$3 million grant gives boost to National AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- This year marks 45 years since the first AIDS cases were diagnosed in the United States and 35 years since the National AIDS Memorial Grove was founded in Golden Gate Park.

Now, a nearly $3 million commitment is helping preserve The Grove, the AIDS Memorial Quilt and the stories behind both.

Volunteers from Gilead spent Thursday working at the National AIDS Memorial Grove, clearing and restoring the site through gardening, weeding and cleanup efforts.

"You name it, we're doing some weeding, we're doing gardening, we're like shoveling," said volunteer Liz Archibald. "There's a lot of stuff that we're doing to try to clean up and make everything look beautiful here."

The effort comes as the Gilead Foundation announced a three-year grant of roughly $3 million to the National AIDS Memorial. Gilead, a Bay Area-based biopharmaceutical company, has long been involved in HIV treatment and prevention, areas closely tied to sexual health and care within communities affected by HIV and AIDS, including the LGBTQ+ community.

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"The Gilead Foundation has made a grant to the National AIDS Memorial, a three-year, roughly $3 million grant, to both preserve The Grove and the quilt, but also to help grow education and prevention programs and leadership development around the Pedro Zamora scholarship programs," said Jane Stafford, president of the Gilead Foundation.

Stafford said volunteering is a core part of the company's culture.

"It is one of the most popular volunteer opportunities. It fills up faster than any others. And I mean, why wouldn't you? This is a magical, magical place. And volunteering at Gilead is in our DNA. It's in our culture. And it makes employees feel connected to what we do outside of the office," she said.

Part of the effort also focuses on preserving the AIDS Memorial Quilt, which is based in the Bay Area and displayed nationwide.

For Gert McMullin, the quilt carries deep personal meaning.

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"I got involved because my friends were the first to die in San Francisco, and I just desperately needed to find something before I lost my mind," McMullin said.

She said she helped create some of the earliest panels. Decades later, she still feels connected to the people represented in the quilt.

"This saved my life, and that's the way I look at it. I look at it like it's still kind of a little baby. I call 'my boys', all of them," McMullin said.

The panels vary in tone and emotion, reflecting the lives they honor.

"I've made some that are just terribly angry, and I put my cigarette out, a few of them on my own. I just kind of damage mine a little bit, so they get mad and come back," she said.

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As part of the new investment, the National AIDS Memorial is also working to digitize the quilt's thousands of panels.

John Cunningham, CEO of the National AIDS Memorial, said the effort will connect the quilt to a broader archive of historical materials.

"This grant is going to help us to continue to the high res digitization process that can then allow us to connect the digitized quilt with the archives that are in the Library of Congress that we sent there," Cunningham said.

He said those archives provide additional context.

"There's a quarter million pieces of archival material that came with the panels that have been in high res, digitized at the library, so we can remarry those, and they tell the deeper story," he said.

Cunningham said the work comes at a meaningful time, decades after the start of the AIDS crisis.

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"But the best way to honor those lives is to ensure that the lessons that have been learned out of the crisis are not repeated. I think it's important to remember that this is the 45th anniversary of the first diagnosed cases of AIDS," he said.

He added that the lessons extend beyond medicine.

"I think it's also important to look and to realize that, it's so much more than a medicine. It is about innovation, and it's about innovation beyond scientific innovation. It's about innovation and community, innovation in humanity, innovation of how we show up for each other," Cunningham said.

For volunteers working in the grove Thursday, the mission was both immediate and long term, caring for the grounds while preserving history for future generations.

"I think our society in general feels an overwhelming sense of concern and, at times, even hopelessness. And the AIDS crisis taught us that we find hope in each other. We find hope by reaching our hand out and becoming engaged in something to bring about change," Cunningham said.