25 Stories: Bernadette Goes Uptown

In a few short weeks, we’ll be transforming the Indianapolis Downtown Marriott into a grand gala, a masquerade ball to celebrate our 25th year of service to Central Indiana, an evening to outshine all others. The Grande Masquerade is nearly upon us. With this magnificent [read: super fun and fancy] celebration just on the horizon, we thought it’d be fun to look back at the history of our fundraisers. Turns out, The Damien Center has a legacy of hosting rockin’ parties, performances, and other fundraising events to get the word out and raise money.  Tom Alvarez, one of our earliest supporters and fundraisers, sat down with us to talk about “Bernadette Galanti Goes Uptown for The Damien Center,” which was, according to Tom, as fantastic as it sounds.

At the time (late 80s/early 90s), Bernadette Galanti was a well-known performer at the Indiana Repertory Theatre’s Cabaret. (Yes, the IRT had a Cabaret. Yes, we wish they still did.) As a performer who had lived in New York City for some time in the 1980s, Bernadette knew people who had HIV/AIDS and was interested in supporting the cause, so Tom, a former television producer, enlisted her to put on a show for The Damien Center. “It was one night only," Tom says, “and it was a first-class affair all the way around.” As a result of her one-woman show at Broad Ripple’s Vogue Theater, Bernadette became very popular within the gay community and “became our local Liza Minelli,” Tom recalls. This event, he says, was one that helped organize and solidify the gay community “not only around the AIDS issue but by being public and by being out there.”

What did Tom and his fellow organizers learn from this, one of their first fundraising undertakings? Sponsors sponsors sponsors. “Most of the proceeds went toward the expenses,” Tom says, “so what we learned was that you really have to have sponsorships for those kinds of things. This was all kind of virgin territory, not only to us, but to the gay community in general.” And with that, we'd like to thank our extremely generous Grande Masquerade sponsors, especially our Event Presenting Sponsors, McNamara Florist and Marion County Public Health Department.

Now, back to the show. It wasn’t just for fun. Bernadette’s performance was, like other fundraisers for AIDS service organizations at the time, critical to how early activists were able to get the word out about AIDS in places like Indianapolis. “AIDS like in many other places, forced people to come forward and to come out, because it was very clear to us that if we didn’t, it was just going to make things worse,” Tom explains. “If we didn’t step forward to educate our community, the larger community, the epidemic would as quickly or grow more quickly.”

So, people like Tom stepped up and started to organize events like Bernadette’s show. Today, we have events like Grande Masquerade that continue the legacy of FUNdraising, bringing awareness to HIV/AIDS as a cause, and bringing people together in the name of a better community. So whether you’ve been around long enough to remember “Bernadette Galanti Goes Uptown” or are just getting your feet wet in supporting The Damien Center, we thank you and hope you’ll join us for this year’s Grande Masquerade on October 20.

Happy birthday to (all of) us!

Birthdays are good for celebrating, laughing, imbibing, indulging. You know the drill: cake, cocktails, loved ones, favorite places and spaces. But they're also good for looking back. Reflecting. Thinking about how far you've come and what you've been doing that matters to you and your values.

Today, I - Kimberly, your faithful Damien Center blogger and marketing coordinator - have been doing just that as I celebrate my 27th birthday. I've been asking myself, what have I been doing these last few weeks, months, and years that enriches my life and others', that makes my community a better place?

Here at The Damien Center, we've also been celebrating our birthday - all year long. It's our 25th year serving those affected by HIV in Central Indiana, and we're so proud of the legacy we have as Indiana's oldest and largest HIV/AIDS service organization. What we do and how we do it didn't start last year or last month. It started in 1987, when a caring, progressive group of people got together to support a community in crisis.

Birthday reflections, for us, have us looking at who we served, how we served them, and where our (your) funding dollars went. So, what have we been doing that matters to us, our values, and our community? In 2011, we:

• performed 2,315 free HIV tests
• reached 796 youth through prevention education
• served 1,126 clients through Care Coordination
• helped 96 families find housing
• fed 616 clients through our food pantry
• assisted 124 clients in receiving emergency financial assistance

And this is just the beginning. Birthdays are also for looking ahead to the coming year(s), planning for a strong future, setting goals, and living life. So as I and The Damien Center look ahead to our next 25 years, we hope you'll help us celebrate both where we came from and where we're going.

Looking for ways to honor our 25 year legacy? Make a donation, volunteer, walk with us in the 2012 Indiana AIDS Walk, or snag a ticket for swankiest gala in town, the 25th Annual Grande Masquerade.  

25 Stories: Losing a Buddy

A few weeks ago, you read about the beginning of Mark Lee’s journey to becoming an AIDS activist (the part where he visits a gay bar for the first time and realizes he has to take action), but it didn’t stop there. A few years after his unexpected introduction to what AIDS is and how he could help, Mark got involved with The Damien Center’s Buddy Support Program through Howard Warren, an HIV+ pastor at his church. Mark was one of the Center’s original buddies when he joined in 1987.

The program, according to Mark, was designed so that two people would be assigned to each person with HIV to serve as a support system for whatever was needed. “Our job was just to help them,” Mark explains. And help they did—with anything. It was the buddies’ job to help with transitioning to an HIV+ lifestyle, taking medications, advocating at doctor appointments, or even planning for their funerals. “Ideally you wanted to become a friend with them first, but a lot of times people didn’t have time for that,” Mark says. “They were thrown into dealing with hospitals who didn’t want to deal at all with people with AIDS and were being discriminatory, or with family members.”

Mark’s first buddy through the program was Bob, one of the last surviving members of the original group of People with AIDS. Though their relationship got off to a rocky start—Bob was wary of the program and Mark had recently lost a dear friend to AIDS—they ended up becoming close. “He was my best friend,” Mark recalls. Bob was tough, determined to live on in the face of HIV. Though the survival rate at the time was only six months to two years, Bob had already lived three years with the disease when he and Mark met, and he would live for another three after that.

But for Mark, his friendship with Bob became a source of guilt. He would go to Buddy Support Program meetings at The Damien Center each week and feel guilty because his buddy was in good health while others were struggling with ill health, or worse, with the death of their buddy. “I told them one time I felt guilty, because all we did was laugh and have a good time, and not really anything as far as helping him with doctors or anything like that,” Mark explains. “Then someone pointed out—that’s actually how it’s supposed to work. You develop this friendship, this trust between you, so that when he does need you, then you’ve already established that friendship, and he’s able to lean on you, and you can help him out with whatever he needs.” And that’s exactly how it panned out for Mark and Bob. When Bob eventually lost his eyesight and wasn’t as healthy as he had once been, Mark helped him through the last few months of his life.

Today, though the Buddy Support Program no longer exists, The Damien Center offers support to HIV+ individuals in the form of Care Coordination services. Highly trained Care Coordinators work with our clients to connect them with all the resources they need to life healthy lives and move forward each day with dignity. Stable housing, medical care, insurance, nutritional needs, counseling—clients and Care Coordinators work together to determine what the individual needs to be healthy and happy. Losing Bob was painful for Mark, but because of important support mechanisms like the Buddy Support Program and Care Coordination, those living with HIV can find the resources and relationships they need at The Damien Center.