DATE: Monday, September 29, 1997            TAG: 9709290065

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   56 lines

SUPPORTERS HIT THE ROAD FOR AIDS WALKERS AND RUNNERS RAISE MORE THAN $30,000 AT AIDS WALK/RUN FOR LIFE.

Holding a big polka-dot umbrella and high-stepping to the thumping beat of a warm-up routine, Linda Williams wasn't about to give in to the arthritic ache in her thickly bandaged right knee.

Williams, of Norfolk, had come to downtown's Taiwanese Pagoda to do some walking. She was one of about 450 people who participated Sunday afternoon in the AIDS Walk/Run for Life.

Despite the rain, more than $30,000 was raised by walkers and runners in the seventh annual event. The money will go to 11 Hampton Roads organizations that help people with AIDS or with HIV, the virus that causes it.

Like many, Williams had a personal reason for participating.

``I have a couple of friends who are no longer with us because of AIDS,'' she said. ``As long as I can walk, I'll be doing this every year.''

But Sunday's event also included many walkers or runners with only a pedestrian knowledge of the disease. As far as he knows, none of his 30 teammates on Old Dominion University's baseball team has a close friend or relative with AIDS, said pitcher Jesse James, a senior who led the team's participation.

``It was our academic adviser's idea'' to walk, he said. ``She told us about it and we talked about it as a team and just decided to do it.'' It's the team's first year to participate, James said. ``We're talking about doing it every year.''

Joe Gannon, a board member of the Hampton Roads AIDS Walk Foundation, said he and his fellow organizers were heartened by what he said has been increased involvement by the ``community at large.'' Gannon, HIV services supervisor for the Hampton-Newport News Community Services Board, said, ``The community is starting to understand and empower itself to try to fight this infection.''

The wider cross-section of participants helped ease some of the disappointment among event planners that this year's fund raising appears to have fallen short of last year's, when $46,000 was brought in.

Organizers blamed the foul weather for lower turnout. The rain turned the warm-up area by the pagoda into a mud hole. But the walk/run itself went smoothly, partly because students from Norfolk Academy helped police monitor the 5-K route along downtown streets.

Among the fund-raising leaders were The Garage, a Norfolk tavern, and Lillian Vernon Corp., which brought in $1,900 and $1,700, respectively.

A Hampton division of Science Applications International Corp. sponsored about 20 walkers and runners, among them Sue Murray, a human-resources specialist for the NASA contractor.

Her son, Ric, died of AIDS at age 30 in 1993. ``They were very supportive,'' she said of her co-workers and her employer. ``I think people have come a long way in changing their attitudes'' toward the disease. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

JIM WALKER

Not everyone walked on their own. Avery Hester, 2, who reveled in

the rain before the event started, got pushed in a stroller.

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