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In the Summer of 1979, a Chicago native and college freshman named Shamey Cramer took a seasonal housekeeping job at an Inn on Mackinac Island. It just so happened that on the other side of the island, Universal was shooting Somewhere in Time. This would be the trailhead of Shamey Cramer’s professional journey in filmmaking. He was assigned to maintain the three stars’ dressing rooms, which lead to being cast as an extra. After proving his salt on set, he was offered a job with Lorimar Television in Los Angeles, who produced the show Dallas. Unfortunately, the job Shamey came to LA to pursue dissolved the week he arrived, due to simultaneous writer, director, and actor strikes, which lasted about a year. But he stuck it out, and remained in Los Angeles until 1985.
One day in May of 1982, he walked into a bar called The Mother Lode on Santa Monica Blvd., and saw a poster for the first Quadrennial Gay Games. This was a moment of kismet. As a child, Shamey was fascinated by the Olympics, and dreamed of producing the opening and closing ceremonies. He also comes from a family of athletes; his father played against the Harlem Globetrotters, his uncle played for the Cleveland Indians, his brother was drafted by the New York Knicks, and Shamey has personally peddled over 100k miles on a bicycle. |
Here was an event that combined things that had always been compartmentalized, his sexuality and the movement towards equality, and athletic competition. He immediately got to work, and established Team Los Angeles for Gay Games I.
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With all of the ground Shamey was breaking as an organizer, athlete and ceremonies producer, he hit a glass ceiling, and realized what he needed to do to grow professionally. He enrolled at LA Valley College and, in 1985, at the age of 25, Shamey was diagnosed HIV positive. Feeling defeated, it no longer made sense to spend the next two years going to college, when he was only given 6 months to 3 years to live. In 1985, there were 15,000 recorded cases of HIV in America, and 12,500 had already died. So, Shamey returned home to Chicago, but didn’t tell his family about his test results. In fact, he didn’t tell anyone for 13 years. After 3 years back home, his health did not decline. And so, he got busy living, continued his journey towards becoming a filmmaker, and moved to New York.
There, he wrote and bartended at Broadway theaters, which exposed him to great writing, night after night. A couple years later, Shamey took a job at a ski resort in Colorado and suffered a major accident, tearing all the major muscles and breaking the bones in his right leg, landing him back home in Chicago to heal once more for two years. In 1992, when Cramer made it back to Los Angeles, his writing skills were put to use working in public relations for such clients as Gene Kelly, Paul Newman, Joan Collins and the Jenner-Kardashian clan. |
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Cramer received his Associate Arts degree cum laude in Film/TV Production from Los Angeles City College. While at LACC, he joined the speech and debate team, and proved to be a champion in yet another arena when he led his team to the 2011 national championships in Connecticut. While there, he picked up the New York Times, and read an article on a research paper from Johns Hopkins University presenting a logical argument to remove the 25-year ban so doctors could perform HIV-positive to HIV-positive organ transplants. This would be the opening of a new chapter in his life, like the poster at the Mother Lode had been 27 years before.
He has a cousin born the same year as he was, who was diagnosed with diabetes when they were in their early teens, and currently is on the wait list for a simultaneous pancreas and kidney transplant. Shamey considered the additional benefit to everyone awaiting organ transplants by lifting this ban, including his cousin, and knew he had to act. This became the topic of his persuasive speech, and he began correspondence with the article’s lead author, Bryan Boyarski. In February, 2013, California Senator Barbara Boxer introduced the HIV Organ Policy Equity Act (aka The HOPE Act) to Congress, and June of the same year it passed in the U.S. Senate. Shamey served as the HOPE Act volunteer advocate in Washington that summer, scheduling meetings, visiting members of the House of Representatives and producing a documentary short that was part of the political campaign. In the end, he and his three professional associates secured the 12 Republican co-sponsors. On November 12th, it passed in the House of Representatives by Unanimous Consent. And on November 21st, 2013, less than nineteen hours after receiving his invitation, Shamey was chosen to be the delegation lead that stood behind President Obama as he signed the HOPE ACT into law.
He has a cousin born the same year as he was, who was diagnosed with diabetes when they were in their early teens, and currently is on the wait list for a simultaneous pancreas and kidney transplant. Shamey considered the additional benefit to everyone awaiting organ transplants by lifting this ban, including his cousin, and knew he had to act. This became the topic of his persuasive speech, and he began correspondence with the article’s lead author, Bryan Boyarski. In February, 2013, California Senator Barbara Boxer introduced the HIV Organ Policy Equity Act (aka The HOPE Act) to Congress, and June of the same year it passed in the U.S. Senate. Shamey served as the HOPE Act volunteer advocate in Washington that summer, scheduling meetings, visiting members of the House of Representatives and producing a documentary short that was part of the political campaign. In the end, he and his three professional associates secured the 12 Republican co-sponsors. On November 12th, it passed in the House of Representatives by Unanimous Consent. And on November 21st, 2013, less than nineteen hours after receiving his invitation, Shamey was chosen to be the delegation lead that stood behind President Obama as he signed the HOPE ACT into law.
Shamey Cramer watches President Obama sign The HOPE Act
Today, Shamey is a Glendale resident and Woodbury University graduate. He expresses his honesty and truth through his writing. He is currently working on a feature film script entitled “Saving Ulysses” with creative partner and Irish actor Gavin Ó Fearraigh. The story is about a present-day Irish engineering student who is whisked back in time to make sure author James Joyce goes out on a date and falls in love with his future wife, Nora Barnacle, on the 16th of June 1904 - the day that has become known in Ireland as Bloomsday. Joyce chose this day as the setting for his epic stream-of-consciousness novel "Ulysses,” which takes place entirely on that day, using a structure borrowed from Homer’s epic poem “The Odyssey.” James Joyce challenged the idea of heroes in the 20th century, and portrayed their battles in secular and humanistic terms: the subjugation of Ireland under English rule, and roles of women created by men’s stereotypical minds are underlying messages in “Ulysses.” These ideas are a source of inspiration and purpose for Cramer as well. Bravery, diligence, passion, civic duty, fulfilling physical potential in games, and using one’s abilities and drive to create a better world are as relevant now as they’ve always been. The odyssey of Shamey Cramer has required embracing and embodying these things in many moments, and soon we will see his take away from the journey, the way he’s known he would tell us, in the form of stories, since “Somewhere in Time,” on Mackinac Island, in 1979.
“If there is a motto I have embraced in life, it comes from second century Kashmiri prophet Yus Asaf: ‘The world is a bridge - cross over it, do not settle down upon it.’ It’s part of the reason why I refer to myself as a citizen of the world instead of being identified by any distinct geographic location. We’re only here for a short, and we’re all in this together.”
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