East Bay family looks back on deadly toll of AIDS; 'We are told to love'
WALNUT CREEK (CBS SF) -- Carol Lynn Pearson lost her husband in the early days of the AIDS epidemic.
It was in the 1980's, before Rock Hudson's news-making AIDS diagnosis, when the illness was taking a deadly toll in the Bay Area and across the country.
The Pearson family story grabbed headlines -- "Wife brings gay husband home to die of AIDS" -- and put a human face on the struggle being endued by so many.
At 82 years old, Carol Lynn Pearson remembers her late husband, his coming out and his coming home to die. She still lives in the Walnut Creek home she bought in the 1980's when her husband told her he had AIDS.
"We are told to love," she told KPIX. "We are told to not let anything out of the sight of our love. But when hard things confront us…when you are just weeping in the night…then is the real test of love."
Gerald and Carol Lynn met in 1965 at Mormon-owned Brigham Young University. He told her about his attractions to men, but the two believed in the promises of their faith that Gerald marrying Carol Lynn and raising a family would fix his sexuality.
The family moved to the Bay Area, where Gerald sang with the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus and lunched with Harvey Milk in the Castro.
Eventually, Gerald told Carol Lynn he had AIDS. Their marriage over, Carol Lynn chose an act of love to honor his life. She brought him home to die in the home of his children, a story she penned in her national best selling book, "Goodbye, I Love You."
Now, decades later, Pearson believes stories elevate human-kind.
"We need stories," she said. "We need them to show us our best selves. Gerald was a real person with a real story."