When I was 10 years old, a high school friend took me to the AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park. We didn’t go because we knew someone who was infected with AIDS or because we wanted to remember those whose lives had been affected by AIDS, but because we thought it would be a shortcut back to her house.

We walked through the grove aimlessly; the few people who were there with us were quiet, so I knew I had to silence myself too. Our talk of what we were going to have for dinner later seemed amplified in the hushed grove. I had no idea what I needed to be quiet for.

As I stood in the AIDS Memorial Grove on Dec. 1, the memorial’s 20^th anniversary, accompanied by Urban teachers Mary Murphy and Jonathan Howland and a few other students, I realized that I had outgrown my ignorance. I’ll admit that I didn’t really know much about AIDS until I took Murphy’s new Infectious Disease biology class last term; I knew it was a sickness that a lot of people were concerned about, but because I didn’t know anyone infected with it, I never paid it much attention.

Now I understand that AIDS isn’t a disease that affects a certain type of person or a certain group of people: It has the potential to infect anybody.

Dec. 1 was World AIDS Day, the “first ever global health day” first marked in 1988, according to worldaidsday.org.

Murphy had been thinking about ways to bring attention to this day since the fall term. “Amazingly,” Murphy says, “after all my time in San Francisco and in the Bay Area, I had never been to the AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park. Teaching the Infectious Disease class and immersing myself in the various issues associated with this pandemic inspired me to want to do something specific on World AIDS Day.” She, along with Nicki Greenberg (’13) and Isabel Fife-Cook (’13) organized the walk to the AIDS Memorial Grove.

According to the Grove’s website, the mission of the memorial is to “provide a healing sanctuary, to increase awareness of this national treasure, and to promote learning and understanding of the human tragedy of the AIDS pandemic.” On Nov. 30, the Grove hosted an event called “Light in the Grove,” which aimed to commemorate those who lost their lives to AIDS and to celebrate the 20^th anniversary of the Grove. On World AIDS Day, San Francisco’s leading HIV/AIDS organizations joined together to host an AIDS commemoration in the Castro called Paint the Castro Red, which included events such as a candlelight vigil and free HIV testing. More information can be found at www.30aids.org.

In the future, Murphy hopes to make “(supporting World AIDS Day) a tradition at Urban so that we can continue to raise awareness about this disease.” When asked about the importance of acknowledging this day, Murphy said, “this day helps to focus our attention on a global health issue, to acknowledge its impact on our city and our world, and to ask ourselves how we can be a part of the solution. It is also a really important time to be able to remember and celebrate the lives of those people we have lost.”

That day, while watching San Franciscans silently pay their respects to those who lost their lives to AIDS, it hit me: I could have lost somebody I loved to this disease. Standing beneath the shade of the grove’s trees, surrounded by the warmth of caring people, nothing needed to be said because the silence said everything.