Community remembers AIDS victims

Names of fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, friends and colleagues and even complete strangers were read at the Trinity Episcopal Church last night. Each of them was a victim of the AIDS pandemic, and students and members of the community gathered to pay their respects on World AIDS Day.\nBloomington resident Daniel Soto, co-founder of the Latino AIDS prevention group HOLA, lit a large candle at the front of the church to start the naming ceremony.\n"I have so many friends who've died of AIDS in the last 20 years," Soto said. "We've lost so many talented people. This (was) to remember the people who have died from AIDS and to remember there is always work and education to be done."\nPeople came up one by one to light smaller candles from Soto's flame and to read the names of AIDS victims. \nFor some, it was a loved one.\nFor others, it was whole groups of children in Africa. \nFor Bloomington resident Sharon Hayden, it was her son, Jerry Hayden Jr., who died in 1999 from the disease.\n"I was just trying to stop from crying," Hayden said afterward. "This was actually the first time I got through it without breaking down and crying really, really hard."\nThe event began with a letter from Bloomington Mayor John Fernandez pledging Dec. 1 as World AIDS Day in Bloomington before the names were read. After that, four volunteers offered reflections on their experiences with AIDS.\nNurse Deborah Phelps spoke about her visit to South Africa in early November with 35 colleagues. There, she said she learned about a drastically undermanned medical system for a population a quarter of which is infected with the virus.\nIU graduate student and Community AIDS Action Group member David Granger talked about his friend Kent, who died from AIDS, and how forthcoming the community was to his sickness. Granger said his friend was still paid and still received medical benefits even after he couldn't work; volunteers donated their time and a doctor donated her services, all for free. He urged people to deal with AIDS patients in the same way.\n"You can make one or two or many people's lives better," he said.\nSenior Kunal Desai, co-director of Outreach Kenya Development Volunteers, talked about his time in Kenya with a mother who contracted AIDS. He said the woman was positive and optimistic about her future and spoke more about her children than her sickness.\n"If there's anything I've learned working with AIDS in Africa," Desai said. "It's that the human spirit is strong and defiant in the face of adversity and suffering ... She didn't cry that night, but I left in tears."\nRev. Mary Ann Macklin talked about her sister-in-law who lived amid AIDS in Cameroon and her brother who died from it while in Kenya. She said the most important way to fight the disease is to promote stopping it.\n"We cannot be silent," Macklin said. "We cannot let isolation, discrimination and stigma be the power. Because love is so much more powerful than that."\nThe IU Chapter of the Student Global AIDS Campaign co-sponsored the event along with CAAG, IU Health and Wellness and the Bloomington Hospital and Health Care System. \nSGAC co-founder and president Manika Bhateja, a senior, said she was pleased with the ceremony. \n"It makes me happy that people are beginning to really understand the crisis," Bhateja said. "They're beginning to be more open, to share their feelings. It's not about having a lot of people there, it's about having people who are passionate about the cause, who want to make a difference, who want to see a difference. We are making a difference in people's lives."\n -- Contact staff reporter Gavin Lesnick at glesnick@indiana.edu.