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Born in Toledo, Ohio, the author, the eighth of nine children, moved to Detroit with her family at the age of three, and then, at 17, she moved alone to Houston, Texas. Her career as secretary to the Chairman of the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Houston, three years as a legal secretary, and many more years as Vice President of Administration for a store planning firm, gave her many opportunities to hone her writing skills.

Freda Wagman now lives near Houston, Texas, where she had moved with her son in order for him to attend the high school which was most suited for his educational benefit as an outstanding academic student. She attended an AIDS support group for many years, but has recently decided to spend her retirement years helping people with other needs.

The AIDS crisis is far from over, but advances in medical care have lifted the death sentence the disease once held. This wouldn’t have been possible had it not been for those who died in the wake of the epidemic and for people like author Freda Wagman who gave her all to help others, while at the same time coming to grips with her own impending loss.

In Snippets from the Trenches, Wagman—a mother of a son diagnosed with AIDS—shares her journey in the trenches during the darkest hours of the AIDS epidemic in Houston, Texas. She made the ultimate sacrifice in losing her only child to the disease. But in an effort to understand her son’s illness and since 1,500 miles separated them, she embarked on a path of selfless service to help others who were often shunned by their own families.

Beginning with a history of the evolution of AIDS, Snippets from the Trenches then tells a personal story of some of the people who suffered from and were lost to AIDS, as well as the angels who were there for them in their time of need. At its central, most painful layer, Wagman’s story is about the loss of Gary, her son, whose diagnosis was the catalyst for her involvement with the AIDS community. Despite her years of volunteering, nothing prepares her for the loss of her son to the same disease she has watched take so many others.