By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
Clients are calling my law office these days asking about the coronavirus and emerging workplace hysteria towards persons who may share characteristics of those thought to be exposed to it. I remember getting the same types of questions over three decades ago during the height of another public health crisis.
Just as I was finishing law school in the 1980s, a condition named Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was attacking and killing gay men and IV drug users, but then hemophiliacs and straight men and women too. Scientists were not sure how AIDS, linked to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), spread. By the middle of the decade, the mysterious and feared disease had killed over 15,000 otherwise healthy persons in the United States alone.
We often react to these outbreaks in a way that maximizes our fears (see: Coronavirus ‘Hits All the Hot Buttons’ for How We Misjudge Risk ) Yet, in the middle of our national paranoia about AIDS, movie star Doris Day invited her old friend and co-star Rock Hudson to be the first guest on her new television program. The Christian Broadcasting Network, owned by evangelical leader Pat Robertson, was airing her talk show called “Doris Day’s Best Friends” that featured celebrity guests and animals.
Day was a lifelong conservative Republican who was friends with then-President Ronald Reagan. She grew up Catholic in the Midwest but later was a practicing Christian Scientist. Hudson was a famous leading male actor, but also a closeted homosexual who was quite ill and rumored to have AIDS.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Day and Hudson starred together in several popular romantic comedies, including Pillow Talk, for which Day was nominated for an Oscar in 1969. Day personified the beautiful “girl next door.” Hudson always played the virile, handsome playboy eventually won over by the wholesome Day. The two actors became close friends during their work together.
In 1985, when she started her new animal show, Day wanted Hudson as her first guest because he loved dogs as much as she did. He travelled to Carmel for filming and they appeared together at a press conference promoting the show in July 1985.
I watched news about the press conference on television and, like many others, was stunned at the contrast between the bright and sunny Day and the much-diminished Rock, who was pale and gaunt. (Although the nature of his illness had not yet been made public, Hudson later reluctantly admitted that he had AIDS, one of the first major celebrities to do so.)
Day handled the moment with grace and tenderness. She smiled, stood close to Hudson, and planted a big kiss on his cheek. One writer has characterized this wonderful and important reunion as “America’s sweetheart showing the world that, even though there was no mention of the disease, she was not afraid of casual contact with her friend.” (see Rock Hudson: The Shot Heard ’Round the World.)
Hudson, also raised Catholic, received last rites and died in October 1985. The talk show he and Day filmed after their press conference was broadcast just days after Hudson’s death. Day, her voice choked with emotion, taped an introduction to the show that recalled how Hudson always told her, “The best time I’ve ever had was making comedies with you.” She said she felt the same way.
Day, who passed away in May 2019, told People magazine that after the July 1985 filming, she had said an emotional farewell to Hudson. “We kissed goodbye and he gave me a big hug and he held on to me. I was in tears. That was the last time I saw him—but he’s in heaven now,” she told the magazine. (See: Doris Day helped America look at AIDS with empathy and love for Rock Hudson.)
Despite her “girl next door” image, Day understood pain and the need for compassion. She was married four times, and suffered at the hands of abusive and controlling men. She had to save her son from the clutches of the Charles Manson family in the late 1960s. Perhaps because of her own pain, Day was able to reach out to her friend and show him love when he needed it most, despite his fearsome disease.
My mother always told me that history repeats itself. Maybe it does.
Today, I hear stories of employees shunning sick Asian co-workers or other persons who recently have traveled to the Far East. One Chinese college freshman in the United States recently told a news reporter, “I cough in class and everybody looks at me. I’m paranoid of coughing.” (See ‘Are you sick?’ For Asian Americans, a sneeze brings suspicion and What’s spreading faster than coronavirus in the US? Racist assaults and ignorant attacks against Asians.)
And it’s not just a problem here. In Singapore, residents have signed a petition seeking to ban Chinese nationals from entering the country. In Hong Kong, South Korea and Vietnam, businesses are posting signs saying that mainland Chinese customers are not welcome.
If history does repeat itself, I hope we also get another Doris Day / Rock Hudson moment. Day’s display of love towards her old friend was a stellar example of one of the Catholic corporal works of mercy—caring for the sick. We Catholics have many other examples too, including Jesus, Saint Francis of Assisi, and Saint (Mother) Teresa of Calcutta who each visited and cared for lepers.
In his encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, Saint John Paul II explained that the sick need to know people care about them: “The request which arises from the human heart in the supreme confrontation with suffering and death, especially when faced with the temptation to give up in utter desperation, is above all a request for companionship, sympathy and support in the time of trial. It is a plea for help to keep on hoping when all human hopes fail.”
At a time of viral outbreaks or other epidemics, we certainly need to take appropriate steps to stop the spread of disease and the infection of others. But as we undertake reasonable precautions to protect public health, we must remember that those who are already infected are not lab specimens, terrorists, or criminals. They are our fellow human beings.
We all need to summon up our own internal Doris Days, and find an appropriate way to love the Rock Hudsons in our lives.
*Mike O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is writing a book about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah.
