AIDS Vigil Focuses on Tombstones

The 740 mock tombstones on the lawn outside the Hall of Administration in Santa Ana Friday were placed there to remember the men, women and children known to have died from AIDS in Orange County since 1981.

It was part of a midnight-to-midnight vigil in Orange County to mark the second worldwide AIDS Awareness Day sponsored by the World Health Organization. Names had been written on a few headstones in pen or magic marker by passers-by who wanted to remember, in a special way, a brother, child or a friend.

Sponsors said the mock graveyard vigil also was part of a local effort to win approval of an anti-AIDS discrimination law in Orange County.

Last June, the Board of Supervisors voted 3 to 2 to reject an anti-AIDS discrimination ordinance, making it at the time the only urban area in California without such a measure. Since then Concord, a suburb just outside of San Francisco, has repealed its AIDS statute.

“The Board of Supervisors can look at this and see that there are 740 real people in Orange County who suffered and died from AIDS,” said Kevin Farrell, a spokesmen for the Orange County Visibility League, a gay rights organization that sponsored the overnight vigil.

Farrell, yawning and sleepy-eyed, was among a handful of activists who spent Thursday night camped out in two small tents on the lawn outside the government building. Group members said they expected about 150 supporters to visit throughout the 24-hour event.

Four Orange County museums also participated in AIDS Awareness Day, holding “A Day Without Art” demonstrations--along with 600 museums across the nation--to draw attention to the devastating impact the deadly disease has had on the art community.

At the Newport Harbor Art Museum in Newport Beach, a standing-room-only crowd of about 150 watched the gripping display of nationally known, 31-year-old performance artist Tim Miller of Los Angeles.