Evelyn Bailey: Passionate and persistent

Dr. Bill Valenti, left, described archivist Evelyn Bailey, right, as noble in her pursuit of Rochester’s LGBTQ history. Credit: Provided by Brynn Capwell.

A group of Evelyn Bailey devotees want to turn her materials on the response to the AIDS epidemic in Rochester into a documentary called AIDS: A Matter of Urgency.

The effort is being led by Kevin Indovino of WXXI, and I certainly agreed to having them use the title of my book. Kevin and the group are trying to raise $100,000 to get a matching grant to make and show the documentary at Image Out in 2024.

Evelyn died in July 2022.

This documentary is going to be important because we need to know history. Where did we come from?

A lot of younger people have come into the AIDS epidemic at a very different time than those early days when people were spreading ashes on the white house lawn and mobilizing for more money for research and drugs. They’ve come into a time when HIV still is a sexually transmitted infection but is also a much more stable kind of situation and it's less a matter of urgency.

We also need to tell the story of the heroic efforts of people in the Rochester area who responded with raising money -- these fundraisers, parties, events, the drag shows – taking patients to medical appointments, bringing them food, staying with them while they died. All of those things. I mean everybody did something. It was a huge, huge community mobilization and I think that really needs to be documented.

Evelyn is our LGBTQ community archivist.  Hands down. She did it.  Her persistence was noble. We talked about her work on my podcast, Just Sayin’.

I remember once she was looking for the incorporation papers for AIDS Rochester and for MOCHA. So we one day sat in front of file cabinets and went through files and we found the incorporation papers from MOCHA. What a cause for celebration. She was just delighted. We had struck oil. It was just a joyful day.

The Rochester Public Library has the collection, which bears her name. The archives chronicle LGBT life in Rochester in the 20th and 21st centuries.

We should be proud of mobilization around this terrible disease that killed people.

It's a whole generation of people from that era the 1980s who have died. The sacrifices that were made by patients and their families really needs to be acknowledged because. We couldn't have gotten to where we are today without those sacrifices. It needs to be documented and acknowledged and out there for people to see so that they can better understand what went on. Evelyn did that.