Jeff Griglak

Background: Jeff is a 38 year old white man who grew up in a rural town called Perryopolis near Pittsburgh. He went to college at Pitt, then Carnegie Mellon, then went to Yale to study oboe. He moved to New York, and got into performing in musical theater. Jeff holds an administrative job at American Ballet Theatre, and he uses the space and resources there for ACT UP meetings and events. He is in a long-term relationship with Lee Raines, also a musical theater performer and also an ACT UPer. Lee and Jeff met on a plane trip from NYC to St Louis where they'd been cast as Jets in a production of West Side Story. An intra-Jet showmance turned into a romance and they became inseparable, except when one or the other was out of town working. They live at 13th Street and First Avenue. They joined ACT UP about six months or so after it started. Jeff and Lee worked together managing the offices and rehearsal space for American Ballet Theater, and were very active in ACT UP, so they spent pretty much all of their time together.  Their affinity group, Seeing Red, sometimes uses the ABT conference room to meet. Lee and Jeff do not know their HIV statuses (though they suspect they are negative since they have been together for eight years and neither has had any health issues), but plan to get tested together this week. Lee is planning to do civil disobedience and get arrested for the first time at Target City Hall, while Jeff is planning to do support.

Role in ACT UP: Jeff is on the Outreach Committee, and he and Lee do a lot of wheat-pasting. He is in the affinity group Seeing Red.

Groups/friends at the meeting: Lee Raines (long-time partner), Outreach Committee, Patrick Moore, Seeing Red

Specific tasks at the March 13, 1989 meeting: Seeing Red is on the agenda, during the Target City Hall report, to ask the floor for approval to use the ACT UP logo on their posters for Target City Hall.

Jeff is also on the agenda later to announce a zap of Governor Mario Cuomo’s office in the World Trade Center on Thursday where Cuomo will be announcing the opening of a 66 bed AIDS facility in the Bronx. The zap will stress that this is woefully inadequate. Jeff will ask anyone interested in participating to meet with him right now at the side of the room to coordinate.

Additional information: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/140-jeffrey-griglak

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