HIV/AIDS Memorial Event Included 4 Individuals from Faerie Playhouse’s Memorial Garden

The Faerie Playhouse was proud to co-sponsor a healing service in honor of World AIDS Day and HIV Awareness Week with current owners of The Faerie Playhouse and neighbors, St. Anna’s Episcopal Church. Other co-sponsors included the LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana and Inclusive Louisiana.

(L to R: Frank Perez, LGBT+ Archives Project, Bill Hagler, Guy LaMothe and Wes Ware with The Faerie Playhouse, and Reverend Alison)

The event included a large red ribbon pinned with the names of individuals that attendees wished to remember during the event, including four whose cremains are in The Faerie Playhouse Memorial Garden (John Ognibene, Peter DeLancey, Cliff Howard and John Horn Foster), which were read aloud during the service.

All were LGBTQ+ rights and HIV/AIDS activists with ACT UP, New Orleans People with AIDS Coalition, Crescent City Coalition, NOAIDS Taskforce, LAGPAC, Louisiana Community AIDS Research Program, Mayor Marc Morial's Advisory Committee on AIDS, New Orleans Regional AIDS Planning Council and more.

In 1985, John Ognibene told the paper, “We’re sitting on a time bomb and no one is doing anything about it.” And in fact, it wasn’t until 1989, almost a decade after the first cases of AIDS were reported, that the first AZT trials began, of which John Foster was a part. Foster, who credited his longer life with HIV to science, went on to participate in the trials of the first protease inhibitor. For 14 years, he took 30 or so pills every day. By the time he died, there had been over 3,535,169 AIDS-related deaths in the United States alone.

It is crucial we remember these activists and so many others who fought for funding for HIV/AIDS research, treatment and prevention programming this Worlds AIDS Day, like John Ognibene who frequently fought with politicians over increased HIV funding or Cliff Howard who insisted on transgender inclusion in the LGBTQ+ rights movement. The World AIDS Day 2025 theme, “Overcoming disruption, transforming the AIDS response,” speaks to the resurgence of the crisis at a time in which federal HIV funding has been slashed, impacting millions across the globe.

We are hopeful that this is one of many collaborations with St. Anna’s church and that our co-sponsoring the event led to many more becoming familiar with the rich history and legacy of “the house with the hearts” across the street.