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Six-and-a-half years after he was found to have AIDS, Michael Callen-author, activist, singer and songwriter-half-jokingly credits his longevity to "luck, Classic Coke and the love of a good man."
Friends have other ideas. They attribute Callen's survival to grit, hope and a refusal to bow to conventional wisdom-the same qualities that have powered Callen's role as a major player in the war against acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
While some people would have AIDS patients romanticize death and "walk toward the light," Callen instead talks of "wrestling this beast to the ground."
"This life is the light," he insisted this month while visiting Los Angeles. "If there is a heaven, this is it."
Callen's tenacious fight for life-his own, his friends' and those of the half-dozen organizations he started and nurtured-has transformed him into a role model for people with AIDS and a major figure in formulating society's response to the epidemic.
An Evolving Role
His longevity has allowed his influence to stretch from the safe-sex battles of the early 1980s to the AIDS "self-empowerment" movement that blossomed mid-decade, to the current drive to speed promising drugs to patients.
"When the history of this epidemic is written, Michael Callen will be up there with the heroes," said Christopher Babick, deputy director of the People With AIDS Coalition in New York, where Callen lives.
"Michael Callen has been a role model for thousands of people, a symbol of hope when there was none, an AIDS advocate before there was an AIDS advocacy movement," added David Corkery, director of communications for the American Foundation for AIDS Research.
Callen also draws praise from the mainstream. Callen's is "a voice of urgency, but also a voice of reason," said the Rt. Rev. Paul Moore Jr., Episcopal bishop of New York, who served with him for three years on the New York State AIDS Advisory Council.
Another panel member, New York State Health Commissioner Dr. David Axelrod, credits Callen with having had "a major impact on the direction and formulation of public policy."
The subject of the accolades is a fresh-faced son of the Midwest who, at 33, looks like a cross between a GQ model and the church choirboy he once was. Nothing in Callen's appearance-from the jade-green eyes...