Jerome Elias Saleeby

After high school, Mr. Saleeby attended East Carolina University, where he befriended Jim Bierma, also a Carolina native. They moved to Atlanta in the late 1970s to attend college. Mr. Saleeby earned a bachelor's degree in accounting from Georgia State University in 1982. After working in banking, he became a real estate agent for RE/MAX Greater Atlanta and, later, specialized in high-end sales. Also, he and business partners would buy properties, then remodel and sell them. In the 1980s, the AIDS epidemic and HIV-related issues spread fear and death in the city. Mr. Saleeby and Mr. Bierma saw friends get sick and die. They got involved. Mr. Saleeby was a founding member of Georgia Equality. He was a board member for the Elton John AIDS Foundation from 1992 to 2005. John Scott of Cameron, N.C., served as the foundation's executive director during the movie buff's tenure. On April 23 2010, Jerome Elias "Eli" Saleebydied at Grady Hospital from complications of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Additional survivors include his father, Elias Saleeby of Raleigh, N.C.; and a brother, James Menefee of Richmond, Va.