Obituary archive honors lives lost to AIDS, the history of Houston’s gay community
The three paragraphs stopped her cold. There, in black and white, was the news Jacqueline Kiffe had both sought and dreaded for nearly 25 years.
Kiffe reeled. As if she had been punched in the gut.
Mike Malone had been the first person to show her kindness. He shielded her from middle school bullies and mopped up the pieces a few years later when a boy broke her heart. He introduced her to art, music and culture and they spent hours talking during hot, lingering Texas summers. He was her protector, her confidant, her surrogate brother.
Then Kiffe went away to school, got married, moved overseas for a few years. Around 1990, the two fell out of touch.
But she always wondered where he was, what he was doing — and she worried. Malone was gay, still a young man at the height of the AIDS epidemic. In the pit of her stomach, she feared the worst.
For years, Kiffe thumbed through telephone directories from all over Texas, searching through pages of Mike Malones for the one she ached to see. Scouring the internet for a trail leading to her friend. Praying for good news.
Then she stumbled onto JD Doyle’s Texas Obituary Project.