STORIES: The AIDS Monument will open in November, 2025, in West Hollywood Park. (photo courtesy of aidsmonument.org)

From the mid-1980s to the 1990s, West Hollywood lost thousands of people to the HIV and AIDS epidemic. Amid neglect from the federal government and intense public stigma surrounding the disease, former City Councilman John Duran remembers the formation of Life AIDS Lobby in 1984 – an advocacy group that came together for quarterly meetings to propose policies to the California State Legislature.

“We would adjourn these meetings in memory of those that we had lost since the last time we met,” Duran wrote. “And sometimes the adjournments would go for 30 minutes or more, as people openly wept about comrades who had fallen and people that had shared that common table with us.”

Those who were lost and their memories will be forever memorialized with the opening of STORIES: The AIDS Monument in West Hollywood Park in November.

The project, originally conceived by Foundation for the AIDS Monument board treasurer Craig Dougherty and then proposed in 2012 by Duran and former Councilman John D’Amico, was created through a collaboration between the city and the Foundation for the AIDS Monument. With the goal of mourning lives lost during the epidemic, educating the public about the impact of the disease and celebrating activists who fought for victims, the monument consists of multiple parts designed by Daniel Tobin – a British artist who is HIV positive.

The first section includes 147, 13-foot-tall, 4-inch-by-4-inch bronze pillars called “traces” – etched with words such as “compassion,” “community” and “courage.” As people walk through the beginning of the traces, they’re meant to experience disorder and chaos, said Irwin Rappaport, chair of the Board for the Foundation for the AIDS Monument. During the early years of the epidemic, information related to the disease was widely unknown and federal and local governments failed to take meaningful, lifesaving action while the death toll from AIDS continued to increase. A 2011 Los Angeles County Department of Health report stated that the county alone lost more than 32,000 people to AIDS and HIV from the beginning of the epidemic until 2010.

“That’s representing the fear and the chaos of the early years of the epidemic,” Rappaport said. “Then as you proceed through the monument and essentially proceed through time, you see a field of traces that are organized in a grid pattern, which represents how the community came together. It represents the organizations that were formed to care for people and to advocate for people.”

The etched words are also listed on aidsmonument.org, where people can hear stories read aloud about people who lost their lives to AIDS. Under “artistry” – Whoopi Goldberg tells the story of director Emile Ardolino, famous for capturing dance on film in hits such as “Dirty Dancing” and “Sister Act,” and Adam Lambert narrates a tribute to legendary Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, who died from AIDS in 1991. Under “courage” – Matthew McConaughey recounts the story of Ron Woodroof – a man who helped distribute lifesaving medication through AIDS medication buyers clubs in the 1980s – whom McConaughey portrayed in an Oscar-winning performance in the 2013 drama “Dallas Buyers Club.”

Under “legacy” – Jim Parsons tells the story of Ryan White, who died from AIDS at 18 years old after being expelled from his high school in Indiana when people discovered his diagnosis. President Reagan’s tribute to White on the day of his funeral indicated how White shifted public perception of the disease, which Reagan had mostly ignored up until that point.

The monument also features plaques engraved with information about the disease – not only how it devastated communities but also the activists who fought to help people who were suffering. After winding through the bronze traces, people emerge at the last section of the monument – a podium facing San Vicente Boulevard. The podium serves as a designated space for people to come together and protest, continuing the advocacy that came before.

“We want it to be a story of loss but also of building community,” Rappaport said. “It was the organizing and the community coming together in the way that it did that laid a foundation for us to be able to advocate for our civil rights.”

As the project nears completion and the city prepares to welcome people to the monument, Duran said he is moved that it honors many of the friends he lost during the epidemic. One in particular, he added, was his first roommate in West Hollywood – John Paul Stiller, a legal secretary who fought for people affected by AIDS while volunteering for the Bill Clinton presidential campaign in 1992. Remembering all of the people who fought for their community gives a new generation a foundation.

“The other important thing is that the people that are too young to have been there have a sense that they have ancestors,” Duran said. “What really happened in real life, here in the greater Los Angeles Westside areas, the current LGBT community does have ancestors. They do have people who came before. They do have people who stood up in the face of massive oppression and persecution and a deadly virus, and with faith and fear, they actually accomplished and created things that were extraordinary.”

STORIES: The AIDS Monument is scheduled to open in November at West Hollywood Park, 647 San Vicente Blvd.