'm stopping a mile and a half early, you know, before I'm supposed to start, but we are coming back to this spot.

I'm gonna make up that mileage the next day."

And we learned there was no getting him around that.

Every event we did, he was there.

Like even when we'd be at those bars selling t-shirts, selling buttons, he'd be meeting people.

People were like, "Oh, I can't believe you're just not back in the Winnebago sleeping."

But it's like, "No, my commitment is to be in this community, to talk to people, to raise money for them and help them organize."

He wasn't gonna let that go.

And I think like all of us, the longer we were on the run, the more political we became.

- Texas is the state with the fourth highest incidents of AIDS in America.

Education is at present our best and only defense against AIDS.

Voting down a bill for AIDS education in Texas is unconscionable.

And I intend for the remaining miles to be run in Texas to urge the citizens of this state to rise up and do something about it.

- That was I think the biggest thing we needed to educate people about, was that how it was spread and how not to spread it.

By educational means, by preventative measures you could take.

those are all the things he wanted to do.

And, you know, it was a huge risk for him to do this.

- I think about Lafayette, Louisiana, where we were so unwelcome.

I mean, literally, people picking up our flyers and then throwing them on the floor right in front of us, saying, "Don't bring your AIDS around here!

We ain't got no AIDS around here!

There's no AIDS here!

Just get out!"

- Do people know about this run?

- Yeah, people are knowing about it.

Hopefully, they'll know a lot more about it once I start running.

We never made the national news.

I lay that at the feet of how entrenched the homophobia was in the media in '87.

- Especially when you compared him to Terry Fox's effort to bring awareness of cancer in Canada, that he did earlier.

- Even though I was the first person to run all the way around America, they were not going to print a word about it because it was a gay man, and it was for AIDS.

- Because again, disposable people, right?

"Why do we wanna cover this?

All it does is create panic."

It just wasn't seen as a national crisis, which it absolutely was, like absolutely was.

That was frustrating that it didn't get the national coverage.

And I know that really was hard for Brent.

- I don't think he got his due till way after he should have.

- So this goes all the way to... Look at the names of some of these places, Chassahowitzka to Hernando Beach.

And then it would have like the week's total, week's average, the year to date.

Oh, Florida was so hard.

(crickets chirping) I could not possibly consider running in the dark across the Tamiami Trail from Naples to Miami, in which there's no shoulder, there's only palmettos coming out to the road.

It took me three days to cross the Tamiami Trail, and every day I encountered at least 20 snakes.

- He has a real fear of snakes.

Did he talk about that?

I remember the first time he jumped on the car, I almost had a heart attack 'cause a snake was.

(chuckles) I was like, "What happened?!"

- [Cara] And you're still moving in the car?

- Yep!

(chuckles) He would just like leap.

- I would be doing these dances over these snakes, (Brent chuckles) and but, of course, in that heat, of course, we couldn't run the air conditioner in Mom's Buick at seven to eight miles per hour.

She'd have to keep the windows down.

And me running, the bugs are staying off me, but she's being eaten alive.

(chuckles) She's swatting the bugs with her map.

And finally, she said, "For God's sakes, will you hurry up?!"

I said, "I'm running as fast as I can.

Do you think I wanna stay around with these snakes?!"

Oh my god, Miami to Fort Lauderdale began the Celebration Marathon at 5:50, extremely humid, even before the sun came up.

Two days before reaching Orlando, Bill and I stopped at an IHOP, and I pick up a "USA Today," and there it says, "Gay Games Founder Tom Waddell, Dead from AIDS."

My therapist is convinced that I'm still suffering from PTSD.

It was too many deaths, too many to begin to be able to process properly.

And so, they've waited, They are still waiting to be processed.

(chuckles) Everything's awful, the heat, the humidity, the bugs, diarrhea the whole way.

Last six miles from 10:15 past 11:00, hideous!

Conditions as they are now, I'm just going to have to be more flexible and pace myself in order to be able to finish.

There were moments where I wanted to pack it in, where I was just so dead tired and in so much pain that I didn't think I'd be able to keep going.

- He didn't know whether he was gonna make it, because certain times when he couldn't walk.

- His feet never toughened up, so he had blisters constantly.

- Blisters became nothing to me.

- [Terrah] So he would come home every night, soak his feet.

- We'd heard about raspberry tea was good for blisters.

- And there's a great picture of him with his feet in a bowl, back, you know, with his headsets on just trying to just re-energize, rejuvenate.

It was punishing.

- A lesser person would've said, "Look, I gave it my all, but this is killing me.

- I mean, I can't even begin to count how many stress fractures I recovered from and ran through.

Started at 7:00 on a wing and a prayer.

The shin splint extremely painful.

Took Advil at eight miles, changed shoes with stabilizers at 12 miles, just kept going, don't know how.

And I took a day off, I must have been in really bad shape.

- That was the ultimate price for him.

He gave his body to that project.

- You see him now, his spine and everything else is damaged.

There's no way you can run that distance in that time period and not damage your body in some way.

- I'm just sorry it cost Brent his health.

That's the thing that disturbs me to this day.

And when I see him today, and he struggles so much, I know he would gladly do it again.

It's not a question of was it worth it?

It was worth it to him.

Just as someone who loves him the way I do, that's a high cost.

- [Charles] He's not quite like the rest of us.

- He would've run on, I don't know what, the air, you know, if he had to, he was so determined.

But that's what I was afraid of.

- He lost so many people, and he'd meet people, and then he would lose them, and he'd meet people, he'd lose those people.

- He would get letters, or we'd get a call about someone else that he'd lost.

Whenever he was feeling horrible and his feet were killing him and he was freezing or he was hot, he would think about all of his friends who were sick and all of those who had passed away, and he would say, "I can do this.

This is nothing compared to what my friends are going through and have gone through and our community is going through."

- Remember back in those days, people with AIDS were quarantined.

They often were not served.

Many of them were left to die by themselves.

So I think even though he had his own physical pains, to him, it was small compared to what everybody else was experiencing.

- Action, love, rage, mania.

- Grief.

Grief drove him.

Grief is what got him on the road, and grief is what kept him going, as well as hope.

- When we would lose another friend, I turned to mom, and I'd say, "Thank God we're doing this."

Can you imagine how much more painful it would be if we weren't spending every day of our lives trying to make a difference, trying to stem the tide of this cataclysm?

- Still gives me the creeps just thinking about it.

I don't know how, but I saw it, and not long after, I finished, I thought I had died.

I'd never felt pain like that.

- Seeing these young people expressing things I went through 30 years ago, a lot of the process, I've had to kind of detach.

These are not characters.

They were people who meant a great deal to me.

Having them recreated right before my eyes, it's very hard for me to see that.

- [Reporter] People in the Capitol are always running for office.

We started the week by covering someone who was running for our lives.

- I was surprised at the amount of energy he still had when he got to the March on Washington in October of '87.

- October 11th was the March and the Quilt, and the Tuesday after it was probably one of the largest acts of civil disobedience at the Supreme Court ever.

And that's when I ran the marathon of protest around the Supreme Court.

But by 2:00, they had arrested over 700 people.

The image that will always live in my memory is the fact that everyone had cleared out, but we still had hundreds and hundreds of police standing shoulder to shoulder with their automatic weapons and their riot shields down while this lone runner's going.

(chuckles) "They're protecting the court against me?!"

I mean, talk about overkill.

(chuckles) (gentle music) - [Cara] Well, here we are in the theater (Brent chuckles) for the show about your life.

How are you feeling about opening tomorrow?

- Oh my God, I'm kind of, you know, really intimidated, and, you know, I'm terrified.

(laughing) - On the eve of the New York Marathon, a one man marathon ended today in this city, an awesome 10,000 mile run across the United States and back.

A run for a cause.

- [Anita] The Homecoming was the biggest production of the whole thing.

- We had gotten Koch to welcome him back.

- They thought it was necessary that I accept the seal of the city from the mayor.

I said, "I don't know if I can do this.

That bastard's got the blood of my friends on his hands."

I remember when mom and I went to see "The Normal Heart."

The set was very simple.

One wall was how much money Diane Feinstein had already spent in San Francisco to fight AIDS and how much money Ed Koch had spent in New York.

Feinstein had spent millions, and Koch hadn't even spent one.

(thunder) You can't get me!

- Exactly.

- You're not gonna get me!

(crew laughing) Originally, they had scheduled him for the rally at Union Square, and then we got word that ACT UP was going to zap our rally.

(Brent laughing) I said, "Well, good for them!"

So instead, we had him at the George Washington Bridge.

- Sandy Pace had arranged for helicopters to fly above and below.

There were fireboats shooting off water cannons to welcome them.

It was really something for them.

They had no idea what was coming.

- 37-year-old Brent Earle of Manhattan finished that run to a big welcome as he crossed the George Washington Bridge.

- Crossing the bridge with my three flag bearers, and I'm looking up, and what I'm looking at is a plane going by with this banner, saying, "Welcome home America Run for the End of AIDS."

- I do remember Brent running across the George Washington Bridge and how inspiring that was.

- Him coming over the George Washington Bridge waving the rainbow flag is really just an amazing, amazing moment.

- The question of "What did you think it was gonna be like, and what was it really?"

I mean, it all kind of came true the day of the homecoming, but none of it was true, you know, up until that point.

- [Reporter] Mayor Koch led the Welcome Home Committee, talked to the struggle against the dread disease.

- You can see the look on my face.

It's like I'm having the hardest time disguising at what I'm really feeling.

You know, like, "Oh, get this guy off the stage before I say something I better not," you know?

- The fight against AIDS.

There you go.

(crowd applauding) - This run has been run, not for any honors, but for the love of friends.

And I accept this in memory of my friends.

God bless you all for being here today.

(audience cheering and applauding) - [Reporter] And then Brent headed toward 47th and Broadway for a Stop at Duffy Park to thank the theater people who helped spark his spectacular run.

- Al had organized a small rally in Times Square for the theater community, which was, you know, very special for me.

- I looked down the street and there he was running and this huge crowd behind him, and people lined up in the street on Broadway, right?

And that was so astounding to me that all those people knew about him at that point.

And that was a moment I will never forget.

- I had over, I think, 150 by then, maybe 200 people running with me.

So that was pretty thrilling to see this huge mass of people.

- You ran down through the city, and people cheering, I was carrying a flag, which was not easy to to do.

But as you're doing it, you're thinking, "This is a once in a lifetime experience.

This is the one thing that I'm gonna remember forever."

- And it was just the most amazing weather.

Unheard of Halloween weather.

It was like 65 and sunny.

It felt like summer.

Just look at the clear sky and the sun.

Here's Terrah Keener, our road manager.

- I was so excited to run in with him.

Oh, it was an honor to run in with him, but I did almost die.

- The Winnebago is right here behind us, and mom was driving, I think, the Buick as well.

- [Anita] People were able to pledge to raise more money if they wanted to run with Brent.

- [Brent] By the time we got to Union Square, we had over 300 running with us.

- Many, many runners and people that had run with him, that had heard about him, that had joined him and had come to the park.

(crowd cheering and applauding) - Tomorrow, I will run the New York City Marathon as a way of saying that although the American Run for the End of AIDS may be concluded, the race must continue against this terrible disease!

- [Reporter] Brent, how do you hold out physically?

- I don't know how, I just do it.

(chuckles) - [Reporter] Would you do it again?

- For this cause, I guess I would.

The following day I went to the center and attended my first ACT UP meeting, and I never left.

- [Reporter] Brent Nicholson Earle, it's all over.

What do you think now?

- It wasn't easy, believe me.

I don't think I even dared to think about what I was gonna do with my life after the run.

I was so focused on finishing.

- I thought, "Well, maybe that's it."

You know, we did it, A.R.E.A., the American Run for the End of AIDS.

Unfortunately, it's not the end of AIDS, but we did the American Run.

It's done, and, you know, now we'll press on with life.

But, no, no, not Brent.

- You know, I came home and said, "Oh, I think I need a job," right?

And he's like, "I am devoting my life to activism, and I'll just have to trust that I will be able to pay my rent, and I'll be able to eat, and I'll be able to do the things I need to do."

Because he believed so deeply in the social change and the political change that he was trying to influence.

You know, everything else was immaterial.

- Do you have AIDS?

- The first positive test?

It happened in June of 1989.

- In those days, the news was, it was very devastating.

- I think he probably wasn't surprised, and I think we probably weren't surprised at that time.

Everybody was being diagnosed, if not with AIDS, as HIV positive.

It was kind of remarkable that he went so long without a diagnosis.

- I felt a myriad of emotions.

I felt, of course, fear.

I felt shame, especially as an AIDS activist, you know.

Even though, how could I not have been exposed with my partner of more than 12 years so sick already.

I also, in a strange way, I felt relieved that the shoe had finally dropped.

- I think he was suffering from survivor's guilt.

Why should I be okay?

And I think, in a way, this took care of that.

I mean, it sounds perverse, but I don't think it is perverse, I think that's human nature.

- I also felt somewhat empowered because being HIV negative at ACT UP, you don't have the same kind of credentials or whatever to be able to speak as someone from within the community.

And now I finally felt genuinely a part of the community, you know, fighting for my life as well as so many others.

- He became even more of an activist in certain ways.

- I never felt that I had an endless amount of time.

If anything, that has been the gift of living with AIDS, making the most out of every moment.

- The next thing I know, he's looking for a road manager.

I said, "Why do we need a road manager now?"

He said, "Well, you know, the Gay Games."

- I thought we should have our own torch run.

But an Olympic torch was not the right symbol.

The rainbow flag, now there would be a symbol.

- "It's only 1,000 miles."

"Oh, it's only a thousand miles," (chuckles) silly me.

- I realized, "Well, I know I could pull this off."

Like we done the run around America, just a shorter chunk.

So I called mom up, do you want to go out again?

She didn't miss a beat again, "Oh, yes, I bored to tears!"

- I missed being on the road, so it was kind of fun.

And we had a newer Winnebago.

"Marion, this feels like home."

She goes, "Oh my God, yes, it does!"

- I would follow him around on the run on my bicycle, give him support.

It was really sort of the beginning of a long process of doing these rainbow runs.

- Set the precedent, you know, and then we can build in years to come upon it.

- Seeing it as a memorial run for all those athletes who couldn't be there, who had either passed away or just couldn't be there with us.

This was running for them.

- Mom called me up after Thanksgiving in 1991.

- I have terrible news.

I just saw on the paper that Ryan Thomas has died right before his 10th birthday.

And I feel like my hope has died with him.

- And I didn't really get it.

I think I said something like, "Oh, now, Mom, you know, you always have hope," kind of thing.

And not really getting what she was saying to me that she really couldn't take it, too many more losses.

And I think there was subconscious terror that now that Al and Bill had gone, there was nobody left for her to lose except me.

And I just don't think she was ready to face that.

I told my dear sister during this past weekend of mourning and reflection, that although from a medical point of view, my mother suffered a heart attack.

In many ways, she died from a broken heart caused by her grief over AIDS.

- [Reporter] What did you hope for this trip?

- I hope that a lot of his dreams of helping cure this disease would come true.

- You think they will?

- Yes, indeed, I have every hope and confidence that they will.

(gentle melancholic music) - Hi, I'm Brent, and this is Margot and Mary Beth.

We're skating across America with the Rainbow Roll for the End of AIDS.

- "Oh my God," I said, "Well, I can't attend that one."

(Terrah laughs) 'Cause he goes, "My body can't take the running."

I'm like, "No kidding!"

I said, "Use a bicycle."

Why are you like?

(chuckles) - This is not gonna fly.

- This is even crazier than the other idea.

I mean, we run in our daily life sometimes, but he'd never gotten on inline skates.

- I mean, it's not easy if this isn't something you've been doing your whole life.

"No, but I can learn."

- Then I really thought he was crazy.

- Join us!

Support us!

- [Brent] From San Francisco to New York, we're bringing the rainbow flag as a torch to Gay Games IV and Stonewall 25.

- It was quite challenging for Brent and myself to even stand up on skates, let alone think about skating every day.

We had wonderful memories of a seven-week event, getting from San Francisco to New York.

- How he got across the country, it's the same thing, I'm telling you, the man is not from this earth.

- So as much as I thought some of them were wacky, I also was, "So, like, you know what?

Keep this vision going."

As long as there's a Gay Games, the queer community cannot forget that this is part of our history.

So if there's resistance to these memorial runs, I don't understand it.

And that's stuff then we have to look at as community.

Why are we trying to pretend this didn't happen?

- [Man] Eddie Barton, - Out of the Darkness is a gathering and a candlelight march, which we will be producing the 28th this year.

- Bill Konkoy, Allan Sobek.

- [Man] Raul Martinez.

- He's still an activist.

He's still out there trying to bring awareness to this.

- It's just so wonderful hearing his stories and getting to work with somebody who paved the way for the queer community that I am a part of now.

- We're living in a really scary time.

And one thing that working on this show has really given me is that we can do something with our fear.

We don't just have to sit and be afraid.

- This being, you know, about running a race, I think we've not shied away from the metaphor of passing the baton.

I hope that me, and, you know, the current generation, can take that baton, and, you know, carry this story forward.

- The younger generation is quite divorced in experience from the AIDS crisis.

- It's still something that people are trying to ignore and pretend like, "Oh yeah, that happened back in the 80s, but we're better now, nothing's going on anymore."

- Well, maybe not if you're white and affluent, but some of the disenfranchised communities, it's still a crisis for them.

Much to the misconception of common belief, the AIDS crisis is not over.

- You hear that, and people say that, and, you know, it's always kind of like, "Oh yeah, sure."

You know, it's not something that you take to heart as much.

And I think through this experience, it really has moved into my heart.

And actually recently, someone very close to me became HIV positive.

And it's just so interesting that the timing would be that way to kind of have this lesson.

You know, things, things happen for a reason, so.

- Can I finally be at peace?

I'm still running in my dreams.

(audience applauding and cheering) - Seeing the joy of Brent's face after every performance when people would come up and ask to have the picture taken with him is this joy of his return to the theater, of his first love.

(audience applauding) - [Alex] What's it like acting in the show of your life?

(all laughing) - It's been awesome.

(Brent chuckles) It ends up, in regards, I'm not even supposed to be here.

I just this past week, have been released out of the hospice program.

I've been on hospice.

(audience applauding) This has been very much part of the reason that I have been, it's given me a real reason to want to stay alive.

I don't kid you, I mean, they've had to deal with a lot of stuff with trying to do a play with somebody with congestive heart failure, you know.

As you can see, I'm here doing the show with an IV, you know, so.

(gentle pulsating music) (traffic buzzing) - I was with him throughout his three-months stay last year in the hospital.

I was with him when he had the quadruple bypass eight years ago.

I thought then the experience, it was a horrible experience, would convince him to slow down.

Everybody did.

It didn't.

- You know, he started off kind of this crazy young man with a dream, and he never gave up.

He kept building on it.

If we look at now, the advances that gay people in America have accomplished it was because of Brent, and many of his other peers at the time, that were so brave to put themselves on the line to do what they knew was right.

- He starts out as a lone man running and increasingly has companions.

One can look back now and see with ACT UP and A.R.E.A.

that they were the first wave.

- I will go to my whatever, thinking about how courageous and how brave and how forward-thinking he was doing all of that.

- Did he influence research dollars or anything?

No, but what he did for individuals is just as huge, if not bigger.

- In terms of people feeling better about themselves, in terms of people being comforted if they've lost people, what he's left behind is probably the number of the thousands of lives that he's touched.

- But that's why I was so excited, you know, when he came home, and I was excited that there was some fanfare and people were getting, but they were still focusing on how much he ran.

Beyond the physical feat, which is like amazing, there's so much more to it than that.

There's what he did, what he left in those communities, or what he was able to ignite in those communities.

Those are the stories that are amazing, and we'll never know most of them.

- AIDS has been a blessing and a curse.

And the blessing has come with the friendships that I've formed because of it.

The activists, the fellow activists that I've lost, who I've been arrested with and found the kind of courage to face phalanxes of police.

It feels very much like losing a fellow soldier in a war.

That's what it must be like.

I've never been in the military, but I imagine that's what it must be like.

- It's Montana or Wyoming, we are driving the pace car, and we see a pickup truck with a gun rack up ahead of me, and Marion and I are like, "Oh, here it is.

This is it."

Marion goes, "Point the car towards him!"

And there's a guy standing out there, you know, and the cowboy hat, the boots, was starting to fulfill my stereotype of someone who might hurt Brent.

And then I noticed he was with a child, and Brent stopped, and the guy said, "I just wanted to introduce my son to a real American hero."

And that's how I always view him.

- He's an enormous heroic figure who put it all on the line for his own principles and to honor people who didn't have a voice, who don't have a voice.

- He's a little volcano bubbling under the surface, exploding magnificently occasionally, but always there with always the passion thrumming underneath.

- People in history who have made significant changes socially and politically, and you read about their lives, and you read about how single-minded they were.

Like, nothing got in the way of that vision.

That is Brent.

- I think that's his gift.

I think honestly, that his spiritual purpose to be here on this planet is to show conviction and commitment to causes that means something to him.

And it just, nothing's gonna stop him, nothing.

- I've walked with him when he's not well, and if he's going somewhere, don't get in his way.

He would never hurt a fly, but he gets this look in his eye, and he's gone!

(chuckles) And you are not gonna stop him.

You're just not, even if he's on oxygen, you're not stopping him.

So whatever planet makes them, we could use some more over here.

(chuckles) - He's still doing, doing, doing, doing.

And never stop.

- You know, I got the newsletter yesterday.

Oh, it's our 31 years since we came home, and it doesn't matter.

People are like, "Really?

Are we still doing this?"

It's like, "Yes, this is still important."

We cannot stop.

- He's gonna be out there lying on St. Patrick's Cathedral floor, chaining himself to the Washington Monument, or whatever is going on.

He's gonna be there.

And if he dies doing that, then he'll die doing that.

I've come to accept that, somewhat.

He's as driven as ever.

I think he's gonna driven until we get a solution to this god damn plague.

- Even friends who are HIV positive, who, you know, look at me as though I'm, pardon of the expression, beating a dead horse.

"Why are you still yammering on about the need for AIDS awareness?"

I feel as though if I had the strength to do it, I should run around America again.

As you can see, I couldn't possibly, (chuckles) but the message still needs to get out there.

- He can't stop because of those losses.

He feels he owes it to the people who died to make sure that he does everything he can so that they won't be forgotten, their deaths won't be in vain, and that they have a voice still in Brent.

- I am haunted by hundreds and hundreds of ghosts, and I couldn't forgive myself, I feel that I would be betraying their memory if I ever gave up the fight.

Written for Dionne Warwick, Gladys Knight, and Patti LaBelle with full gospel choir.

The song is underscored by a continuous mantra of names.

Paul, Michael, Ignacio, Tom, Ray, Mary, David.

♪ Phil ♪ Paul, Michael ♪ Ignacio, Tom ♪ Ray, Mary ♪ David, Phil ♪ When you left, you still remained living on ♪ ♪ In my tears and pain ♪ And missing you was all I knew ♪ ♪ But in time, the pain has gone ♪ ♪ Picked up the pieces and moved on ♪ ♪ Paul, Michael ♪ Ignacio, Tom ♪ Ray, Mary ♪ David, Phil