Suzi’s Story

In some eight years of the AIDS crisis, the Peabody Board has reviewed many fine programs dealing with the disease. Some have won an award, but few have captured the human toll of the crisis and the cry for dignity created in this superb production. Suzi’s Story, produced by HBO in association with Pro Image Productions for Network Ten (Australia), is a personal story of one young couple’s determination to face AIDS with courage, altruism, hope and love. Not a member of a so-called “high-risk group,” Suzi Lovegrove contracted AIDS two years after a brief affair with a man she later learned was bisexual. Now married, Suzi learned she had passed the fatal disease on to her newborn son. By allowing cameras to track the final months of her life, including her last moments with husband Vince, Suzi shared her pain and courage with all. In doing so, the implications of AIDS for family relationships and our need as a society to respond with compassion and commitment, as opposed to myth-making and depersonalization, was effectively dramatized. For making a bold, yet compassionate statement, a Peabody to Suzi’s Story.