Point of View

The Downtown AIDS Memorial is a Must

An AIDS Memorial Park at the former St. Vincent’s Hospital site would a fitting way to remember how AIDS swept through our community, and how the community got together to help and to respond to the epidemic.

We need a place to focus on and remember individuals, not so much that they died – too often too soon and too young – but to recognize that for so many even a life cut short can have tremendous meaning.

VillageCare was asked early on if we would support the memorial park proposal, and we said that we absolutely would, wholeheartedly.

For me as an individual, I believe this to be one of those worthwhile projects that everyone in the community can get behind.  I’m certain that our HIV staff – current and former – feel similarly, especially those who were working at VillageCare back at the height of the epidemic.

In many ways, I am where I am today because of AIDS.  I lost dear friends to this insidious disease, and I vowed to do something about it.  That is the main reason why 20 years ago I sought employment at VillageCare.

During the 1990s and much of the “aughts,” I oversaw VillageCare’s HIV programs, which we used to call our Network of AIDS Services.

Going back before my time at VillageCare – back to the early days of the epidemic in the 1980s – the organization was one of the first to begin to shape ways to address the needs of those with AIDS, and to provide unique, compassionate care.

In developing responses to the epidemic, VillageCare was led by caring and wonderful individuals, as well as great thinkers.  They included Nick Rango, who would go on to become the first director of the state’s AIDS Institute, and Len McNally, who was integral to the planning and design of the comprehensive services VillageCare created in response to the epidemic.  There were so many others at VillageCare who gave everything they had to combating AIDS.

Until the development of protease inhibitors and combination therapies in the mid-1990s, VillageCare staff faced a tremendously difficult time dealing with the constant deaths.  No more so than the nurses and others working in our Certified Home Health Agency, who held weekly memorials in our offices for those patients who had passed on.  Weekly memorials – because so many were dying.

When we opened Rivington House – The Nicholas A. Rango Health Care Facility, a nursing home for those with AIDS, we found that people were staying at home as long as they could before coming to us.  Basically, they came to Rivington House in its early days because they were no longer able to be cared for at home.  They came to Rivington House to die.

In its first year, the 219-bed Rivington House had well more than 400 admissions.  Sadly, the “discharges” that enabled the facility to accommodate such a number were due to death.

For those of us who witnessed first-hand the devastation AIDS caused, the plan for an AIDS Memorial Park simply makes great sense.

The site is important, too.

For many years, and particularly during the first decade of the AIDS epidemic, VillageCare was a partner with St. Vincent’s in caring for those with AIDS.  No other hospital took on the symbolic importance of St. Vincent’s.  It is the hospital most closely associated with the AIDS epidemic in New York City, leading the way in caring for those with the disease when others were, in effect, turning away.

Our community, and all of New York City, needs this AIDS memorial, as well as the inclusion of permanent teaching space in the basement area.  Together they would be deeply enriching assets for our community.

The memorial is long overdue.

We need this memorial because people need to remember.  Those who were not alive or were very young when the AIDS epidemic struck may very well not understand how terribly a community was impacted by a disease that was wiping out neighbors and friends mercilessly.  And the memorial would serve as a reminder of how everyone in the community pulled together to do something about it.

We must not forget this.  Not ever.

To borrow a line from a Bruce Springsteen song:
 ‘Cause we made a promise.
 We swore we’d always remember.
 No retreat, baby, no surrender.