Sustaining Awareness, a Step at a Time

Event Aims to Raise Money, Strengthen Focus on Disease

Christine Rodgers of the District was among thousands who participated in AIDS Walk Washington yesterday. (By Nikki Kahn -- The Washington Post)

AIDS Walk Washington drew its largest turnout in years yesterday, encouraging organizers who have been challenged to keep people focused on AIDS in the United States as awareness of it overseas has grown.

About 7,000 people took part in the event, nearly twice as many as last year. They raised $800,000 as of yesterday -- more than the event, now in its 21st year, has collected since 1999.

At least one of every 20 District residents is HIV positive -- the worst infection rate per capita of any U.S. city, said Chip Lewis, spokesman for the event. The AIDS walk raises money for the Whitman-Walker Clinic in Washington, the area's largest provider of health services for people with HIV and AIDS.

Rhonda Anderson, 36, went with her 1-year-old son and several friends from the local chapter of Zeta Phi Beta, a historically black sorority. No one in the group knows anyone with HIV, but Anderson said they are worried about the high number of black women who get infected.

"People are getting married later, so they're not monogamous. And people think, 'Oh, yeah, you can take a drug and get over it,' " she said as dance music boomed.

JaVon Townsend and her brother Marcus knew someone with HIV -- their uncle, who died last year two weeks before the walk.

"I know it's real; it can kill people," said Marcus, 12. The siblings, of Waldorf, said their family did not speak openly about their uncle's disease.

Among those heading up Pennsylvania Avenue were clusters of corporate entrants in matching T-shirts, groups from houses of worship, drag queens and a squad of teenagers wearing shirts promoting abstinence. That group, Washington AIDS International Teens (WAIT), danced on stage and sang: "I need someone to wait for me, I need someone to be worthy of me, I want a happy fam-i-ly, so please, baby, wait for me."

To a trio of friends moving toward the Capitol, AIDS is more than a song; it's their life. Infected with HIV in the early '90s, the women have suffered seizures and strokes. But since going to the Whitman-Walker's Austin Center clinic in the early 2000s, they said they are much better.

"In 2001, they gave me six months to live," said Freda Lockhart, 44, who contracted HIV from her daughter's father, who died.

"They told me three to six" months, said Linda Ashby, 50, a recovered cocaine addict.

"If it wasn't for the center, I wouldn't be here," said Vera Colvin, 56.

As waves of walkers and joggers passed, Colvin said she isn't sure how much progress has been made in educating the public about how HIV is transmitted.

"They still think people can touch you and get it -- in 2007!" she said. "People are still ignorant."