“I’m not nearly as frightened about losing the people I love as I am of leaving the people I love.” --Kerry Stoner
“You couldn’t talk about AIDS in this town,” begins Anita Srikameswaran’s 1999 reflection on the life of Kerry Stoner, “without mentioning Kerry Stoner.” Stoner was a relentless activist and organizer who played a leading role in the civic response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s. Stoner died of complications from AIDS in 1993, a few weeks shy of his 40th birthday. His death came only a year after he had stepped down from serving as the executive director of the Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force (now Allies for Health + Wellbeing) due to increasingly ill health.
In 1985, Stoner had led the formation of the task force to provide “compassion, supportive services, and information about the disease” to people living with HIV/AIDS. He was its first director — and employee — and grew the organization from an informal association of 18 volunteers to a robust regional nonprofit with “18 employees, 500 volunteers, an $800,000 annual budget,” and services that reached more than 40,000 people a year around the Pittsburgh region.
Friend and colleague Cynthia Klemanski describe Stoner as a “natural-born leader” who “really valued the simple aspects of life — family, friends, a sense of community.” In a testament to his impact, hundreds attended both Stoner’s funeral, near his family’s dairy farm in Westmoreland County, and a service in his memory, held at the Calvary Episcopal Church in Shadyside.
Another testament to Stoner’s character and impact: the Stoner AIDS Education Fund, created by Louise and Chandler Ketchum. The Ketchums, whose son died of AIDS in 1989, “got to know Kerry Stoner and had great admiration for him” as a result of their son’s disease and their own work on AIDS education. In 1993, they chose to roll over the balance of a fund they had previously created in honor of their son, the Craig A. Ketchum Project Fund, to create the Stoner Fund. The fund supports AIDS-related initiatives in the region in a fitting continuation of Stoner’s life and work.