I did not know that about the Creek Chorale, though I'm reminded of a rather famous photo of the San Francisco Men's Choir with the faces erased of the vast majority of members who died of AIDS. Those were frightening days, indeed. I was living in NYC during the worst of the epidemic, and my partner's address book (which became my address book too and which I kept and used after he died) contained SO MANY lined-out names, almost half of the book, almost all because of HIV/AIDS.