The Fourth of July came exactly a week early for Kevin Deese. He walked into the Buffalo Navy Reserve Center on Thursday for his first day of duty, wearing the single gold bar that designates an ensign, a Navy officer.

That journey began 14 years ago, when Deese, 32, entered the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. Raised in Florida, he’s the son of Sue and Bobby Deese, a Buffalo native and Bills stalwart well-known for carrying the team flag to famous landmarks around the world.

Deese is the second of three children, between his brother, Adam Abitbol, and sister, Kelsey. Adam, nine years older, attended the Naval Academy, became a Navy pilot, and is now a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration commander and “hurricane hunter.”

His achievements helped inspire Deese, as a teenager, to start thinking about “service to a cause that’s bigger than one’s self.” He was also accepted at Annapolis, with a goal of serving on Navy submarines.

Deese was eating lunch with his classmates in April 2014, on his mother’s birthday, when he was startled to learn the commandant wanted to see him. The news was devastating: He had tested positive for HIV, on routine blood tests.

While Deese would receive his diploma, there was a ban on anyone with HIV being commissioned as an officer. A month later, Deese remained seated during graduation, while his friends rose together to accept commissions.

“It was the darkest day of my life,” Deese said.

Ten years and one day later in Buffalo, during last month’s joyous naval park ceremony on the USS Little Rock, Deese was formally commissioned as an ensign in the Navy Reserve. He noted the ship – built to serve in World War II – was commissioned just a little too late for that duty.

“I feel you, girl,” Deese said, to much laughter.

Yet the long struggle, he says now, provided larger meaning.

When he learned he had HIV, he was only 22. He had spent much of his young life denying a giant part of himself – that he was a gay man, a member of the LGBTQ community – and if you cannot fully accept yourself, he asks, how can you truly lead?

The subsequent decade of education – from Annapolis to Charleston to Minneapolis, and then to a community embrace in Buffalo – only strengthened what U.S. Naval Reserve Lt. Kyle Coia, master of ceremonies at the commissioning, described as Deese’s “authenticity and integrity.”

Bobby Deese, Kevin’s dad, said those trials proved what any parent hopes to see: “Phenomenal courage in the face of adversity.”

For a time, Deese worked as an Amazon shift supervisor and then for a startup in Charleston, where many friends from Annapolis were stationed. But they were busy with their lives as officers, while Deese – still hoping to reverse the decision – formally asked the Department of Defense to grant an exception, allowing him to be commissioned.

Denied again, seemingly for the last time, he was accepted for graduate work at the University of Minnesota. He joined the Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus, and that support, as he recalled in his commissioning speech, helped ignite a revelation during a large gathering on AIDS Action Day:

“People were standing up full-chested and speaking to having HIV,” Deese said, “and it changed me.”

He realized going public could bolster others facing the same stigmas and misconceptions. Deese learned from Peter Perkowski – a Los Angeles lawyer raised near Letchworth State Park – that a plaintiff called John Doe had gone to court to challenge Department of Defense exclusions regarding HIV and commissioned officers.

Deese not only asked to sign on. He said his name could be used publicly. By becoming “the face of this fight,” Perkowski said, “Kevin was making it better for others going forward.”

It was particularly meaningful, for Deese, to emphasize this point: While it’s important to follow practical precautions to avoid HIV, people diagnosed with it had served quietly and efficiently within the military for years. The ban only applied if you tested positive for the disease before you joined or were commissioned.

In 2020, after earning graduate degrees in business and public policy, Deese contemplated where to build his career. He kept thinking about childhood visits with his grandmother in Buffalo. His father handed down that fierce allegiance to the Bills, and Deese appreciated how the city seemed to generate such passion in so many residents:

They embrace it, he realized, as something larger than themselves.

Deese was hired by M&T Bank. The director of his chorus in the Twin Cities reached out to Rob Strauss, artistic director of the Buffalo Gay Men’s Chorus, and suggested Deese as a talented potential member.

He was also welcomed at Buffalo’s Holy Cross Catholic Church, where Deese became a cantor in the chorus. In 2022 – while settling into his new life, and a new relationship – a Virginia court ruled the Army made an unconstitutional decision in stopping a National Guard sergeant with HIV from commissioning as an officer, according to Perkowski.

Based on that outcome, Perkowski said, the DOD ruled midshipmen and cadets who learn they have HIV in service academies can become commissioned officers – though people with HIV, for now, still cannot enlist.

In essence, Kevin Deese had a chance to symbolically stand up with the rest of his class, a decade later. After going through all the requirements a second time, he learned in early 2024:

The Navy was ready to give him his commission.

“I think a lot of people are dealt a hand like his and fold,” said Dr. Seth Glassman, an assistant clinical professor at the University at Buffalo who handles Deese’s HIV care through Evergreen Health.

Glassman admires Deese for his courage, and for publicly establishing a simple truth: “In 2024, the medicines for HIV are so safe and effective that people can expect to live a normal life span, and discrimination or preventing people with HIV from serving in the military is no longer rational or defensible.”

This May and June – which by chance is national Pride Month – brought Deese a sequence of monumental events. A priest from Holy Cross, the Rev. Vincent Adaikalasamy, provided the invocation and benediction at the commissioning for a guy whose “gratitude to everyone who has been part of his life journey makes him unique and rare.”

The Buffalo Gay Men’s Chorus sang the national anthem and a special rendition of “Anchors Aweigh” prepared by Strauss, who waited a day to tell the members some news he understood they’d find upsetting:

The Diocese of Buffalo had canceled a June 9 choral concert at St. Joseph’s Cathedral that was supposed to include the BGMC – contending the group’s appearance in the building would be “inconsistent with Catholic teaching.”

Strauss didn’t want that disappointment to infringe on Deese’s celebration. “It was hugely emotional to be there,” he said.

A few days ago, Deese was also elected to the Erie County Democratic Committee, following what he describes as a grassroots, door-to-door campaign. After so many years of watching decisions about everyday lives being made from “way, way up,” he said he’s ready to be part of affecting changes, on the ground.

All of it ties into what Deese will contemplate on the most meaningful Fourth of July of his life. He thinks every day of how so many people who died in the early years of the AIDS epidemic tried desperately to make a larger point about shared humanity – and how the medical and cultural advances that protect him are built upon their legacy and sacrifice.

If “service” means trying to lift up everything that matters in his life – his partner and family, his city and nation, his deep faith – then it all begins in one truth he reached in full, in Buffalo:

“This is me,” said Ensign Kevin Deese, commissioned officer.

Sean Kirst is a columnist with The Buffalo News. Email him at skirst@buffnews.com.