By Rita McInerney

The large room at Central Presbyterian Church is arranged with white-draped, candlelit tables, the aroma of good food is in the air. It's Tuesday evening and dinner is being served. The guests are persons with AIDS (PWAs).

They are well-groomed, mostly younger, men. A few look pale and thin, others use canes, occasionally a man is wheelchair-bound. They are former strangers who have, in the course of a year, melded into a caring community of support.

On Nov. 22, Archbishop Eugene A. Marino, SSJ, dined with them to mark the first anniversary of "Tuesday Evening At The Shrine" begun by Father John Adamski, pastor, at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, at 48 Martin Luther King, Jr., Drive, in downtown Atlanta. Earlier in November, the dinner had been moved next door to Central Presbyterian Church, part of the swap which brought that church's night shelter to the Shrine basement while Central Presbyterian is being renovated.

Father Adamski had returned to Atlanta in June, 1987, after a sabbatical year spent as chaplain to PWAs at St. Clare's Hospital in New York City.

"That ministry was much on my mind. I wanted to continue it here but didn't know what that would involve," he said. The dinner St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Manhattan had been giving for AIDS sufferers for several years was his model.

Once assigned as Shrine pastor he found the location was accessible by transportation and facilities in the Shrine basement suitable for the dinners. After talking with a few friends, he ventured to launch "Tuesday Evening At The Shrine" without knowing how it would be received.

"We started with 30 guests. It stayed around that number for the first couple of months. The last two months we have been serving over 100 guests. The high was 125. To me that says there was a need and we are meeting that need."

"It provides a social opportunity. The guests are comfortable with one another. It is not so structured or serious. The feedback we get is that they really enjoy and appreciate it."

The atmosphere, he went on to say, is relaxed and supportive. "They feel good about being with one another. I think it's probably been one of the easiest things I've ever done. There have been no financial problems."

He produced his first annual report which listed 3,507 guest meals served and 520 meals taken to the home-bound or hospitalized. Food expenses were $9,454 and the cost of candles, tablecloths, name tags, was $1,037. A balance of more than $3,000 is in the bank. The dinner is entirely funded by donations.

The Peasant restaurants have been "most supportive," occasionally cooking a gourmet meal in their own kitchens and trucking it in. And creative volunteer cooks are plentiful. Menus vary from week to week, sometimes international cuisine, other times roast beef and apple pie.

Waiters and waitresses are quick to provide more iced tea or second helpings. Such volunteers came, in the beginning mainly from among Shrine parishioners and a few other parishes. Now, it "has branched out by word of mouth. We've never wanted for volunteers or money," Father Adamski said.

Father Alan Dillmann, chaplain at Grady Hospital in residence at the Shrine, is co-host and roving photographer each Tuesday night. Sister Margaret McAnoy, IHM, Cursillo director, is volunteer coordinator and occasional cook.

Photos by Dillmann, of table groups from past dinners, are pinned on the large easel near the door. Guests also check it weekly for updates and room numbers of hospitalized friends.

In a table nearby is a bouquet of fresh flowers supplied each week, along with arrangements on the tables, by florist friends of the Shrine dinner. Guests take the flowers to friends in the hospital or to brighten their own spaces. Cartons filled with take-home meals are stacked on the table.

Tipton, Randall, Roy and Don cheerfully shared a meal and conversation with a visitor one recent Tuesday. Their talk was open, of facing their illness, hospital and drug costs, medical coverage and the lack of it, support groups.

Don, 57, and self-styled "old man" of the group, was just back from a trip to see his mother in Mississippi, driving almost 1,000 miles in four days. A regular since the first dinner, he says, "Now I come for the companionship. In the beginning I came out of curiosity. I had just gotten out of my shell." He doesn't know of another dinner like it. "I think it's amazing to get so many people in our situation together. And all the expenses are donated."

He had to leave his teaching work in April, 1987, and was in "great depths of depression" after his doctor said, "We've got to talk." Several months later he attended an awareness weekend and decided he "would live with AIDS rather than die with AIDS."

Now he provides transportation to the doctor for AIDS Atlanta clients, attends support groups about five times each week and goes to Al-Anon meetings six nights a week. "Whatever it is I give comes back to me far greater than what I give."

Roy, a regular since the second week, said, "If I miss two weeks, everyone is glad to see me." The companionship is a big help to him, a break from outside problems including the strain of undergoing intravenous medications five days a week, at a cost of about $90 daily. With that there is the cost of a home health aide who comes once a week to change the intravenous needle.

Roy said his parents, German Jews who survived Hitler's atrocities, live in Atlanta and are supportive. "Hopefully we're thinking that this is just another part of life" that may get better.

Tipton Bishop comes to the dinner as often as he can. He's spent over 100 days in the hospital and it meant a lot to him "when some of the fellows would come by and bring me a plate." He still has some insurance, although his hospitalization over 13 months has cost over $170,000.

He lives from day to day with his major goal being not to worry. Once each day he reads the 91^st Psalm. "It's all about faith and support in the world, but without faith it's nothing." He finds his love and support "from so many different avenues. I'm one of the lucky ones. I have a very supportive family. They love me and let me know it."

Trained as an actor, he tries to use his "God-given gifts to educate, share what I can to humanize AIDS." He appeared in a play, "Higher Ground: Voices of AIDS" at the World Congress Center over the Memorial Day weekend while the AIDS quilt was on exhibit. At present he is cast in another drama about AIDS at Onstage Atlanta. What he gives, he said, he gets back tenfold, has a feeling of usefulness and the pleasure of being around people.

"This dinner is certainly of God's love." Randall said. "There's no pressure, no worry. It's safe and it's fun." The quiet young man, who works weekends with a catering firm, mentioned that he had blood work done the day before. It took ten minutes and cost $1,000.

Bill Thomas, 43, in a brief conversation before the soup course was served, said he told the archbishop when he visited that "it's a wonderful thing you do here. It's a chance to meet and exchange ideas and feelings." He commended the "loving Christian attitude" of Fathers Adamski and Dillmann, Sister Margaret and Brenda Griffin, another volunteer.

"I knew I had it a year ago in April, one year after I retired. I felt so bad, my mother was dying of cancer and I didn't want any more pressure in my life. I've been very fortunate, I haven't been real sick," he said.

After he learned he had AIDS, he said, he went through a period of spiritual enlightenment, "God's way of preparing me" to accept the illness.

All his life, he said, he had saved his money so he could retire at 40 after working 18 years for a men's apparel firm. When AIDS struck, he had no medical coverage. Now his savings are rapidly being depleted.

Coming to the Shrine dinner gives him a chance to meet people in a social atmosphere, without alcohol, a welcome change for someone unable to work and living alone.

Father Adamski said guests frequently bring a parent or parents if they are in town. "To me that says this is a meaningful, good experience, another validation of what we are doing."

At the start, he said, he never doubted that the support would be there for the dinners, but "the response is much beyond anticipation."

He said that before he left Atlanta for the year working at St. Clare's in New York, "I was involved in AIDS ministry for a long time. It's a normal part of what I do as my ministry."