AIDS Memorial Grove an Oasis for Grief, Healing : San Francisco: A bowl-shaped dell in Golden Gate Park is seen as a place for memorial services, a place for remembering, honoring victims of the disease.

By ELIZABETH WEISE

Dec. 18, 1994 12 AM PT

ASSOCIATED PRESS

SAN FRANCISCO —

For volunteers who pulled the weeds, carried the rocks and planted the trees, the AIDS Memorial Grove helped bring peace of mind long before the arbor’s dedication.

“Somehow it helps work through the sadness and grief,” said Phyllis Gomez, who came with her husband, Hank, almost every month to help clear the long neglected area of Golden Gate Park.

“We can’t have our loved ones back, but we can remember them,” said Gomez, who lost her son, Michael, to the disease. “Working here is an expression of caring and renewal.”

With other volunteers with AIDS or with family and friends with AIDS, the couple applauded Thursday as the “thunk” of a nine-ton Sierra granite boulder dropping into place marked the official ground-breaking at the grove.

The ceremony was timed in conjunction with World AIDS Day.

Its creators intend the bowl-shaped dell as a place for memorial services and a place for remembering and honoring, a living memorial to the thousands of Americans lost to the disease.

“The thing that happens when a hole is torn in your life is that you fall through,” said Dr. Brad Steward, medical director of the Sonoma AIDS hospice. “This place is a place to fall to.

“This is a healing place. I don’t mean cure, but a place to help in getting through the darkness.”

Three years from now, the glen will include a Dogwood Crescent, a Pine Crescent, a Redwood Circle and the Fern Grotto, in addition to a main portal set with native stones and a south portal.

A meadow overlook and wide paths will make the area accessible to people with limited mobility.

Landscape architect Michael Boland tried to take his ideas for the layout from the way the grove was used by the people drawn to the project from the beginning. For them, the idea, not the finished project, was important.

“The minute we named it, they started coming here,” Boland said.