Folby, John

John Folby at the Harrisburg AIDSWalk in Harrisburg, PA in 1993.

John Folby was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The eldest of five children, Folby was raised in a “very strict Roman Catholic, Irish-Italian family.” At age twenty-five, he relocated to Harrisburg with his partner. Shortly after moving to Harrisburg, Folby became heavily involved in the local gay community, beginning with his work on the Harrisburg Gay Switchboard. He also joined a group for gay Catholics, Dignity/Central PA, which better integrated him into the gay community with trips to New York City for the annual Gay Pride parade and introductions to the gay bar scene in Harrisburg.

With the influx of HIV/AIDS in the gay community, Folby began his twenty-five-year career with the Department of Welfare where he ran the Special Pharmaceutical Benefits Program (SPBP), Pennsylvania’s version of an AIDS Drug Assistance program for people living with HIV/AIDS. Folby, with the help of his supervisor, was able to parlay this civil servant position into one of advocacy. Due to lack of government funding, Folby was frequently forced to think creatively and economically to promote HIV/AIDS awareness and get the word out about HIV/AIDS medications, such as AZT. Folby became an advocate inside the system.

This collection contains the personal and governmental activism of John Folby. Items represent local, state, national, and international HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention.

John Folby was born in Pittsburgh in 1947. He was the oldest of five children in an Irish-Italian Catholic family. He relocated to Harrisburg in 1975 with his partner. John continues to live with his partner in Harrisburg in a relationship lasting more than 44 years. John is well-known for his activism in the LGBT community of Central Pennsylvania. In his younger days, John was involved in a Catholic group for lesbians and gays known as Dignity, and assisted in the Gay Switchboard Hotline. He began a 25-year career in a state government civil service position running a medical drug program for persons with HIV/AIDS. He continues his service to the LGBT community through consulting for the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health which offers the Pennsylvania Mid-Atlantic AIDS Education Training Center. John’s work with HIV/AIDS has been recognized with numerous awards, and the John Folby Award for Excellence is named in his honor. He additionally volunteers for the LGBT Center of Central PA’s History project. In this interview, John not only discusses his extensive activism efforts, but also his family’s reluctance to address and accept his homosexuality, his relationship with his partner, and changes within the LGBT community within his lifetime. He also discusses his and his partner’s decision to have John adopt his partner in order to financially protect themselves and their assets when gay marriage was illegal in Pennsylvanian.

Document created by Jerry Brennan and Richard Hill recording the history and development of Dignity/Central PA as an organization in Harrisburg from July 1975 to June 1985.