FOUNTAIN HILL, Pa. — Around 1982, St. Luke’s Hospital infectious disease specialist Dr. Jeffrey Jahre started seeing patients with symptoms that matched a strange new disease reported in San Francisco and New York.
Jahre, who still works at St. Luke’s, said he did not realize at the time he was treating the first patients in the Lehigh Valley with AIDS, let alone the extent of the impact the disease would have on the world.
- Lehigh Valley residents were in the center of the fight against AIDS at the height of the epidemic in the 80s and 90s
- Allentown resident David Moyer gave people their HIV test results when he worked at the Allentown Health Department
- Upper Macungie Township resident William Aull worked as a caregiver at Rainbow Home, a personal care home for people with HIV and AIDS
- St. Luke’s Dr. Jeffrey Jahre saw the first cases of AIDS in the Lehigh Valley, which were some of the first in the country
“At the very beginning of all of these epidemics … there's really not, I think, a true appreciation of what it can become,” Jahre said.
It became a worldwide health crisis that killed hundreds of thousands of people, primarily gay and bisexual men. Thursday is World AIDS Day, a time to commemorate those who have died of AIDS and continue to fight against it.
And while the Lehigh Valley was not the epicenter of the disease, Jahre said a larger proportion of the population died of AIDS or human immunodeficiency virus, the virus that leads to it, in the Lehigh Valley than in most of the country.
And some current Lehigh Valley residents were in the center of the fight against the disease.
David Moyer
Allentown resident David Moyer worked in the Allentown Health Department as a community health specialist, but became what he called the bearer of bad news — giving people their HIV test results. Hundreds tested positive, and some were close friends, he said.
“Back then in the ’80s, it was a virtual death sentence."David Moyer, former Allentown Health Department community health specialist
“Back then in the ’80s, it was a virtual death sentence,” Moyer said. “You had, from the time of diagnosis to when you left, about anywhere from six months to two years, depending on how advanced it was at that point, because we didn't have any medications.”
Moyer said his friends were glad he was the one to tell them if they had HIV.
“That made me feel a little more at ease, but still, the idea that you know… how am I going to see you again?” Moyer said. “You could die tomorrow, you could die next week, you could die next year.”
Moyer said that in 1986, a group of concerned owners of Lehigh Valley gay bars and other residents started Fighting AIDS Continuously Together, or FACT, to help people in the Greater Lehigh Valley with HIV and AIDS.
Moyer heard about the organization in 1992, and he started attending its board meetings. He said he was impressed by its work.
“I kept going back to the meetings, and then I was asked if I would like to be on the board,” Moyer said. “So I said, ‘Sure, I can do this for a little bit.’ Well, I've been on the board since 1992.”
FACT has since raised more than $3 million and donated almost all of it to people infected by and affected by HIV or AIDS. The organization will have its 35th annual Snow Ball fundraising event Dec. 4.
William Aull
In the 1990s, Upper Macungie Township resident William Aull worked as a caregiver at Rainbow Home, a personal care home for people with HIV and AIDS near Reading.
“There were a lot of nights when my coworker and I would just sit in the office and look at each other and go, ‘So who's next?' And that wasn't to be mean. But it was reality.”William Aull, Upper Macungie Twp. resident and former caregiver at Rainbow Home
Aull, now 71, said during his time there, he went to more memorial services than he thought was possible.
“There were a lot of nights when my coworker and I would just sit in the office and look at each other and go, ‘So who's next?’” Aull said. “And that wasn't to be mean. But it was reality.”
Aull has a framed picture of four of his friends who died of AIDS, and he calls them his four angels.
“When I start to feel kinda icky, I just look at them and go, ‘Hey, guys, how are you doing? How's heaven?’” Aull said.
The Rainbow Home was run by Roman Catholic nuns, and Aull said they received a letter from the bishop at the time threatening to shut down the home and send the nuns back to their convents. They ignored it and kept working, and Aull said the bishop never followed through with his threat
“God love them, [the nuns] really stepped over the line, so to speak, and they didn't care,” Aull said.
Dr. Jahre
Jahre said the Lehigh Valley saw some of the first AIDS cases in the country. The disease had not even been named AIDS at the time. There was little information about how to care for the afflicted — they were not sure how it was transmitted or what isolation procedures should be put in place.
But he said his colleagues did not shy away from helping the patients.
“I think there was certainly a noble effort by many, many of my colleagues to be able to step up and take care of these individuals, when there was really a lack of knowledge and some potential danger to themselves,” Jahre said. “We had very few people who refused to be involved.”
Jahre said across the country, HIV and AIDS was highly stigmatized.
“People were ostracized, there was violence against individuals who were suspected or who had AIDS at that time,” Jahre said.
Jahre said an entire floor of St. Luke’s became dedicated to caring for HIV and AIDS patients.
“We had literally, at that time, units that were full of AIDS patients, and many of whom would then go on to die, and in some cases in a really very, very dark way,” Jahre said.
“There's nothing worse than being a physician and watching individuals die, particularly young individuals, and obviously, in many of these cases, they were young individuals, and feeling helpless, and what you could actually do for them.”
HIV and AIDS today
There have been many advances in AIDS treatments. A diagnosis may no longer be a death sentence — many people can live a normal lifespan with the proper treatment and care.
But AIDS remains a major public health issue worldwide. In 2021, 650,000 people died of HIV-related causes, according to the World Health Organization.
Jahre said certain groups are disproportionately affected by HIV and AIDS. Young women in sub-Saharan Africa are particularly at risk, Jahre said. In the United States, Black people account for a higher proportion of new HIV diagnoses than other racial groups, according to the CDC.
“It's a very, very unequal situation,” Jahre said.
The United Nations has set a goal to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030, but Jahre said there is a lot of work that still needs to be done to meet that goal.
To read more stories of people who lived through AIDS in the Lehigh Valley, visit the Bradbury-Sullivan Center and Muhlenberg College’s oral history collection, 40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community: HIV/AIDS.
