He stood up for us

Someone wrote a story about the face of courage. The girl who withdrew from the Olympics because of mental health issues. I have a person that I respected and admired. He accepted his diagnosis with grace, and it's ugly truth with dignity and respect. In December 1984, a young boy from Kokomo, Indiana. He was a boy of just thirteen and he got sick, with a bad bloody nose. His mother took no chances as Ryan was a hemophiliac and rushed her boy to the hospital. They ran some test and it came back that Ryan had contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion. The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program was named for a courageous young man named Ryan White who was diagnosed with AIDS following a blood transfusion in December 1984. Ryan White was diagnosed at age 13 while living in Kokomo, Indiana and was given six months to live. When Ryan White tried to return to school, he fought AIDS-related discrimination in his Indiana community. Along with his mother Jeanne White Ginder, Ryan White rallied for his right to attend school - gaining national attention - and became the face of public education about his disease. Surprising his doctors, Ryan White lived five years longer than predicted. He died in April 1990, one month before his high school graduation and only months before Congress passed the legislation bearing his name in August 1990 - the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act.

It was after this diagnosis that his life did change. He wasn't allowed to go to school and he had to do school from home with equipment that barely worked. Someone ran over and killed his dog, he found it laying in the middle of the street. The neighbors would throw bricks through the windows, Ryan wanted to go to school, but with a diagnosis of three to six months to live his mother wouldn't consider it. When Ryan was diagnosed, they only gave him 3-6 months to live. So at that time, I thought every cough, every fever, I worried that it was going to be his last. And I really never thought he'd be healthy enough to go to school. But as he started getting healthy, as he started gaining weight, he started to ask, "Mom," he said, "I want to go to school, I want to go visit my friends. I want to see my friends." So I really kind of put him off for awhile and finally he just said, "Mom, I want to go to school, I want to go visit." So It was a long process, we had to go through almost a year and a half, he didn't go to school for about a year and a half. He was worried about taking the 7th grade over again, and he didn't want people to think he was dumb, because he was a very smart and intelligent kid. So it was a long process. Through court hearings, we thought it would take one court hearing, and we'd have all these medical experts in so to speak, and then everybody would be educated, but it didn't happen that way.

It was really bad. People were really cruel, people said that he had to be gay, that he had to have done something bad or wrong, or he wouldn't have had it. It was God's punishment, we heard the God's punishment a lot. That somehow, some way he had done something he shouldn't have done or he wouldn't have gotten AIDS. (Ryan White Story)

Ryan's favorite singer was Elton John. He disclosed that on Oprah. One day as him and his mother was getting home the phone was ringing, it was Elton John inviting Ryan to California. It was a bond that would not be broken. There was another singer who invited him to California and that was Michael Jackson.

With help, Ryan's mother was able to move her family to the next town over from Kokomo. She met with the school principal about Ryan attending. He told her to let him have a school assembly about it and to send out letters to parents. After the assembly, Ryan was welcomed with open arms the first day of school for him.

Elton was being hassled from Los Angeles about a project he was supposed to be on. Elton said I am dealing with family issues right now and I will be back when I am finished. The day Ryan died he was listening to Elton Johns music. Elton was trying to encourage Ryan to make it another day, he said to Ryan, hey Michael is on his way and I am grade B compared to him. Ryan brought the fight against AIDS to the front of the pages, he was the face of the campaign. Without him AIDS would still be ravaging our community,