The Rising of the Phoenix

And then there was AIDS.

Again, I was introduced to the epidemic when it began. I was in Louisville, Kentucky working as a professional Christian in charge of a building called a sanctuary with bars on the windows. Sunday School rooms were converted into apartments and homeless people moved inside. A few years later, I was known in the City has someone who could help people find housing.

Then AIDS happened. I still remember the first time the very thin man with the droopy moustache entered my office at the Church. His landlord had evicted him because of the HIV+ diagnosis. He was asking me to help. I was scared to death because everybody was scared to death at the time. We all thought that we could catch it from breathing the same air or sitting on the same toilet seat.

So I was invited to become one of the founding members of the St. Jude’s Guild. St. Jude is the patron Saint of the sick and dying so my friend and co-founder Father Vernon Robertson named us. We were four clergy of different faiths and four gay people. We established Glade House, a residential facility for people living with AIDS in the mid-1980s. It was among the first of such housing programs in the county.

So when I returned to Savannah to work at Union Mission in 1987, I had first-hand knowledge of AIDS. I was too busy to pay much attention in 1990 because of the crowded Grace House shelter filled with women and children sleeping on the floor. We were in the midst of building the Magdalene Project. HIV was the farthest thing from my mind.

Then one of the homeless men came into my office and told me that he had AIDS. We converted a broom closet into a bed room and he moved in so that we could segregate him from the others. I remember calling his father so that his family could come and get him. He needed to be at home surrounded with those who loved him. After I explained the situation to the father I can still recall how stunned I was when the Dad said, “Call me when he’s dead”.

There was a gay guy in the shelter named David then. David was one of the resident managers. He was a caregiver to the AIDS-infected guest. He asked one day what I would do first if I were going to start a program for people diagnosed with HIV+. As I’ve explained, we were totally pre-occupied with building a program for homeless women and kids. But I told him and the next day, David had done it. He asked “What would you do next?” and I told him and he did it.

Then, Joe Daniel, who was Chairman of the Union Mission Board of Directors, Mills B. Lane (a Savannah philanthropist) and the First City Network (Savannah’s emerging gay association) all came together and in a matter of months, Phoenix Place opened. Work began on it after construction began on the Magdalene Project but it opened before the women and children’s shelter was completed.

David named the place Phoenix Place, for the bird rising from the ashes. I remember the neighbors saying that they did not want us there until an elderly black grandmother stood and explained that she wished such a place existed when her son died of AIDS. They then demanded that the City grant zoning for the HIV facility.

J. C. Lewis, Jr. the principal financer of the men’s shelter and the soon-to-be completed Magdalene Project wanted nothing to do with the AIDS project. When we would meet, which was often, he never asked about it which I always thought was weird because he was such a compassionate man.

I remember the grand opening when Mayor John Rousakis arrived and shuttered when he learned that the place was for people with AIDS. He left as quickly as possible after his remarks to the boos of some in attendance.

And I remember the pride and joy of the First City Network. The opening garnished a lot of press and this was the first time that FCN had been publically acknowledged in Savannah. I can still see one man with tears in his eyes cheering loudly when they were recognized in front of the crowd.

So Grace House came first in 1987. Followed by Phoenix Place in 1990. Followed by the Magdalene Project in 1991. The foundations of Union Mission as it is today were miraculously put together by people who normally wouldn’t be caught dead together. But they did because people were dying and they cared more about that than their prejudices. It was Georgia’s second residential program for people living with AIDS but only by a couple of weeks.

More than anything that I have experienced at Union Mission, Phoenix Place was the most special. It should have never happened but it did anyway and it reminds be that miracles can still take place on most any day.