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player ready...Magazine writer Don Terry was on the campaign trail with Senate candidate Barack Obama when he found himself at the Liberty Baptist Church for a news conference about AIDS. Don politely picked up a pamphlet on Vision House, a residence for people living with AIDS, and put it in his pocket.
That was three months ago, and since then Don has become a part of Vision House, visiting several times a week, meeting residents and talking over a meal, joining them on outings. Tenants welcomed Don into the apartment building that is run by Vision House Inc., a not-for-profit chaired by the pastor of Liberty Baptist, once the pulpit for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when he brought his movement to Chicago in 1966. Now the church is at the center of another storm: While HIV infections may be declining nationally, they are increasing among African-Americans, and churches have been reluctant to get involved in dealing with the disease and its impact on their communities.
Although another reporter might have found the months spent at Vision House sad ones, Don marveled at the strength and dignity of the residents, who were determined to live their lives to the fullest.
“Nationally,” Don argues, “the black church is beginning to rally around the issue of HIV and AIDS. As the founder of New York’s The Balm in Gilead, Pernessa C. Seele, says in the story, `We aren’t where we want to be yet, but thank God we aren’t where we used to be.’ “