The Long Walk
Georgetown is a community. It exists as a place, but also in time, and is shaped by the world around it as well as by those who study and teach here, who cook and clean here, who care for the dying and catch the newborn babes here. Although the campus has some walls and gates, the Georgetown ethos seeps out into surrounding neighborhoods and beyond, touching this beautiful city, rowing its rivers, walking its alleys.
I live near American University a few miles away, and set out early one morning for a short walk. I fell into step with a woman who was out for a longer walk, and we began talking. It turns out she had retired from a long nursing career at Georgetown Hospital, where she worked in clinical trials for HIV and AIDS. She shared a painful chapter of our university’s history with me. It was the first I’d heard of the Thursday Night Clinic—an effort to care for the people dying of AIDS, despite pressure from some hospital leaders to keep those patients out, or at least out of view.
She told me how at first the patients were young gay men, and their numbers grew quickly. Next came people who used intravenous drugs. Then in poured the sex workers. All God’s children, broken, dying, alone. So many that it became a day-long clinic, she said, shaking her head, and the stigma was pervasive.
My teenage children can’t comprehend the social transformation we have undergone since those years. When they witness vestiges of it today—hatred and bigotry towards the LGBTQ community—they are shocked and angry. And that gives me hope for a continuing bend in the justice arc as future generations embrace openheartedness and inclusivity. Accompanying people with HIV offers a way to embody the true values Georgetown aims toward: reaching out to care for the marginalized, developing science and technology in health and medicine to support these efforts, and living generously in service to others.
Today we have people aging with HIV, and the first glimmers of what seemed at one time unimaginable: a possible path to a cure. Our faculty, students, patients, and alumni are working around the world and around the corner to help stop the spread of the disease, to care compassionately for those who carry it, and to research and design the most effective treatments of tomorrow.
In the end, what emerged powerfully from the walk with the retired nurse was her pride in those stalwart people at Georgetown who champion the suffering, who touch and care for people who may be abandoned by their own family, church, workplace, society. A few of these many leaders of conscience—who sometimes work quietly behind the scenes—can be found on the pages of this magazine. It is our privilege to share a slice of these stories.
