About the Author

Gerry Huerth is a seventy-three-year-old person who has creatively responded to being an outsider and, in that process, has learned to be an effective advocate for people who face the challenges of working with systems that may not be responsive to their hopes and needs. Fifty years ago, he was an early member of FREE, the first gay and lesbian college organization in this country. He has also worked as a registered nurse in many health-care systems focusing on the needs of people who he served. These nursing experiences include psychiatric nursing, working with drug-addicted mothers and infants in Harlem, New York, volunteering for the farmworkers union in California, being on the board of a very early hospice in Maine, volunteering to do massage for people with AIDS, and collaborating to create a personal care service for people with mental illness living in the community.