Android java reference to object being destroyed
===

I have set up custom horizontal paging in my app with lets say 5 pages.  Each page has its own ListView and ListView Adapter.  In my main Activity class, I have an ArrayList of custom objects that I use to hydrate each ListView.  

So in my main class, I can call:
    
    lvAdapter.setItems(items);

Works fine.

But when I call:
    
    lvAdapter.clearItems();

I only want it to clear the items in the ListView, but it actually removes all the items from my ArrayList for that object.  I suppose the Adapter is only holding a reference?

Adapter clearItems:

    public void clearItems()
    {
          this.items.clear();  //this will remove the object in the ArrayList
          this.notifyDataSetChanged();
    }

What I am trying to do is setItems on actively visible pages and clearItems for those pages that are not visible.  Because I am dealing with out of memory crashes when I load all the pages at once...