Memorials dot the Yale campus: the Civil War memorial linking Woolsey Hall and the rotunda; just outside that, the World War I monument in Hewitt Quadrangle (aka Beinecke Plaza); and numerous places named in memory of individuals.
The Yale AIDS Memorial Project is different. A virtual memorial founded by young alumni, it launched last year with a print journal profiling eight alumni and faculty members who died of AIDS.
Now the project has a new website on which it aims to "honor and document the lives of hundreds of men and women from the University who perished during the AIDS epidemic."
With biographies, photos, and stories from friends and family, "YAMP will make the epidemic palpable for a younger generation and help to stimulate an AIDS memory boom," the website says.
David W. Dunlap ’75 of the New York Times offers a touching tribute to his friend and former lover, Warren Smith ’74. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Smith worked for white-shoe law firms before becoming a vice president and counsel at a major insurance company.
"No longer lovers, in New York, we were more like fond, battle-wearied friends," Dunlap writes. "We would have lunch together, or dinner together… and then, I forget what year, but he called to let me know that he had AIDS.
"I wrote his obit for the Times."
Dunlap asked Smith's mother, Rita: “May I specify in the obit that he died of AIDS?”
She wasn’t at all sure about that, and with good reason: in 1987, most obits did not specify that. People died “after a short illness.” Or, “the family would not discuss the cause of death.” And without any persuasion on my part, except for my saying, “Rita, for someone to know that the vice president of the Home Life Insurance Company has died of AIDS…” And she said, “Yes. You can say that.”
This is World AIDS Week.
loading
Print
Email
