BRATTLEBORO-Most matriarchs observe Mother's Day on the second Sunday in May. But Guilford great-great-grandmother Shirley Squires has reason to wait until the AIDS Project of Southern Vermont's annual Walk for Life fundraiser later this month.
The 94-year-old didn't know much about the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) when it struck her son, former state Rep. Ronald Squires, D-Guilford, some four decades ago.
The lawmaker was the first in the Vermont Legislature to announce his homosexuality, doing so in the spring of 1992 to help pass a statute prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation.
"This bill is not about special privileges," the representative told colleagues on the House floor, noting the legislation instead would give him and his peers "the same rights that you all have."
Nine months later, on Jan. 8, 1993, the 41-year-old was hospitalized for AIDS-related viral meningitis when switchboard operators patched through a call from then President-elect Bill Clinton.
"They thought it was a hoax," his mother recently remembered. "I was dumbfounded."
Within the next hour, the legislator, taking his last breath, became the first Vermont public figure to lose his life to AIDS, the Associated Press reported nationwide.
"Just before he died," his mother recalled, "he said he didn't know what he would do without the AIDS Project."
Shirley Squires knew little about the Brattleboro-based nonprofit, one of the state's three AIDS service organizations - along with Vermont CARES and the Upper Valley's HIV/HCV Resource Center - that provide support to people with HIV as well as community prevention and education programs.
She nonetheless collected $1,000 from family members and friends for the organization's 1993 Walk for Life, not knowing how far that first step would take her.
When AIDS was initially identified in the 1980s, a diagnosis was a certain death sentence. Breakthroughs in testing and treatment in subsequent decades have helped some 750 Vermonters live with the virus, according to the state Department of Health. But such advances have left succeeding generations less concerned and, as a result, less conscientious of a disease that still must be managed by ever-continuing and costly medications.
And so the great-great-grandmother (yes, she has children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren, although she admits to losing count of how many) hasn't stopped generating money and awareness.
Squires, yet to miss a year of fundraising, reported a cumulative total of $52,000 upon her 10th anniversary walk in 2003, $235,000 upon her 20th in 2013, and $456,118 upon her 30th in 2023.
By the start of 2025, her lifetime haul was up to $478,007 - just $21,993 shy of a half-million dollars.
Anticipating her annual handwriting of solicitation letters to 500 regular contributors, Squires had a surefire pitch: If she can raise just $104 more than the $21,889 she reaped last year, she'll hit the $500,000 milestone.
But that isn't what the matriarch penned to her mailing list, which ranges from past and present state leaders to locals who visit her home at Christmastime to view her collection of more than 1,000 Nativity sets.
"I am writing on behalf of Shirley, who recently broke her shoulder and is unable to write her usual personalized note," someone else printed.
Even so, Squires and the staff of the AIDS Project are forging forward.
"Every single dollar Shirley brings in could potentially be replacing a chunk of funding that we might be losing," said Samba Diallo, the service organization's executive director.
The AIDS Project, whose nine staffers serve 77 clients in Bennington and Windham counties, operates on an annual budget of about $600,000. Nearly 85% of that comes from federal and state funding, with the remaining 15% covered by local and private sources.
Talk of government cuts is scaring the nonprofit, which already has seen financial aid shift from rural areas with fewer people and lower perceived risk to urban centers with larger populations.
"There are so many challenges, but money is the biggest," Diallo said. "How do we make sure we have stable funding?"
The AIDS Project will start by holding its 38th annual Walk for Life on Saturday, May 31 at 10 a.m. at Centre Congregational Church at 193 Main St.
Squires hopes people will contribute whatever they can.
"I want to try to write everyone to thank them," said the matriarch, who notes that she no longer has to confine her shoulder to a sling.
Diallo, for his part, is drafting his own wish list.
Top on it: "We just need more Shirleys."
For more information or to make an online donation to the AIDS Project of Southern Vermont, visit aidsprojectsouthernvermont.org.
This News item by Kevin O'Connor originally appeared in VTDigger and was republished in The Commons with permission.