"A life in public service is the key to personal happiness," Ann Hilton Fisher said in an interview a few years ago. And as the outgoing executive director of the AIDS Legal Council of Chicago ( ALCC ), she should know. One would think a multi-decade career in legal advocacy for some of the state's most vulnerable citizens might burn Fisher out. Instead, even as she prepares to retire from the job at the end of March, her voice still radiates with evident passion. At the end of her 17-year tenure, she credits three things with keeping her going: engagement, meaning and gratitude.
It was not a boring job, she said, because "there's always something new, always something interesting, involves my heart, involves my mind, get to work with great people."
After working in legal services on Chicago's West Side, Fisher started at ALCC in 1997, keeping some of the same clients in the process. She came in at the end of the years when a positive HIV test was a death sentence and when there were funerals every week. At that point, the new drug cocktails were becoming available—and the focus of the council became not on supporting the dying and their loved ones, but the living. The morning of our interview, Fisher had held her last ever board meeting, and looked back over the meeting notes of her first to recall that in 1997, ALCC started a back-to-work project simply because clients were getting better.
Fisher emphasized, "My clients are not dying of HIV, but living with HIV" and they were not their statuses.
She talked of years-long relationships with clients from affluent professionals to indigents with haphazard access to services, "clients who become so incredibly grateful if I can get them a Social Security check of $721 a month." She talked about accompanying a man with mental-health issues and HIV, who still lives with the grandfather who raised him, to a caseworker's appointment where he finally received benefits. Fisher revealed that her pride is his pride in finally helping out his grandfather, and she even knows his favorite TV show—The Real Housewives of Atlanta.
These interactions drove home the job's meaning to Fisher and the people she serves. Other victories are broader, like the time ALCC—through a few phone calls about a job applicant's HIV status on his criminal background check—managed to get that information removed from all Illinois police records in Cook County in a single night. The successes tie directly to Fisher's self-described third element of happiness: the gratitude. It's the link through all of Fisher's stories, heartwarming and horrifying.
She shared two uncomfortably recent examples of status bigotry, among many. A man downstate found that the medical assistant who tested him revealed to all of her gay friends that he was positive. He moved from the town where he had a job and a life. Another man called Fisher: His neighbor had intercepted his mail, found out he had HIV, told another neighbor and that woman posted a sign on her window that read "HIV Awareness" with a big arrow pointing toward his house. While Fisher is harsh about the situations, she said she's honored to be available for these men and others like them.
As counterpoint, she picked up a recent handwritten letter from her paper-strewn desk. It's from a woman who, 10 years ago, found herself saddled with her dying daughter's children, one severely disabled. Fisher and ALCC assisted with the daughter's last days, getting her work benefits and life insurance, and negotiated the children's custody. The last 10 years were unimaginably rough on the grandmother, poor and dealing with a disabled husband, yet she still found the time and desire to write Fisher her thanks, a feat the director does not take lightly. "This woman is a saint." Fisher said. "What I did is so small."
Gratitude works both ways, as Fisher specifically thanked the gay community for continuing to support and raise funds for a disease that has affected people of practically every background. Many of the donors, she said, are still upper- or middle-class gay men who remember the horror of the 1980s and feel moved to contribute. She praised the Chicago activist community for staying tight-knit and for having long-running, successful events, and described the network of integrated case management and advocates as "the best in the country."
On a personal note, it's easy to see why so many people put their faith in Fisher throughout the years. Her voice was the voice of a storyteller, full of emotions. While clearly well-informed when discussing policy, she still has a sense of humor, joking about speaking in outlines as a lawyer thing. In addition, her charm extended to self-awareness in readily admitting she could be a little more organized.
While it wasn't public at the time of the interview, ALCC recently announced Thomas D. Yates, an honored legal advocate who joined the organization at the end of 2013, as her replacement. Fisher called him "terrific" and said she can't wait to see him take on expanding ALCC's services, including new outreach programs.
Ann Hilton Fisher's retirement event will take place Thursday, April 3, 6-9 p.m., at Winston & Strawn LLP, 35 W. Wacker Dr., 46th floor. See www.AIDSLegal.com .
