It was a long week of 18-hour days and lots of responsibility.  We all made it through the week, and I remember going home exhausted, but happy that I’d apparently passed muster.

Later that summer I was asked to put together a weekend retreat for teens who were HIV positive.  I’d met a few teens at camp who fit that description, but I’d never planned a weekend event for kids before.  In conversation with my wonderful Hemophilia Council colleague, Jackie Fineberg, I was advised to call Val Bias and ask him for some suggestions.  Val now seemed like a mythic figure after watching him run the summer camp program for seven days, so it was a bit intimidating to call him for this kind of advice.  I was a social worker, after all, with a master’s degree.  Shouldn’t I know how to do this kind of thing?  I swallowed my pride and called Val.

Long story short, Val squeezed me into his busy schedule as the director of the before and after school program at the Albany YMCA.  I remember meeting him at a cafe on Solano Avenue one evening after he was done with work.  I explained to him that I’d been asked to lead a weekend retreat for HIV positive teens with hemophilia.  “What do you want to do at your retreat?” was his response.  I’m sure my answer was, “I have no idea”.  Within a half hour, without any judgment, (Val could be tough….but always fair), he had sketched out an agenda of activities for the entire weekend on the back of a napkin and had volunteered his YMCA facility in Albany for the first night of the retreat as well as the use of a YMCA camp in the Marin Headlands for the second night.  The retreat was held in January 1990, and we had a magical weekend with Val, Todd Smith and Dave Sager as volunteer staff.

To this day I wonder why Val took me under his wing and helped me succeed that weekend.  He did this time and time again throughout my career.  When I needed advice or other practical assistance, he was always there to provide it or to refer me to just the right person who could help.  Thirty-three years later, it’s become very clear to me that there are many people around the country with a story just like mine.  Val’s reach and his bandwidth for providing service to others was unparalleled and unfathomable.