Key West Florida Weekly

PINK TRIANGLE

The Key West AIDS Memorial: History created by compassion



 

 

Researching this story prior to the morning of June 12 was an exercise in nostalgia — poignant but pride-inspiring nonetheless. But then the LGBTQ community was plunged into a vortex of evil and hatred.

Forty-nine souls were slain and more than 50 wounded for the sin of partying in a popular gay nightspot in Orlando. Vigils were held throughout the world, including in Key West, as a somber conclusion to the annual Pride Parade. Perhaps these massacred martyrs will one day have their own memorial.

Here in Key West we have a very special memorial that is testament to another massacre, our AIDS Memorial. It is at the foot of the White Street Pier, and consists of a stately series of black granite-faced wedges facing original walkways around black granite tiles engraved with each victim’s name, seven names per tile. There is also an inlaid, free-form map of the Keys and appropriate quotations engraved in lighter stone.

The Key West AIDS Memorial was built with private funds and donated to the city of Key West in 1997 and dedicated on Dec. 1, World AIDS Day. It remains unique, because as of June 2016 the Key West Memorial “is the only official municipal AIDS memorial in the world and serves as a tribute to the accepting and generous community of Key West.”

But why Key West?

“It might be hard to understand now, but on an island of less than 30,000 year-round residents, AIDS and HIV had a devastating impact, including the loss of over 700 friends and neighbors to AIDS-related illnesses in only a few short years. No segment of this island’s community was spared as prominent business owners, housewives, Conchs, servicemen, gay and straight alike contracted the dreaded disease,” according to sources as varied as People magazine (1988), The New York Times (1990) and esteemed local epidemiologist Dr. Mark Whiteside (2011).

“According to the Centers for Disease Control, Key West had one of the highest AIDS rates per capita in the United States in 1988, based on the number of diagnosed cases per 100,000 people: Key West (Monroe County), 121; San Francisco, 102; New York City, 63; Greater Miami, 45; Greater Fort Lauderdale, 37. Not only was Key West (including statistically all of the Florida Keys) battling an epidemic few people understood at the time, but it was also becoming a refuge for hundreds of people who were diagnosed elsewhere but felt they could not remain at home in what many considered to be hostile environments. So they moved to Key West, which drove the ‘real’ numbers much higher and put an overwhelming strain on the medical resources of the tiny island community.” Jon Allen, Mike Dively and Michael Ingram were part of the original organizational effort. Ingram, an architect and current president of the Friends of the AIDS Memorial, wrote in an email this week: “I found the site and ultimately designed both phases of the Memorial that are in place. The project has been privately funded and maintained with the City Community Services doing additional work and participation for World AIDS Day.”

At the time of its dedication ceremony on World AIDS Day 1997, the memorial included 730 names. I was there. I wept. It was my impression that everyone wept. And when the words were over, most heartbreaking of all were the single flowers or small bouquets adorning so many of the granite plaques inscribed with the names. That ceremony is repeated each World AIDS Day, including the announcement of new additions — happily fewer and fewer as time passes and medical science improves — the reading of each name a ritual of remembrance. There are always flowers.

“Names are engraved once a year without cost,” although a contribution of $150- $250 is suggested “to cover if it can be managed,” Ingram wrote.

“Of interest,” he reported, “the Friends were able to create a fund (with a substantial matching gift from the John D. Evans Foundation) at the Florida Keys Community Foundation which is a fund for the maintenance of the memorial in perpetuity.”

Private AIDS memorials have been created all over the world, the first in Barcelona in 2003. The excitement at the moment is the pending opening late this summer of the New York City AIDS Memorial Park at St. Vincent’s Triangle in Greenwich Village. New York City has reportedly lost over 100,000 people to the disease.

Our memorial officially belongs to the city, but there has always been a caring committee that tends it lovingly. It has overcome scorn — being described by a local tour company as solely the beginning of the unfinished highway leading to Cuba — and damage, but “I can share that there has never been any vandalism to the Memorial. The bollards are original to the design to aid in the deflection of the periodic driver that may be either confused or cocktailed,” Ingram wrote. Helping him to lead the Friends of the AIDS Memorial are vice president Alan Eckstein, treasurer Jeff Smead, Clayton Lopez, Peter Arnow, Peggy Ward-Grant and Steve Torrence. Also acknowledged for their contributions, in addition to corporate sponsors and organizers cited, are R. Brooks White, Joseph Bryan Jr., Matthew Helmerich, Guy Ross, Jefferson Overby and John Evans.

The memorial inscribes the names of more than 1,200 people who have died from AIDS in the Florida Keys. It deserves a visit. ¦


 

 

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