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Education, compassion are their aim

On World AIDS Day, a Largo church continues its usual mission: testing people for the virus and reaching out to those affected by it.

By VANESSA DE LA TORRE
Published December 2, 2005

LARGO - A black Hummer drove past, then a cement truck. Then a woman in a blue sedan who smiled at the pastor while chatting on her cell phone.

All zoomed down the narrow two-lane street in front of Greene Chapel AME Church, and all put that touch of sadness in his voice.

"They want to stop," said the Rev. Bernard Smith, as he tried to wave down another driver.

"But it's just the stigma behind it."

That stigma was staked in the grass with two wooden crosses on a big white banner that blared "FREE HIV TESTING."

Greene Chapel is the only church in the county that allows HIV testing within its doors, said Tyrone Singletary, prevention coordinator with AIDS Service Association of Pinellas. The church has offered passers-by a mouth swab test twice a week for two years now, and the effort on World AIDS Day Thursday was hardly different.

That afternoon, HIV counselors waited outside with red ribbons, a sign-up sheet and a bowl of condoms and lollipops.

Their challenge: getting people to step inside the small African Methodist Episcopal church on 134th Avenue.

"We've got free food, free HIV and AIDS tests, free Subway, free Chick-fil-A," Smith told one person.

Walter Stanley III, a 41-year-old unemployed man in a black leather jacket, was ambling down the sidewalk when the pastor stepped in his path. Smith, a 57-year-old in black suspenders, looked in his eyes. He inched closer and held Stanley by the shoulders.

Had he been tested recently?

"Yes, but you can never have too many," Stanley said. He walked away, but gave his word that he would return.

The church and ASAP focus on AIDS education in the African-American community.

About 4,000 people in Pinellas County are infected with the virus, Singletary said. Nearly 40 percent of those are African-American, though they make up about 12 percent of the county's general population.

"To be honest, it seems that the younger you are, the more you know about HIV," he said. But older people seem to have the illusion that only wayward youngsters are infected.

"If I wasn't doing this for a living, where would I be getting this type of information?" said Singletary, 33. "They don't have as many opportunities to get in contact with it.

"Unless it hits them in the face."

Smith said that convincing people they need an HIV test is difficult.

"It instantly brings a lot of anxiety in people," he said. "And a big challenge, as you can see."

It is one that Smith has battled since the early 1990s, when he started out in the ministry and encountered a pastor who refused to visit a dying AIDS patient. The duty fell to Smith.

After that, he said, God made AIDS education and testing his calling. When Smith became a senior pastor five years ago, he started an HIV and AIDS ministry at Greene Chapel that has reached out to the predominantly low-income black neighborhood.

At the nearest street corner, Brenda Williams, the ministry's president, tried to cajole people into taking a test.

Williams said she was a drug addict for three decades before getting tested last year at the health department in St. Petersburg. The results were positive. She decided not to tell anyone, ashamed that she would die this way.

"I'm 52 years old, and I didn't think I'd be affected in my age group," she said. "But I learned different. It's not a killing disease anymore if you do the right things."

Now clean and sober, Williams believes the ordeal has brought her closer to God. She wants to keep others from making the same mistakes.

People are still reluctant to get tested, but not if she can help it.

About an hour later, a pair of men getting tested for the first time walked out the church doors and into the sunlight. Williams handed each man a pack of condoms.

"Tuxedo, my favorite kind," said Anthony Dorsey, 21. He came with his uncle after Williams talked them into the test.

"They've got free food and free tests. I thought it cost money to take it," said Calvin Dorsey, 27. The test results will take two weeks to come back.

"I was scared to get tested," Calvin Dorsey said. "I've been told to take one before, but I never really wanted to find out."

Earlier that afternoon, Stanley, the man who had promised to return, kept his word. He walked toward the large wooden cross behind the altar, sat in a choir pew and took his test.

[Last modified December 2, 2005, 01:14:18]