Photo: Trevor Pittinger
by Steve Desroches
Three different times in the 1800s Provincetown was hit by a smallpox outbreak. Highly contagious and often deadly, each epidemic came with a spasm of fear. A major whaling and fishing port at the time, both locals and those who were in port suffered, with the latter sometimes blamed for bringing the disease to town.
By the 1850s there was a vaccine, but many were more afraid of what might save them than the disease itself. Those that did contract smallpox were sent to live, and often die, in the Pest House, far from town in what is now the Cape Cod National Seashore. And it was a miserable existence. There are a recorded 14 deaths from smallpox, and those who died were hastily buried in the woods near the Pest House, with some of the markers still existing today in a hard-to-reach spot near Clapps Pond, overgrown with foliage. Only numbers exist on the markers, no names. Historians believe the death rate to be higher, but shame and stigma around the disease meant a true public health record would never be known.
When another public health emergency hit Provincetown, namely the HIV/AIDS pandemic, Provincetown responded quiet differently, becoming a safe haven for those with the virus feeling the town’s embrace rather than being cast away. And motivated by that spirit, members of the town’s Cemetery Commission began a process to create a Provincetown Smallpox Memorial, dedicated in 2015 in the Winthrop Street Cemetery with all the names of those who died so they will not just have a nameless grave on the outskirts of town. Their names are Adam Dyer, John Roberts, Monson W. Barnard, Elizabeth Hill, Kennis Fergerson, Antone Domingo, Mary Rogers, George G. Hallett, Tamsin Manuel, Frank Sofrine, Manuel Terceira, William H. Butler, John McDonald, and Thomas Basell. And ever since 2018 the Provincetown AIDS Memorial, designed by Lauren Ewing, stands on the lawn of Town Hall as a reminder to the town’s experience during the crisis and to those lost, far too many to include by name.
But there is a different kind of AIDS memorial in town many are unaware of, and that seeks to remember those lost to AIDS in Provincetown. It’s called The Great Book.
“The history of HIV in this town is in these walls,” says AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod (ASGCC) president and chief executive officer Dan Gates pointing to the Great Room at the organization’s headquarters on Bradford Street. “A client told me that and I will never forget it. For years there was no memorial, just The Great Book.”
In a longstanding tradition of reverence, no photographs of any kind are allowed. Founded in 1992 by then ASGCC board member Gregg Russo, The Great Book is an oversized, rust-colored, leather-bound journal with off-white pages. “The Great Book” is written in gilded embossed letters on the cover, with a large gold frame hugging the edges of the front of the book. And inside are hundreds of names, just over 450, of people lost to AIDS who were clients of the groundbreaking AIDS organization. On one of the first pages a passage from Romeo and Juliet is inscribed in black calligraphy that reads; “And when they shall die, take them and form them into little stars and they will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun.” The first name entered is a man named Jacques who died in Provincetown in 1983. The book is updated every other year, with local playwright Myra Slotnick now doing the calligraphy, and the most recent entries date to 2023.
“This has been such an important source of comfort to so many people,” says Gates. “People frequently come here, come to Provincetown, to come see the Book and see the name or names of loved ones. It’s powerful to see those names.”
It is certainly not a full accounting of all that were lost. Some expressed in life that they did not want their names added due to the stigma, and others aren’t because in the real time of the crisis such documentation didn’t come to mind. But the energy that vibrates from this important artifact and living memorial is palpable, and its size communicates the gravitas. Every five years all of the names in The Great Book are read aloud at the Worlds AIDS Day commemoration, with the most recent reading occurring last year. And soon the Book will be on permanent display in the Great Room as renovations are complete after frozen pipes burst several years ago causing extensive damage to the facilities. Since its creation the Book now includes names of people from all across Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard, as the scope and scale of the ASGCC’s work has expanded over the years. In particular, armed with experience, the ASGCC was uniquely positioned to address the opiate epidemic and the more recent fentanyl crisis on the Cape and the Vineyard.
“There was a period of time we were seeing three to four overdoses a week,” says Gates. “It was like during the worst of the AIDS crisis in a way. We had a few conversations here where we were like, wow, do we need to start another book?”
World AIDS Day is Sunday, December 1. The AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod plans to commemorate the event by gathering at the Provincetown AIDS Memorial on the lawn of Provincetown Town Hall at 4:30 p.m. and then progressing down Commercial Street onto Gosnold Street and over to the ASGCC offices at 96 Bradford Street for a gathering. For more information call 508.487.9445 or visit asgcc.org.
