Photos by Antonia Padilla

HRC to honor ‘Papa Bear’ founder of AIDS Foundation
QSanAntonio.com, August 4, 2010

At the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in San Antonio when no one wanted to treat the infected, Robert "Papa Bear" Edwards started the San Antonio AIDS Foundation to care for local gay men who were sick and dying. In the process he became a fervent advocate for people with AIDS who faced discrimination in housing, on the job and in the military. On October 23, the Human Rights Campaign will honor Edwards’ achievements at their annual Gala Dinner by bestowing upon him the Chuck Jordan Award.

Walk for Life marks 20th anniversary
QSanAntonio.com, August 20, 2010

Hundreds of participants from across the city will converge on Woodlawn Lake Park on September 25 for the 20th Annual Walk for Life benefiting the San Antonio AIDS Foundation. Last year over 500 people gathered together and in 2010 organizers are anticipating a significant increase in attendance.

"In the twenty years since we started the Walk for Life, the San Antonio AIDS Foundation has helped care for thousands of men and women with HIV/AIDS. This past year, in addition to in-patient skilled nursing and hospice care we’ve added a transitional housing facility," says SAAF Executive Director David Ewell. "Events like the Walk for Life provide an essential source of funding for the work we do here."

The Walk for Life brings together individuals and teams to a festival-like setting along the banks of Woodlawn Lake. There will be entertainment for all ages including games, face painting, a moon bounce, a rock wall, dancers and live music. Emcee for the event is DJ Crystal Stone.

This year Citi is once again providing generous funding as the Presenting Sponsor. "Citi has been remarkably supportive of SAAF and the Walk for several years. We feel that their participation helps build awareness of HIV to a broader community," says SAAF’s Deputy Executive Director, Jill Rips.

Other sponsors include the University Health System and Garza Pharmacy. Partners are Balloon Productions, Walgreens, Culvers of San Antonio, Planet Fitness and Whole Foods Market. Media sponsors are QSanAntonio.com, the San Antonio Current, Ignite Magazine and C. Stone Entertainment.

"This is a day for family, friends, co-workers and even pets to join in and support SAAF while promoting community awareness," says Ewell. "We invite everyone to come out and join in this fun and important event."

The Walk for Life begins at 8:30 a.m. on September 25 at Woodlawn Lake Park with registration and submission of collected donations. The Walk begins at around 9:30 a.m. and takes about an hour and a half to complete. The event concludes with a closing ceremony at 11:30 a.m. Those interested in participating can get all the necessary information and forms at WalkForLifeSA.com.

Crystal Stone spins tunes for the crowd at the 2009 Walk for Life

Auction to benefit SAAF’s Walk for Life
QSanAntonio.com, August 14, 2010

Crystal Stone remembers back to 1991 when she participated in her first AIDS walk in her hometown of Philadelphia. "I told myself to get involved in something and not wait for it to hit home and then get involved. I walked, made some friends and shed some tears and we raised a lot of money for HIV/AIDS," she says.

Stone, a local radio personality and DJ, is still raising money eighteen years later. Last year she raised over $4,500 for the San Antonio AIDS Foundation’s Walk for Life. Over the years, she’s raised over $30,000 in donations for SAAF.

During the past eight years, Stone has organized an auction timed to coincide with SAAF’s Walk for Life. This year’s auction will be held on September 10 at the Bermuda Triangle. The auction items include guitars signed by well-known recording artists.

Stone is the proprietor of C. Stone Entertainment who can be seen around town spinning the tunes as a DJ at local clubs or you might hear her on local radio stations. In addition to raising funds for SAAF, she has served as emcee for the WEBB Party and the Walk for Life.

Stone’s motivation in her continued commitment to fundraising was sealed when her sister Jo-Ellen was diagnosed with AIDS. "When we were told that Jo had AIDS we were also told that she had six months to a year to live," she told QSanAntonio.

"Well we were blessed in a wonderful way. Due to the efforts of many people who donated their time and money, Jo-Ellen lived five long years. I have seen personally how your donations work. Jo was able to have food delivered to her home, assistance with her rent and help paying for her medication." Jo-Ellen died on June 7, 1996.

The auction will be held Friday September 10, 2009 at 9 p.m. at the Bermuda Triangle. To donate an auction item or for more information contact Stone at 210-722-3745 or crystalstone@djcrystalstone.com. The Walk for Life is on September 25 at Woodlawn Lake Park.

Photo of David Ewell by Azul Mares Del-Grasso

SAAF Executive Director featured on web news program
QSanAntonio.com, May 14, 2010

David Ewell, Executive Director of the San Antonio AIDS Foundation will be profiled in a segment of 50PlusPrime, an online news program for baby boomers that premieres on Sunday, May 16 at 9:30p.m (CST) on www.50plusprime.com.

Tony Fama, host of 50PlusPrime describes the segment in which Ewell is featured: "In 2007, HIV Positive Magazine reported that just five states have facilities properly equipped to care for people living with HIV/AIDS. The San Antonio AIDS Foundation is the lone organization in Texas identified by the report as providing a full array of social and medical services for HIV/AIDS clients. David Ewell is the 48-year-old baby boomer who heads up SAAF House, as it’s called. For the one point one million people in the United States living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, there is no greater advocate."

Ewell was born in 1961 in Cambridge, a small town on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. At the age of eight years Ewell’s family moved to York, Pennsylvania, where he lived until he attended Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania receiving a BBA in Business Management. He moved to Texas in 1983. Prior to SAAF he was a staff accountant for six years at Psychological Corporation of Harcourt Brace and Company.

In 1991 Ewell joined SAAF as a grant writer and accountant. In 1998 he was named Executive Director. He is responsible for all financial and budgetary issues of the Foundation, as well as having ultimate responsibility for human resources and policies and procedures. He programmatically oversees the nursing, administrative, dietary and adjunctive therapy programs.

Ewell is the liaison with all of SAAF’s major funding agencies and has been an active member of Title I HIV Planning Council, the San Antonio AIDS Council and the HIV Region 8 Consortia.

"I’ve always been impressed with the work of the San Antonio AIDS Foundation, and its commitment to helping people stigmatized by an unforgiving disease and the prejudice that often accompanies it," says Fama. "In launching a program about baby boomers making a difference in their communities, it was an easy and obvious choice to tell the story of David Ewell’s selfless and compassionate work for SAAF."

Where and when to watch: www.50plusprime.co, Sunday, May 16, 2010, 10:30 p.m.

San Antonio Webb Foundation, Webb Party, April 16, 2010
Photos by Antonia Padilla. QSanAntonio.com, April 19, 2010

Testing San Antonio
By Azul Mares Del-Grasso & Eric Boyd, QSanAntonio.com, February 25, 2010

You realize how big Texas is when you make that drive from El Paso to San Antonio. Eleven hours on the road because there is no where to really stop. You make sure get gas any time your tank nears half tank, especially when your driving a seven ton vehicle across the state.

Testing in San Antonio was like being back home in Los Angeles. At the San Antonio AIDS Foundation the majority of the testing they provide is internally funded, whether they are testing out of their facility or setting up tents in front of a Walgreen’s, they have a very streamlined and forward thinking process. In just the two days we spent in San Antonio we were able to test 160 people! From treatment, transitional housing, education and prevention services SAAF is doing what they can provide comprehensive services in the area. However much more work is needed as their executive director David Ewell who has been with the San Antonio AIDS since December 1991, in his 19th year of working with this disease and has seen the changes in the epidemic from the early 90’s to date. In the beginning he provided services and hospice care for all gay males. "Everyone died who was admitted into our facility. In 1995 with the new drug combination’s, people began to live longer and healthier lives so we opened at skilled nursing program." After college in the early eighties I began working for "Corporate America" as a staff accountant. The job was very stressful and was very demanding and not rewarding at all.

In late 1991 David was told by a friend that volunteered at the San Antonio AIDS Foundation (SAAF) as a phlebotomist that SAAF was in need of an accountant and grant writer. Also at that time, he had just found out my cousin was HIV positive. David decided to interview for the position and found out his salary would drop 35% if he accepted the job and there were no benefits. SAAF was desperate and was really needing this position. "After discussing it with my partner and my family, I decided to take the position (even though I was still very nervous about how HIV was spread at the time). My parents were not very happy, my father, who was always a corporate man told me it would be the biggest mistake of my life if I took the job and that the non-profit may not even survive." said David.

As SAAF approached 2000, their demographics started changing and heterosexual males and women were starting to pour in for services. Today HIV should be everyone’s concern regardless of gender, race, or sexual orientation. The stigma must go away. David explained to us, "In the schools in particular, Texas is a predominately abstinence mandated curriculum, so our hands are very tied when providing prevention education in the schools. We are unable to show or demonstrate how to use condoms, we cannot even talk about how to properly use condoms. We can only say that condoms are an effective way to prevent HIV infection if used properly and used every time." Over all, because San Antonio is a predominantly Latino community, there is great stigma attached to being gay or MSM. HIV is still very much viewed as a gay disease here. Those men who are on the down low, both Latino and Black are hesitant to come forward and be tested or are unwilling to attach prevention messages to their own behavior. It is probably more respectable in this climate to have contracted HIV from sharing needles, than from MSM.

Azul Mares Del-Grasso & Eric Boyd are on the road with the American Healthcare Foundation’s Testing USA 2010 Tour that stopped recently in San Antonio. This article was reprinted with permission from their blog, (freehivtest.net/testingusablog), which chronicles their travels across the United States.

SAAF launches Webb Party with VIP event
QSanAntonio.com, January 8, 2010

Organizers at the San Antonio AIDS Foundation held a VIP Party on January 6 to recruit donors who help underwrite the cost of producing the agency's annual Webb Party which this year is scheduled for April 16. The event was held at the home of SAAF board member Alan Beckstead and featured costumed volunteers dressed as characters from Alice in Wonderland -- this year's theme. Click here to learn how to become a Webb Party VIP.

Resident brings joyful touch to SAAF’s holiday decor
QSanAntonio.com, December 18, 2009

When the San Antonio AIDS Foundation decided to deck the halls for the holidays they got an unexpected surprise when a resident of their transitional housing facility stepped in with a series of witty and original designs.

Marco Conner (shown in photo), whose background includes some experience with retail display, created personalized office door displays for SAAF staffers that reflect their personalities.

The photos (above) are just a sample of some of Conner’s designs that include an apron with green and red dishes for a door to a kitchen storeroom (photo right, center row). Conner also created a blue Hanukah door (shown behind him in first photo) for SAAF Deputy Director Jill Rips who is Jewish.

SAAF’s Marketing and Events Director Wendy Scholl says Conner is also adept at floral design and table decor. "I gave Marco a few ribbons and some artificial flowers and he created a wonderful table design for a buffet we had for a staff luncheon," she says.

Conner has been living in SAAF’s Carson Street transitional housing facility for homeless clients with HIV/AIDS since November and has until January 18 to find a job and an apartment. He’s working with staff counselors to achieve that goal.

Conner is a SAAF client since 2002 and homeless for most of time before he came to the Carson Street facility. Despite being homeless, he has worked as a long-time volunteer for SAAF helping daily in the kitchen and wherever else his talents can be employed.

David Ewell, SAAF’s Executive Director, alerted QSanAntonio to Conner’s artistic talent. "It would be nice if someone who owns a business could see Marco’s designs and hire him. He’s extremely creative and a very hard worker."

Conner says that he lives day to day and is trying not to think too far past January 18. "I’m hopeful that something good will come my way. It’s all I can do."

San Antonio AIDS Foundation Carson Street Open House
QSanAntonio.com, September 26, 2009, Photos by Antonia Padilla

Robert "Papa Bear" Edwards and District 2 City Councilwoman Ivy Taylor cut the ribbon on September 24 to officially open the San Antonio AIDS Foundation's new Carson Street facility for homeless persons with HIV/AIDS. (See related story below.)

City Councilwoman Ivy Taylor. Robert "Papa Bear" Edwards with David Ewell, SAAF Executive Director.

Randy Rice, Jill Ripps (SAAF Deputy Director), Mario Llano and County Commissioner Tommy Adkisson. Robert "Papa Bear" Edwards with San Antonio Metropolitan Health Director Fernando A. Guerra, MD.

San Antonio AIDS Foundation -- Walk for Life -- Woodlawn Lake Park, September 19, 2009

Photos -- Walk for Life nets more than $50k
QSanAntonio.com, September 21, 2009

Organizers at the San Antonio AIDS Foundation announced that their Walk for Life on Saturday, September 19 netted $54,000 from approximately 400 walkers.

Prizes were given to individual walkers and to walk teams. Individuals who received prizes were Crystal Stone who raised $4,204; Lilly Barrera who raised $334; John Anthony Garza who raised $250. The largest team donation came from the Alamo Empire who raised $2,268.

The event was held in a festival-like atmosphere at Woodlawn Lake Park. There was entertainment from a variety of performers and music by DJ Crystal Stone. Gordon Hartman, of the Gordon Hartman Foundation, served as the guest emcee.

Center row: Timothy J. Gette Executive Director, Institute of Texan Cultures. Michele Durham, Executive Director BEAT AIDS. Bottom rown: David Ewell, Executive Director San Antonio AIDS Foundation. Robert "Papa Bear" Edwards, Founder of San Antonio AIDS Foundation with Charles Whitehead from BEAT AIDS. (Photos by Antonia Padilla)

AIDS Quilt provides moving reminder of those who have passed
QSanAntonio.com, August 15, 2009

The opening reception at the Institute of Texan Cultures exhibit of panels from the AIDS Quilt provided a visual reminder of the great loss experienced by so many at the hands of a disease that does not discriminate.

There are panels commemorating the lives of gay men, women, black people, Latinos and infants. While viewing one of the panels, George Page, a board member at the San Antonio AIDS Foundation said, "This really tugs at your heart."

The exhibit, "Touching the Lives of Texans: The AIDS Memorial Quilt Comes to San Antonio," consists of 12 blocks of the quilt, each with 8 panels commemorating a person with a Texas or San Antonio connection. The Quilt is on view from August 15 until September 20.

The names of Texans who died from the disease were read throughout the reception and a recording of those names will play continuously while the Quilt is on display.

In his address to the guests at the reception, Timothy J. Gette Executive Director of the Institute of Texas Cultures, said that the Institute’s mandate is to tell the story of Texas and that Texans who have died of AIDS are a part of that story.

Gette was joined at the podium by Michele Durham Executive Director BEAT AIDS and by David Ewell, Executive Director of the San Antonio AIDS Foundation.

Durham spoke emotionally about the epidemic and the loss of her brother from the disease in 2002. Ewell encouraged vigilance, encouraging everyone to be tested so they could catch disease early and start treatment that could help them lead "long and productive lives."

Ewell also offered a salute to Robert "Papa Bear" Edwards, who in 1986 founded the San Antonio AIDS Foundation in the back of a bar he owned. Edwards, who was in attendance at the reception, responded to the AIDS crisis by offering hospice care in San Antonio when little was known about the disease and when many were afraid to treat, or even be around, infected individuals.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt is on display Aug. 15 – Sept. 20, during regular hours, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday; noon to 5 p.m. Sunday; closed Monday. The Institute of Texan Cultures – East Texas Gallery UTSA HemisFair Park Campus, 851 E. Durango Blvd., San Antonio, TX 78205.