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FAIRBANKS — Community members joined the Interior AIDS Association on Monday evening in the Salisbury Theater to recognize World AIDS Day.

The tone of the ceremony was bittersweet — it mourned the loss of friends and loved ones but celebrated the educational efforts of the Interior AIDS Association, which has likely saved many from becoming infected.

Susan McInnis remembers when people were afraid to touch door knobs out of fear of catching a disease once thought to be unique to the gay community.

“There was a time when we worried if someone with AIDS breathed, coughed or sneezed on us, but today there is a deeper understanding that men and women who are HIV positive or have AIDS aren’t divided by a single culture,” she said.

Science has proven that HIV, human immunodeficiency virus),and AIDS, acquired immune deficiency syndrome, can infect any person from any background and are not transmitted through casual contact such as hugging or sharing water glasses.

Still, the illnesses are alive and thriving, even in the Fairbanks community.

In the U.S., nearly 800,000 cases of AIDS have been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and, according to the CDC, nearly 40,000 Americans become infected with HIV each year.

“A lot has changed in 20 years, but the illness has not,” she said.

McInnis learned about the disease in 1988 after watching a close friend named Jerry slowly die from it.

She recalled visiting Jerry’s quarantined hospital room with a doorway covered in contamination warning signs.

“He just sat there, looking very small, and after that day I couldn’t go back,” McInnis said. “He died shortly after.”

McInnis, with the help of Beverly McClenden and a handful of others, started the Interior AIDS Association after attending Jerry’s funeral.

“The funeral started softly,” McInnis recalled. “But then there was a sharp turn of meanness, and it was horrifying to us.”

According to McInnis, the preacher at the fundamentalist church told the mourning audience that Jerry had died of AIDS because he was a homosexual.

“He said all homosexuals were going to die this way, and to this day, I still don’t know why we didn’t jump up and scream or yell or even walk out,” McInnis said. “I think we were all just too stunned.”

Within weeks of the funeral, McInnis reserved the smallest conference room in the library, and it filled with members of the Fairbanks community who understood that the attitude about AIDS needed to change.

“We had come from an era when grass-roots was really something in our hands and there was strength in it,” McInnis said of the group. “It was a paraprofessional world that grew out of people who were trying to conquer the medusa heads of problems like domestic violence or sexual assault and suddenly, by the mid-’80s, HIV and AIDS had become another one of those heads.”

Shortly after that first meeting, someone donated a telephone, and Immaculate Conception Catholic Church lent a tiny office in its basement to the group.

“It didn’t matter if the phone rang or not,” McInnis said. “But the presence of the phone was like a living metaphor that said some sort of help and support was available and there was a group of people who wanted to try to solve this problem that was sinking it’s teeth into the gay community,” she said.

After working for several years as a nurse, Beverly McClenden headed north to Alaska only to learn about the disease from a Newsweek magazine that pictured 400 men who died of AIDS in 1987.

“Something had happened in the world while I wasn’t paying attention, and I knew it was time to get involved,” McClenden said.

She noted how frightened she was the first time she had to speak openly about sexual education to her nursing peers.

“I was trembling and shaking, but I took a deep breath and realized we had to keep going,” she said. “We did it because all of our friends were dying and we knew they needed a safe place to talk, so we got up and running as quickly as we could.”

McInnis finds much has changed since the first meeting in 1988.

“There’s never going to be enough money, never enough time, never enough staff and, as always, in the case of HIV and AIDS, like tuberculosis, the disease will move through time, through cultures and through generations,” she said. “It’s going to be with us a long time and it makes me grateful for the Interior AIDS Association.”

Today, the Interior AIDS Association rests in the hands of executive director Anna Nelson and a board of directors.

Its budget has grown substantially, and the array of services provided spans from helping clients pay $2,000 bills each month for medication, to helping clients finding housing, medical care and other support services for clients.

“One of the biggest challenges we face today is complacence,” Nelson said. “We hear about HIV in health education through schools, and it’s hard to imagine people haven’t been exposed to some information about it, but there are many who aren’t thinking about it anymore. If we can work to prevent HIV, we could prevent a host of other sexually transmitted diseases.”

Much of the association’s efforts focus on prevention education among young adults, Nelson said.

“Today’s teens weren’t around when the death rates were so high, so they’re not as afraid of it,” said prevention director Brenda Reichenberg. “Our society is definitely changing, and we’re treating HIV and AIDS victims equally now, but there is still a long way to go.”

Contact staff writer Rebecca George at 459-7504.