The Joshua Gomes Memorial Scholarship Fund

AIDS Walk 'a day of unity'
Event helps family, friends honor lives lost to illness

By John C. Ensslin, Rocky Mountain News
August 23, 2004

Shortly after Joshua Gomes met Patrick Gibbs in third grade, the two youngsters were horsing around on the school playground.

Gomes got bruised. The next day, Gibbs was shocked to see his classmate come to school on crutches.

Gomes had hemophilia. Neither youngster knew what that meant, but they knew it was something bad. And it drew them together as lifelong friends.

To overcome his condition, Gomes received transfusions of the blood-clotting agent his body lacked. Through one of these transfusions, Gomes contracted HIV.

Again the boys knew it was something bad. A lot of people were scared away. But the two boys remained friends.

They eventually went on to the University of Denver together where Gomes had been a pre-med student before he died of AIDS complications on May 31, 2001.

On Sunday, Gibbs and his girlfriend took part in the 17th annual AIDS Walk through Denver's Cheesman Park.

Along with friends and family, they walked under a clear plastic balloon that carried Joshua Gomes' name aloft. They wore shirts with his picture and the words, "We'll Walk for You."

"I just wanted to show the whole world that we still care about Joshua and that we're not going to let his name be forgotten," Gibbs said.

They were among some 8,000 participants registered for the walk. Organizers were expecting to raise nearly $800,000 for 30 AIDS-related organizations.

One of those organizations is the Joshua Gomes Memorial Fund, created by his parents Steve and Mary Gomes, of Englewood, to help HIV-positive high school graduates attend college.

"We created it to give them hope," Mary Gomes said.

This year, the Gomes fund will help two students attend college.

The Gomes family and friends were one of 511 teams that helped raise money for this year's walk. That's about 100 more teams than last year's total, said Dierdre Maloney, executive director of the Colorado AIDS Project.

The AIDS Walk is her organization's major fund-raising event. But it is more than that, Maloney said.

"It's a day of unity," she explained. "The money keeps us going all year long, but so does the energy."

As fund-raisers, AIDS walks across the nation have seen declines, Maloney said. She was hopeful that Sunday's walk could help turn around that trend.

If it does, Gibbs will be one reason why. After Joshua died, Gibbs said he had stopped participating in the annual AIDS Walk.

But this year, when Gibbs got an e-mail from Mary Gomes asking for help, he decided to get involved again. She asked that the team set a goal of $2,000. He decided to make that his personal goal.

Last week he was $27 short of the goal through donations from friends and colleagues at PricewaterhouseCoopers, the accounting firm where he works.

He mentioned that to a friend and found an e-mail pledging $27 by the time he got back to his desk.

Joshua Gomes' sister, Heather, raised $1,915 among her friends and colleagues.

Gibbs said his friend would have loved to see all the walkers stretched out for several city blocks ahead of the Gomes contingent.

He said Joshua never let the media attention that his illness drew go to his head. "All he wanted was a normal life, just like everybody else."

08/23/04 - The Rocky Mountain News. "AIDS Walk 'a day of unity'" by John C. Ensslin.

08/16/04 - Molly Hughes of News 4 Colorado interviews the Gomes family. Watch the interview.

01/04 - The Cherry Creek Times. "The Legacy of Joshua Gomes: The greatest man I never met" by Meagan Baalman.

08/25/03 - The Denver Post. "Another step against AIDS Thousands touched by the disease take to the streets for annual fundraiser" by George Merritt

Summer/01 - Hemophilia Society of Colorado. "Gone But Not Forgotten - Josh Gomes" by Sherri Rojhani.

Fall/98 - The Rattle. "Life With AIDS" by Joshua Gomes.

The Joshua Gomes Memorial Scholarship Fund is a 501(c)3 organization.