Whitman-Walker, a Longtime Front in AIDS War, Moves Out

Several blocks from the clinic was the White House, where President Ronald Reagan had barely uttered the word "AIDS" in his eight years in office. In 1989, the Centers for Disease Control reported 22,082 deaths from AIDS.

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That same year, a square-jawed guy walked into the clinic and introduced himself as Hank. He said he wanted to volunteer. Freeland H. "Hank" Carde III was a retired Navy commander who had done three tours in Vietnam as a river intelligence officer working with Navy SEALS and Army Special Forces units, for which he earned two Bronze Stars. Carde's partner had just died of AIDS, and Carde, though strapping and fit, was HIV-positive.

Whitman-Walker's newest volunteer was assigned to the bedpan brigade at a group house for AIDS patients.

Within two years, Carde was holed up in offices at the clinic helping to write grant applications that eventually netted $3 million. When the District spent so little of its federal AIDS grants that the U.S. government threatened to yank the entire subsidy unless city officials filled 15 federally funded jobs, Carde staged a hunger strike in front of the District Building, sitting in the pouring rain for three days until the city promised to fill the jobs.

Whitman-Walker employees marveled at the irony of Carde's forcefulness: The same military that spied on and isolated people with HIV had given Carde the training and determination to get the job done.

By 1992, a decade into the epidemic, Whitman-Walker had treated 2,600 clients: 1,600 were dead, a thousand more were still living. AIDS education had calmed some of the paranoia but not all. A D.C. Council member called Hawkins to float the idea of holding HIV-infected patients at a juvenile facility in Maryland with barbed-wire fence.

Race was a tricky complication. Barbara Chin noticed that African Americans were more nervous to be seen walking into the clinic.

"The white boys had gotten to the point where they said, 'I'm gay and to hell with you,' " Chin said. "African Americans were afraid that someone would label them HIV. This was their home town."

Clients were trying all sorts of unproven remedies to stay alive, and Whitman-Walker saw it all, from the egg yolk lecithin craze to flying to Europe for ozone therapy. Clinical research trials were underway, and some were terribly painful. One called for heating the blood. Hawkins was in her office at the clinic when a client called to say he wanted to participate in a trial at the National Institutes of Health. The man had already lost his partner, and he was also sick.

"You are going to cut in half your life expectancy by going on these trials," Hawkins told him. He said he understood but wanted to help others. He died four days after starting the trial.

"These are the unsung heroes of the epidemic," Hawkins said. "It was all about the people who would come later. And they were right."