In 1985, I founded Us Helping Us People into Living.  I thought I would do this for a moment and then move on. Every year I would say this is my last year doing this work. In 1993, I opened Inner Light Ministries and Ron Simmons took over Us Helping Us, and now my work with HIV is over. It's 2012 and I am still doing HIV work at church and every year I say, "This is it, no, really I mean it this time."

God truly has a sense of humor.

Catalina Sol is the Chief Programs Officer at La Clinica del Pueblo, and led La Clinica’s HIV/AIDS Department from 1998 through 2009. La Clinica del Pueblo is a non-for-profit, community clinic serving uninsured and low-income persons in the metropolitan area, targeting immigrant Latinos for quality health care. La Clinica’s HIV/AIDS services include direct services for persons living with HIV, including primary medical care, case management, mental health services, linguistic services, and support groups. In addition, La Clinica provides a range of peer-based prevention services, including HIV counseling and testing, and comprehensive HIV prevention interventions for at-risk Latino groups. A hallmark of La Clinica’s work in HIV is its commitment to developing programs by and for the communities most affected and vulnerable to the HIV epidemic.

Ms. Sol has worked for the past twenty years in health care settings serving immigrant, uninsured Latinos in the Washington Metropolitan. She holds a Masters Degree in Public Health from John Hopkins University, and is from El Salvador.

My name is Sue Rowland, and my story is not extraordinary -- but the people that I have met along the way are. In the early 90’s, I worked for the Virginia Health Commissioner. That Commissioner (Dr. Bob Stroube) had added first AIDS, then HIV, to Virginia’s list of reportable diseases before most other states. He wanted the State Board of Health to talk about AIDS, and asked me to set up a program for the Board. That is when I met the first extraordinary person that I knew to be living with HIV.  She put a face to the disease that Dr. Stroube had identified as a public health challenge that must be addressed.  She died a few years later.

Then in 1994, I began work for the Northern Virginia Regional Commission as its director of human services. Within the first week, I was sent to a national meeting on AIDS in Atlanta because one of my division’s responsibilities was the administration of Ryan White and HOPWA funding. Though I didn’t know it at the time, it was there that I first saw Brent Minor. He is an extraordinary man who in the years since as taught me a lot, and is a good friend to me today.

I represented Virginia on the Title I (now Part A) Metro DC Planning Council until I left my job at NVRC to start my own consulting business in 2002. My second client was the Virginia Organizations Responding to AIDS. Many, many extraordinary people have given me the reasons to continue my work with VORA, have supported me, and have shown me over and over again why this work must not stop.

To this day I keep in my office a personal note that I received from a fellow Planning Council member, Commander Hank Carde on September 1, 1995. He said to me then, “As I put down my own burdens, it is heartening to know that people like you are still carrying on the good fight ... Keep pushing – keep them honest! Your work is terribly important.”

I can only say that what little I do is because of the extraordinary people that have crossed my path along the way, with the hope that everyone’s lives, including my own, is better.

Working in the challenging field of HIV since the late 1980s has given some people the chance to project all sorts of qualities onto me.

“What a wonderful person you are.”
“You must be very special. A mensch.”
“That must be the hardest job in the world. If I believed in saints, you’d be one.”

A saint? Are you talking to me?

They don’t understand that I do this work because of all the gifts I receive from HIV positive friends and clients who have struggled, adapted, started to live again - and some, to die. Unbeknownst to my clients, they have inspired me to follow my dreams, to take risks, to handle my fears in new ways. Thanks to them, I have begun to understand what it means to live in the present, a challenge for all of us, whether or not we have HIV.

Working in this field has opened doors to spirituality, to finding a Unity church and embracing Buddhist thinking. Clients have shown me new perspectives available to us when we choose to believe in something greater than ourselves.

And so, equipped with these strengths I stepped out in 1994 when I left Whitman-Walker Clinic to follow one of those dreams that I had kept buried: to write plays. As I wrote about loss and healing and the importance of connection, I realized how writing filled a part of me that had been parched. Earlier this year, a group from Ohio who had performed one of my plays on-stage was inspired by how healing the experience had been, and they made it into a movie: ‘Neitzsche’ Ate Here is now being submitted to short film festivals.

Yes, some people understand what I have received in doing this work - in giving HIV test results, in counseling the newly diagnosed, in working at the Inova Juniper Program facilitating a gay men’s support group, and educating health care workers to work with human beings who have this virus. Intense, yes... and filled with gifts.

Gifts I receive from working with colleagues with passion and from being present with clients.

“Not knowing. Not curing.”  Just being present.

When I leave earth, I hope I’m remembered for that (as well as for my many gay N.Y. Jewish-Buddhist neuroses and some of my less than saint-like behaviors in the 70’s...okay, the 80’s too).

The fun and accidental founding of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care (ANAC), an excerpt from the oral history of ANAC

Martin Schneider from Convatec-Squibb invited Jeannie Kalinoski of Belleview Hospital AIDS Program and me to a meeting in Princeton, New Jersey for September 14 and 15, 1987 to talk about HIV/AIDS. So began a fun and funny adventure.

Driving up Eighth Avenue in NYC to New Jersey on Friday, September 13, a fire truck came rolling up behind us with sirens blaring. Jeannie didn’t pull over fast enough. The cops stopped us, and gave us a warning. I said to her, “You know, it’s a good thing that you’re driving, because you’re white. I would be in jail if it was me!” We then got on the NJ Turnpike. About then it started to rain. Soon the entire tread on one tire stripped off. We managed to stop the car. “Well,” she said, looking at me, a little gay guy; “What are we going to do now?” I said, “Watch me butch it out!” We changed the tire! When we walked into this reception hall at the hotel in Princeton, we were dripping wet and covered with grease! It was hilarious!

The next two days, Saturday and Sunday, we met; on Sunday afternoon, Martin Schneider from Convatec-Squibb said to group, “Would you like to form a nursing association?” We said, “Sure.” About sixteen of the original 30 or so nurses stuck it out and they became the founding members. A steering committee of seven was formed to develop recommendations on how to form the organization. I volunteered to do the by- laws and set up the organizational structure, several other assignments were given out.

When I returned to Princeton in December, the steering committee announced that they were going to become the board. I told them it was not part of their charge. “Well, we’re going to,” they replied. I said, “Well, I’m not so sure you’re going to like what’s going to happen when I go back and tell the founders!” The founders called a meeting at the Pennsylvania Hotel in NY, in March of 1988, sending out a call to other nurses through their network to join us at the meeting. As I predicted, the steering committee was dissolved and a board was formed. I was nominated to be President, Jeannie was VP, Janice Janaoviac was Secretary and Mike Damon Treasurer; there were also at-large members.

At that meeting in March of 1988, we decided to have our first conference by that fall. A management consultant firm was hired and the conference was held at a hotel near the Baltimore airport. I remember being interviewed by the press; I was a nervous wreck!

Over the next four years we incorporated, set goals to ensure cultural and geographic diversity and set up the organizational structure. We laid out the goals we wanted to achieve: fiscally viability, property ownership and development of a certification process for nurses working in the field of HIV/AIDS. We also started the chapter process: I traveled

to San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles to get all that started.

The first year was pretty rocky. We hired a management consultant group to run the day to day operations; we interviewed the candidates to be the management company in the barn of the Secretary’s house in New Jersey.

Dr. Hurley and Dr. McGriff of NYU met with us about starting a professional Journal. They had contacts with Burroughs Wellcome who agreed to provide the initial funding; this led to the founding of the Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care (JANAC) with Jeannie as the founding editor. The first edition of JANAC was published in less than a year; Jeannie worked to have the Journal formally listed in the Index Medicus.

In preparation for the convention in 1991, we accomplished three main things: 1) We planned to turn over the leadership to the new elected board members and president. 2) We developed a circle of “Friends of ANAC.” The first were Burroughs Wellcome and Convatec as the first Gold members. This was the start of a development process. 3) We created the clinical and leadership award. A friend gave us $500 and we just picked the people, no time to develop a process!

I opened the 1991 convention and on the last day we had the formal business meeting of the membership. During this meeting the business of the association took place and as part of this process the outgoing president laid out what was accomplished over the past year and at the end of the meeting the new president would describe the goals for the coming year. The formal transition to the new president became effective at the end of the meeting. This was the end of four long years of planning and developing an organization from the ground up and launching it to full birth.

In November 15 through the 18, 2012 ANAC celebrates its 25th anniversary in Tucson, Arizona. I leave behind a wonderful legacy in my profession with fond memories.