HUFFINGTON
12.09.12
OUT AT THE TIMES
ready surmised the truth.
“I’d wondered about it,”
says Frankel.
“Previously, I didn’t
know he was gay. But
there was speculation
that it was AIDS and
that he was gay.”
Schmalz tested HIVpositive. His T-helper
cell count — a key measure of immune-system
health — was zero. There
was a fear that his vision
problems and the convulsions stemmed from
toxoplasmosis, a deadly
opportunistic infection
in the brain. But when a
spinal tap indicated no
presence of toxoplasmosis, Schmalz’s doctors
decided they wanted
to do exploratory brain
surgery to find out what
was going on. “I had to
tell the paper at that
point — I’d spent my
whole life exploring the
truth and reporting the
truth,” he says. “I just
went in and told them I
had AIDS.”
“It was a sad moment,”
recounts Frankel, with a
rasp in his voice. Frankel has been at the paper
for 42 years. He watched
Schmalz grow up there.
And since Frankel took
over as executive editor
in 1986, their relationship has become