recognized at local
high school
World AIDS Day
recognized at local
high school
BY SANDI CARPELLO
Staff Writer
RED BANK — If Glenn Williams could do it over again, he’d do it differently.
Before a crowd of Red Bank Regional High School students, Williams, 42, who tested HIV positive 12 years ago and is now living with the AIDS virus, told the teenagers how one mistake changed his life forever.
Once a young, svelte New York bartender and compulsive partier, Williams thought he was on top of the world. Now, thin, frail and blind, Williams’ life is marked by weakness, muscle aches and extensive medical treatments.
"Everything has changed," he said. "I can’t do a lot of things anymore, I can’t drive anymore. I used to love to drive. Nothing is the same. When you lose your sight you lose everything."
To pay tribute to the 15th annual World AIDS Day, which was celebrated nationally earlier this month, the Red Bank Regional Source Foundation in conjunction with CARE — a 10-year-old after-school club dedicated to fundraising and AIDS awareness — invited AIDS victims from the Center of Asbury Park to share their experiences with the student body.
"It’s important to bring faces in, because kids think that AIDS is something that happens in someone else’s backyard," said Stacy Liss, a social worker with the Source Foundation and CARE Advisor. Hopefully, the students will listen to these speakers’ experiences and make responsible decisions, she said.
While members of the Care Club handed out symbolic red ribbons and literature on AIDS awareness, Liss and Williams spoke about the perils of alcohol and drug abuse and the influence it has on the choices people make.
"If you’re drinking and drugging it takes down your inhibitions," Liss told the students. "A lot of people got infected with HIV that way."
"I was drunk all the time so my judgment was clouded," added Williams.
At the end of 2002, 38.6 million adults and 3.2 million children were living with AIDS. Roughly half the people who become infected do so before the age of 25 and often die before they are 35.
Aloma Baily, a high school junior who was especially affected by Williams’ story, said she had never seen anyone who was living with AIDS.
"I’ve heard a lot about them on TV, but I’ve never seen them in person," Baily said. "Williams touched me especially. To come and talk about his private business like that. It’s serious."
But Williams said educating the future generation is his life’s mission.
"If I can save one person from doing what I did, I feel like I’m saving the whole world," he said.