2-24-2 regular World AIDS Day marked in valley withs.ad;kadsjk;ds

By Sean Barron

Despite greater awareness, a stigma toward the disease endures in the Valley, a task force member said.

WARREN - For Karen Vadino, eggs, chocolate chips and other foods are more than key ingredients for making chocolate-chip cookies: They also individually and collectively represent essential elements of teamwork — a key ingredient in fighting AIDS.

Vadino, a motivational speaker and humorist from Liberty told her audience of about 100 at Sunday’s Trumbull County Area AIDS Task Force dinner how her mother used to assiduously lay out each item before baking the cookies and would reprimand her for eating some of the chips beforehand.

Vadino was the keynote speaker at the dinner at G‘s Golden Gate Restaurant, 2186 Parkman Road N.W. The program was set up to commemorate today’s 21st annual observance of World AIDS Day.

Using plenty of self-effacement, personal anecdotes and stories, Vadino used the analogy of the individual ingredients to point out that people’s personal qualities and talents are vital for effective teamwork - a critical ingredient for working toward combatting the HIV virus, she noted.

“Every team needs a little bit of that or you won’t get anywhere,” she added.

Vadino said the title of her presentation, “350 degrees for 1 Hour,”came from recollections of how her mother believed that nearly anything would turn out well that was cooked for an hour at that temperature.

The title also is a metaphor for how some people have the mistaken notion that things can always be fixed by consistently using the same approach. Working together to fight AIDS requires others’ ideas and personal attributes, she noted.

It’s difficult to obtain an accurate picture of the incidence of AIDS in Trumbull County because for a long time people had to go elsewhere to get tested, noted Mike Whitney, the county task force’s president. Within the last 10 years, though, a center opened that works in conjunction with the Youngstown Health Department, he said.

Testing is available the first and third Tuesdays of each month at the American Red Cross Trumbull Chapter, 661 Mahoning Ave. N.W., as well as each Thursday at the Warren City Health Department, and can be done anonymously, he added.

Despite more awareness and information about AIDS, a stigma remains in the Valley and some other areas with a smaller population, noted Elda Schueller, director of Terry’s Cupboard, the task force’s food pantry named in honor of her son Terry, who died in 1992 from complications from AIDS.

Schueller said she’s seeing more young mothers and older women testing positive for HIV. In addition, about 80 percent of the women she’s seen with the virus are 50 or older, she noted.

Some women over 50 are “still in the dating scene” and may not always use protection while having sex, she added.

“The only way to prevent AIDS is protection,” Schueller said. “I can’t stress it enough: protection.”

Giving the invocation was Marie Keene-James, the task force’s vice president.

The two-hour program also included a 50/50 raffle, Chinese auction and pamphlets with information about the disease.