07/01/2026
🇺🇸 As AIDS ravaged the gay population in Dallas in the early 80s, our backs were literally to the wall. We had few resources and needed help. Pleas for action or compassion frequently fell on deaf ears.
Because AIDS was a “gay disease” and politicized, government agencies disdained us, treatments were delayed or denied, funeral homes refused to embalm bodies and families abandoned their sons. Infected individuals lost their jobs, their insurance and their belongings were tossed into the streets.
Out of this crisis, we created a AIDS Resource Center (now Resource Center Dallas, one of the nation’s largest LGBTQ service organizations).
Without hesitation and potential adverse reaction, Dallas model maven Kim Dawson (1924 - 2010) said “Put my name on (the advisory board).”
Kim was a tour de force on raising funds for the Center. Not only did she lend her name, but she pushed others to contribute money or time or both.
Kim pulled in personal favors from the fashion and modeling industry, as well as celebrities including Givenchy, Alexander Julian and actresses Faye Dunaway, Cicely Tyson and Morgan Fairchild among others to attend fundraisers and put a “name” at every table just so they could assist in opening pocketbooks.
As AIDS progressed unabated, Kim herself saw individuals close to her and models from her agency become infected and/or sick. One such young man was Dwight Byrd, a brilliant producer of many of Kim’s fashion shows. His creativity transcended from the models on the stage to the audience. He was extremely talented, and as a black man, Kim shoved him out onto the world stage to success. His death was a tremendous loss for her.
One weekend Kim went to the ICU unit of a hospital in a small town south of Dallas to check on one of her models who was sick. Horrified, she found him barely able to breath.
Kim checked the young man out of the unit and rented an ambulance to transport him to a larger hospital in Dallas for better treatment.
Kim was upset, so I told her about our own illegal delivery of aerosolized pentamidine as a preventative treatment, but we needed more machines to aerosolize the drug so it could reach the impacted areas of lungs compromised by P*P or pneumonia. She ripped out a check and said, “buy four more.” I reminded her that we could get arrested. “Don’t worry, I’ll come visit you.”
Kim was a former fashion model, but she will always be remember as a role model for her response to AIDS. đź“– by William Waybourn,
