The Miami Herald, Inc.; a Knight Ridder publication. One Herald Plaza, Miami, FL 33132-1693 - Miami Herald (MH) - Tuesday, October 29, 1996 Edition: Final Section: Living Page: 1D Word Count: 733
Leslie Casimir and Stephen Smith, Herald Staff Writers

Tangela Sears is tired of burying people.

So when African-American leaders gathered at Harvard last week to exhort a war on the disease, they could look to Miami and see a woman whose life has become a mission.

She wants to stop a killer that has greedily stalked her community, stealing lives at a disproportionate rate and leaving families decimated.

On Friday, Sears will make a joyful noise -- accompanied by a host of gospel singers at a concert that will benefit a clinic and a consortium involved in counseling and education. That has become her campaign, too: teaching and talking and volunteering at a clinic. Her story is so widely known in Liberty City that strangers stop her on the street, seeking her counsel, sharing their own struggles.

"I feel like sometimes, was I put here to suffer? I'm losing everybody I love to this disease," says Sears, words weary in that way that comes to people who have buried too many people too soon. "Sometimes, you get depressed but you keep going.

"When I think about the cause, I'm really encouraged -- we've got to come together."

That was the message, too, when luminaries from government and business, medicine and religion converged on Harvard to assess the toll AIDS has wrought on the black community.

Numbers are revealing

Florida knows the story all too well: Of the 56,000 people in the state who have developed AIDS since the epidemic's dawn, blacks account for 42 percent -- the same percentage as white non-Hispanics even though blacks make up just 14 percent of the state's population. In Dade, the numbers are even more stark: Blacks constitute 48 percent of reported AIDS cases.

"This is a human tragedy of monstrous proportions, which could have been and could be avoided," said Henry Louis Gates, chairman of the Afro-American studies department at Harvard.

The proportions of that tragedy have framed Sears' life since the late '80s, when doctors detected the virus in the blood of her best friend.

Then, as she struggled to keep him alive, another bolt of news struck: Sears' brother, Dennard McTier, was infected, too.

McTier was born and reared in Liberty City. But when he was diagnosed with AIDS, he moved to Atlanta to die -- to spare his family the shame he feared the diagnosis would bring.

His big sister urged him to return, determined not to let her brother suffer alone. After all, she figured, Liberty City is home. But home proved to be where folks shunned her brother -- a gay, black man with AIDS. In the last few months of McTier's life, Sears took him everywhere. One day, Sears took him to a beauty salon in Liberty City. During a coughing jag, Sears' hairdresser asked her brother to leave.

"Many people don't realize that you can eat with them, you can hug them, and you can sit with them," Sears says. "Our community is ignorant when it comes to AIDS. We have to stop and take care of them."

A big blow

On May 30, McTier's lungs collapsed. He died at the age of 25. When her brother died, so did a part of Sears.

"When my brother died, I wanted to go with him. I couldn't understand why my brother was taken away from me."

The words arrive with chilling familiarity to Pat Kelly, who presides over the AIDS ministry of MOVERS, a confederation of church members who take to the streets and the pulpit and the home to provide comfort and education. It started at Mount Tabor Baptist Church in Liberty City as members watched the disease ravage their community. "I'm a stomp-down Baptist all my life -- I believe in sex after marriage -- but that's not reality," Kelly says. "And we in the church have to face up to this."

IF YOU GO

The HIV/AIDS benefit gospel concert is at 7 p.m. Friday at Mount Tabor Baptist Church, 1701 NW 66th St., Miami. Groups performing include Curry's Special Choir from New Birth Baptist Church, Ingram Gospel Singers, Inspirational Voices of Mount Tabor Baptist Church, Second Chapter, Shades in Rhythm and Wood Brothers. A collection will benefit MOVERS and the Liberty City Health Center. .

CAPTION: color photo: AIDS activist Tangela Sears (a)

CANDACE BARBOT / Herald Staff RIBBONS OF HOPE: AIDS activist Tangela Sears.

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