Today, the world lost one of its most influential loudmouths.

At age 84, Larry Kramer wasn’t expected to live forever. But his larger-than-life persona certainly made it seem that way.

And what is my connection with the renowned playwright and AIDS activist? My younger brother was his personal trainer for several years.

My brother Bill got to know Larry through their mutual friend Rodger McFarlane. If you’ve seen the HBO version of Larry’s A Normal Heart, you probably loved the character played by Jim Parsons, which was based on Rodger. The Ned Weeks character (played by Mark Ruffalo) was based on the playwright.

Larry was an agitator. He roared when others whimpered.

He used his words to make a difference.

Back in the late 1990s, Rodger asked Bill to join a team he was assembling. His mentor, Larry Kramer, was ill and needed a liver transplant. But first they needed to get Larry in the best physical shape possible.

Bill, a personal trainer, accepted immediately. For the next four or five years, Bill helped get Larry physically ready for the operation. Afterwards, he helped him stay in good shape.

“I was the designated cheerleader,” Bill told me this afternoon. Larry didn’t like doctors and he didn’t like hospitals. He could get grouchy. Who could blame him, considering what he’d seen so many friends go through during the AIDS epidemic, which he always called The Plague.

Bill kept trying. Sometimes his wife and baby daughter would come along to Larry and David’s home in Connecticut. “He didn’t have to do that,” Bill says. “He welcomed them into his home. And even gave baby Lucy a set of Beatrix Potter books, which she treasures.”

Larry invited Bill to his New York apartment twice to watch the Gay Pride Parade from his bird’s-eye view. They watched from his window. Many parade marchers knew it was Larry’s apartment and waved wildly.

Rodger’s been gone since 2009. I asked Bill how he might have eulogized their friend. “I think he’d have said, ‘Larry taught me you can’t just sit back and do nothing.'”

He had to be tough. Larry Kramer was a great man.

Bill didn’t take any photos with Larry, but I think his friend would appreciate us using this picture to symbolize just one of the results of his life’s work.

This is our grandson, Cameron, last year at the first Gay Pride Parade in Evansville, Indiana.

Rest in Paradise, Larry Kramer.

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