Opinion: Where are the personal journals from the early days of HIV?

Every time I have moved house — too many times — the cardboard box has followed me, a reminder of my unfulfilled promise to Jon Miller. It contained his journals and letters, mostly from the last 18 months before his death from AIDS/HIV complications in 1990. 

Jon Miller was my first city editor. I was 19, an Antioch College student on a co-op job as a reporter for the Troy, Ohio, “Daily News.” It was the bitter winter of 1968, the winter of the Tet Offensive. I look back at that time and marvel at how self-absorbed I was. Jon seemed so much older — 26, a chain smoker and hard-nosed newsman who had to put up with my inexperience. But he took an interest in my writing because I had a knack for jazzing up simple assignments — weather forecasts, the hog market report, and the little controversies that roiled the rural school boards I covered. He was a wonderful writer and editor with a style that journalism no longer values — creative, playful, and readable.  

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