LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Time now for StoryCorps. This week, we revisit a story about chosen family. Stefan Lynch was raised by gay parents at the start of the AIDS crisis in the early 1980s. At StoryCorps, he told his friend, Beth Teper, about growing up.
STEFAN LYNCH: My family were mostly gay guys, who were my babysitters and the guys who, you know, took the pictures at my birthday parties. And I felt like I had this amazing family. I called them my aunties. And it was a really wonderful, amazing world that came crashing down. Starting in '82, the first person I knew died of AIDS, a young guy named Steve.
BETH TEPER: And how old were you at the time?
LYNCH: I was 10 when he was diagnosed. And I remember I was on the beach, and I saw him. And he was covered in these purple spots. And I remember asking my dad, like, what's wrong with Steve? And my dad said, oh, he has this skin cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma. And I said, well, what is that? And my dad said, well, nobody really knows, but there's some gay men that are getting it. And within, I think, two months, Steve was dead.
And it was pretty much a succession of deaths of my family throughout the next decade. My stepdad, Bill, died in '87. My dad died in '91 after a really grueling six months of me taking care of him. You know, I was 19. And at that point, everyone had died except for a handful of stragglers who I now hold near and dear to my heart, my aunties. It was a powerful family. There was a lot of love. And they modeled for me how to survive an epidemic, even if you were dying while doing it.
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FADEL: Stefan Lynch and Beth Teper for StoryCorps in San Francisco. Today, Lynch is a nursing director at an LGBTQ+ health center. Their interview is archived at the Library of Congress. By the way, StoryCorps and MORNING EDITION are partnering on an experiment in human connection. Meet someone on video from another part of the country and learn about their life. Your conversation becomes part of a time capsule of stories at the Library of Congress. Sign up at connect250.org. America, get ready to meet America.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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