For more than 30 years, Lauren Aaronson has been spurred to action by the plight of those suffering from AIDS and HIV. She was honored late last month at Congregation Beth Torah for her 25 years of service helping AIDS patients through SAVEHome.
Aaronson first became aware of AIDS when she was a nurse educator and researcher on the faculty of the University of Michigan School of Nursing in Ann Arbor in the late 1980s. The AIDS epidemic was raging, and homosexual men were losing their battle with this then-dreaded disease.
“I was appalled about what I was reading and hearing about what was happening to patients with AIDS and HIV,” said Aaronson, who has both undergraduate and master’s degrees in nursing as well as a doctorate in sociology. “I knew then, as a young researcher, that if I worked clinically, I would be volunteering to care for these patients. It touched my heart.”
Aaronson came to the Kansas City area in 1989 after she was recruited to become the associate dean of research at University of Kansas School of Nursing. She also became a founding member of Congregation Beth Torah, serving as the chair of the newly formed Reform congregation’s Social Action Committee. It is through Beth Torah she was able to connect her desire to help AIDS patients with a project.
“It is hard to say how the committee discussed it (AIDS),” she said. “But as a group, when we talked about what projects to do, we saw there was a great need in this community for help. We could provide that help as part of the Jewish mitzvah of caring for the sick.”
After meeting with several agencies that work in the HIV AIDS community, Aaronson said the committee decided making and serving meals at SAVEHome was something “we thought we could do.”
“They had a need for someone to bring meals on Sunday nights. At the time we had a young congregation with many young families. Sunday night dinners at SAVEHome was perfect.”
Aaronson took the first dinner to SAVEHome on May 9, 1993. SAVEHome was run primarily as a hospice house in its beginning years. Most of the patients would not recover from their AIDS diagnoses.
“We did not know from one week to another which patients would still be there,” she said.
According to SAVE, Inc.’s website (saveinckc.org), the hospice facility was founded in 1986 as the first 24-hour hospice care facility in Missouri for individuals dying from AIDS. Its original hospice house, a six-bed facility known as SAVEHome, is where Beth Torah’s volunteers brought their meals. Eventually SAVE, Inc. expanded to more facilities and added different programs to their AIDS and HIV services.
Blaine Proctor, SAVE, Inc.’s chief executive officer, said the Sunday evening dinners that Aaronson coordinated were important.
“Not only were they providing a meal for the residents, but the dinners also provided an opportunity for fellowship with people outside of the home,” Proctor said. “Due to the stigma, rejection and marginalization many people with AIDS experience, the residents’ interaction with the world outside the home was often minimal at best. The fellowship provided them was an opportunity to interact with someone outside their day-to-day experience.”
These dinners continued for 25 years until the facility closed in June because SAVEHome is changing course and ended the program. Due to medical interventions, AIDS patients are no longer needing hospice services as often. The need for a hospice house dedicated to them is also ending, so SAVE, Inc. is changing the use of the home.
During those 25 years there was one constant: Aaronson and Beth Torah’s Sunday night dinners.
“I was always impressed with her dedication to this program,” said Marcia Rittmaster, who volunteered for the program from the beginning, bringing meals four to six times each year.
“She never took a break. She was determined to see that this program continued,” Rittmaster added. “Her determination and dedication were amazing.”
In fact, Aaronson ran the program even when she lived in the Washington, D.C., area for two years while working for the National Institute of Health (NIH), as part of an interagency agreement between KU and the NIH. While there she served as the senior adviser to the directors of the National Institute for Nursing Research.
“I kept doing it because it was my baby,” said Aaronson, who retired from KU in 2016 and is now a professor emerita. “I felt that if I did not do it, it would not happen. Also, by then email had evolved, so I did not have to call people. Email made it so much easier.”
In 2001 Beth Torah and Aaronson each received a Ribbon of Hope Award for AIDS Community Service from the AIDS Council of Greater Kansas City. More than 200 Beth Torah congregants have participated in the program since it started.
Aaronson’s work with SAVEHome changed her life forever in more than one way. Twenty-three years ago, in November 1995, she and Philip Meltzer, another member of the Social Justice Committee, took a meal to SAVEHome for the first time. Their friendship grew and in January 2012 they married.
Freedom from scheduling the Sunday night dinners has impacted Aaronson.
“I had mixed emotions when I found out it was closing,” Aaronson said. “I was excited about the new plan for the facility, but sad because it had been so much part of my life.”
Beth Torah and SAVEHome made it into a celebration. On Friday night, Nov. 30, Aaronson was honored by both. It was an apropos day, as the 30th anniversary of world AIDS Day was Dec. 1. Proctor spoke at the synagogue as they honored Aaronson. The congregation also purchased a leaf for the Tree of Life in her honor.
SAVE Home will reopen in 2019 as a drop-in center/shelter for youth aging out of foster care who identify as LGBTQIA and are experiencing homelessness, SAVE, Inc.’s Proctor said. A former board member and board president, Aaronson plans to remain committed to SAVE, Inc. and she hopes to find ways Beth Torah can continue to help as well.