Staying Fit
In 1985, Cleve Jones was at what he calls “the epicenter of a horrendous and growing tragedy.”
Then a young activist living in San Francisco, Jones, 65, recalls learning that the city-wide number of deaths due to AIDS had reached 1,000 people.
AARP Membership— $12 for your first year when you sign up for Automatic Renewal
Get instant access to members-only products and hundreds of discounts, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP the Magazine.
"That was just a devastating number for me,” he recalls. “The majority of them lived and died within six blocks of my apartment, and there was no evidence. No evidence at all."
Nationally, the disease's toll was poised to climb even higher. By the end of 1988, the year in which World AIDS Day was first observed, more than 61,000 AIDS-related deaths would be reported across the country.
Those who, like Jones, lived through the height of the epidemic recall years marked by terror, tragedy and rage — but also the immense resilience of the LGBT community and groundbreaking work of activists and researchers around the world.
As the 31st annual World AIDS Day is celebrated Dec. 1, they say that honoring the past is key to keeping the global fight against AIDS alive into the future.
'The threat of the disease'
For Jones, that fight began in the early 1980s. He cofounded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation in 1983 and in 1987 created the first panel of what would become the AIDS Memorial Quilt, which was displayed for the first time during the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights that year.
"It was healing, it was comforting. It was empowering,” he says of the quilt, which today spans more than 1 million square feet and commemorates the lives of more than 96,000 people. “It was a great tool for the media and great weapon to shame the politicians whose lack of action had contributed so much to the threat of the disease."
More on politics-society
Meet LGBTQ Advocate Curtis Lipscomb
He's working to build a strong LGBTQ community in DetroitRobert Redfield's on Guard Against Epidemics
M.D., Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention