The Private Life and Public Death of Frank Koury

October 3, 1993, was declared A. Frank Koury Day in the city of Houston. Mayor Bob Lanier, members of Frank's family and representatives of Fulbright & Jaworski came together to honor Frank as a good man and a fine attorney. It was a brief respite in the war George and Sam continue to fight to this day over Frank's memory. It is a war of attrition, with each letter and phone call an attempt to claim a tiny piece of Frank's memory.

George is 73 years old now, sick with prostate cancer and still waiting for the courts to tell him what's left of Frank's entangled estate. In the meantime, he has concerned himself with what material possessions Frank left behind. His letters to Sam invariably warn him not to remove or damage any furnishings in the townhouse, including the recording equipment Frank bought for Sam. He seems to be trying to reconcile his feelings about Sam, even as he slips into denial about what he represented in his son's life.

"I am trying to have some compassion for your situation," he wrote on June 18. "I recognize that you may have given my son some companionship during the period that you knew him but you enjoyed a very expensive lifestyle and made no contribution thereto."

Sam Templeton figures he has a year to live. To date, he has managed to avoid pneumonia and other threatening conditions, but he knows from tending to the few friends he has left who have AIDS that it is only a matter of time.

Sam is surviving on $700 a month in social security; George has sent him a couple of checks totaling about $2,700. Still, Sam awakens in the townhouse each day, knowing that George could show up before it's over and order him out. He has accepted the fact that the cure for AIDS will not arrive in time. He has not, however, accepted the circumstances under which the end will come.

"I'd like to think I helped Frank by just being here," he says. And then, a little later, he adds, "Sometimes I get pretty damn pissed at Frank."

As the legacy of one man's personal turmoil, such conflicting emotions come naturally. Sam suspects that the truth of his lover's life, the answer to the question of who Frank Koury really was, will probably always elude him. But for now, with so much of his own life tied up in the answer, there seems no more appropriate question to consider.