Today was the nineteenth annual AIDS Walk Houston, hosted by AIDS Foundation Houston, sponsored by Chevron, and partnered by other organizations as listed here.
Tom has been volunteering with AIDS-related organizations for thirteen years. First with the NAMES Project, then with a transitional care facility where people with HIV/AIDS lived between a hospital visit and the time they began receiving assistance to live independently. He’s been a volunteer with AIDS Foundation Houston for about six years, and this is his third time to participate in the AIDS Walk. Interestingly, the job he took this year brought him full circle, as he helped oversee a group of Quilt panels that were on display.
According to Tom, around fifteen thousand people participated today, and they surpassed their fundraising goal of one million dollars. So many people walk together with groups of coworkers, and many of their companies offer matching funds. It’s truly a community effort that involves countless volunteer hours and cooperation from many agencies.
One Houstonian is infected with HIV/AIDS every eight hours. Many thousands of Houstonians are here to offer assistance to ensure their quality of life and be there during times of illness. I’m proud to be married to one of those who helps.
You can see the full set of Tom’s photos here on Flickr.
Go Tom.
Clicking on that NAMES Project link is something else. I like certain quilts, how friends and/or lovers memorialize their lost with humor and apparent in-jokes. And then I see the heartbreaking proximity to dates of birth and the deaths. It must take wild strength to sew one.
This? Is one of the many reasons why I love Tom.
That Tom is a helluva guy and I mean that sincerely.
That Tom’s a good guy.
It’s always amazing to me when something that large is able to be organized and pulled off.
that’s awesome of tom. heck of a guy you got there!
and one in every eight hrs?! jeez…that really bothers me.
…and he didn’t mention anything about it when I talked to him on Saturday… what a guy. 🙂 Rhonda and I realized that Saturday was the day of the AIDS walk, when at 7:00AM on our way to our tournament, we ran into a bunch of cones on Memorial. — I’m just sorry I couldn’t do both events that day. Every year I am amazed by the amount of support the walk receives.
I had to come back to this. I saw one of the panels had ‘Doug Adams’ on it. There was a Doug Adams a hear ahead of me in school, and when I saw that panel, I thought ‘huh.’ Of course, how many Doug Adams’ are there in the world? Yesterday I opened up an alumni thing from my high school, and saw that there was memorial money given in Doug Adams’ name. Now I have to see what happened to my school’s Doug Adams.