As many of you may or may not have read in the “About Us” section of this site, my biological father passed away from AIDS in 2001. With not meeting him for the first time until I was 24, I never got much of a chance to get to know him before he died. Actually, I only know a handful of things about him with the exception of any negative comments about him from other family members. 

They have reasons to feel these things about him. He didn’t lead the greatest life. He constantly borrowed money from people, he bounced checks, he got evicted from places on numerous occasions and he lied, a lot.  The worst part of it was that he left my mother with two young children…took the car and other things in the middle of winter and left her. My sister was 5 and I wasn’t even a year old. That did not sit well with me…still doesn’t.

However, it wasn’t until after I came out, that I started to have some sort of twisted understanding as to where he was coming from. I don’t condone they way he left us, but being gay in 1976, I’m sure wasn’t easy.  He was trapped between a heterosexual world and the world he needed to be in.  And neither was accepting of him. Gay with a wife and two kids just didn’t fly and we’ll neither did being gay. So he ran and he made mistakes like humans do.

The night before he passed away he was unable to speak, however he could listen and understand. So, with seeing my father lay before me only weighing about 60lbs at 6′1″, I decided to tell him how I felt…about everything. It was the best thing I could have done for my own healing and for his. The last words I spoke to him, I said, “No matter what you did in your life or what anyone says, you will always be my father and no one can change that.”

Since his death, I’ve wanted nothing more than to find out as much about him as possible. With being disowned from his family, I have no way of finding out personal things about him. Simple things. Stories or memories and of course medical history.  I have been able to obtain his military records from when he was in Vietnam, but it doesn’t say much. I have a video of him and his brother, Roger, my uncle. However Roger died of lung cancer only two years after Ben. So, my link is gone. At this point, I’m trying to find out whatever I can, but I’m not sure where to start looking.  I have all of his original documents, birth/death certificate, social security card, etc. 

Some people ask me why I want to find out information on someone who left us and treated my mother badly. Here’s the thing…It has nothing to do with the fact that he was gay or that I’m gay. Yes, I can relate to the feelings he may have felt being married and hiding his life, but that’s not it. He was a human being. He created me out of love and from what he told me, he loved me and thought of me everyday. There is no one else on this planet that cares about him or his things but me. This is hard for my family to understand. They think I honor him too much.  For me, I don’t care what mistakes he made, there’s no reason why someone among the living shouldn’t care about him or his life in death.

So, I will be continuing the journey of ‘looking for him’. Find out whatever information on him I can. AIDS took him away before I had a chance to develop a relationship with him and before I was even able to come out to him. What I find of him is all I have now.

If anyone has ever been through something similar, please share your stories with me. I’d love to get advice on the best ways to search for information. With every piece of information I find, I find him. I’ll keep you posted from time to time on how the search is going.

Juliet