Ryan White - My Own Story (16 page)

Mom was telling Andrea and me all the time to keep going, to never feel sorry for ourselves, to remember that we were doing something important—helping people by educating them. But so many people were against her, and there was only Andrea, Steve, and me to help her keep her own spirits up. She wasn’t bitter, but she was exhausted.

I tried to make Mom laugh. “Mitzi Johnson doesn’t care what you think of her,” I said. “Why should you care what she thinks about you?”

Mom winced.

On Monday we went to see Mr. Vaughan about what to do next. Mr. Vaughan had been working on a new strategy. He had gone back to court to force the Concerned Citizens to post a $12,000 bond to show good faith. They had been setting out glass jars at all their meetings to collect money for their legal fees. So we thought that $12,000 would really set them back. But in three nights they raised $19,000! They held an auction in the school gym—kind of a giant yard-sale, with just about everyone in town donating something valuable. TVs, furniture, china ornaments, auto parts, an extra-strong session at a tanning parlor—you name it. The auctioneer was none other than Dick, of Dick and Charlie on “Male Call.” He promised to hold an auction for us as well, if we’d just give up.

Mr. Vaughan wasn’t about to quit—just the opposite, in fact. Our next move, he said, was to take our fight to state court. But Mom was flat broke. If she stayed home because I was sick or because we had to be in court, she didn’t get paid.

She said, “I’m worn down. I want to stop. All the pressure on our family—I just can’t take it anymore.”

Mr. Vaughan looked at me. “How about you, Ryan?” he asked. “Do you want to quit?”

“No!” I said impatiently. “We’re right. They’re wrong. We can win.”

Mr. Vaughan turned back to Mom. “Well, Jeanne,” he said,
“Ryan’s
my client now.”

I smiled. I liked Mr. Vaughan. The worse things were, the more fired up he got. I was thinking about becoming a lawyer myself. Besides Mr. Vaughan, I admired the lawyer in
Miracle on 34th Street
who says law is the most fun when you’re helping people who are being pushed around. Taking on the big guys, just like we were doing now. And Grandma was always telling me I was good at arguing—though I think sometimes she didn’t mean it as a compliment.

Mr. Vaughan had decided that because of all the publicity, we’d never get a fair hearing in Kokomo. So he got our next date in court switched to another town, Frankfort, west of Kokomo in the next county. But we had to wait some more—until early April. I was back home and bored again. Sometimes I would write very formal notes to Mom on my computer: “Dear Mom, I love you very much. Give me a call from work later. I LOVE YOU, Ryan White, your son.” I’d doodle little pictures, including one of myself saying, “Why me?”

One day a reporter stopped by the house to talk to me. He mentioned that most AIDS patients had gotten their disease from sex or drug use. I’m not a typical AIDS patient. The reporter asked me, “How do you think people around here would have reacted if you’d been five years older and homosexual?”

I certainly knew the answer to that one. I held up my thumb and forefinger in the shape of a gun and fired into the air.

“Pow,” I said.

I had plenty of time back then to think about why people were being mean. Of course it was because they were scared, but why were they so scared? Maybe it was because I
wasn’t
that different from everyone else. I wasn’t gay; I wasn’t into drugs; I was just another kid from Kokomo. I’ve been a twig all my life—if you ruffled up my hair, a bird would probably nest in it. But other than that, I didn’t even look sick. Maybe that made me even more of a goblin to some people.

You aren’t supposed to stand out in Kokomo. If you’re sick, you’re supposed to stay home quietly and be nursed. But I wouldn’t play that game. When I started speaking up, people from out of state sided with me, and some of them wrote the newspaper to say so. So people in Kokomo got even more upset with me. They didn’t want outsiders telling them what to do.

Sometimes it was actually harder when people tried to be nice about my having AIDS. Like now and again someone would say, “I don’t know how
you
do it.
I
couldn’t do it.” I wondered if they were
really
saying, “Thank God I don’t have to.” Well, if you have no choice, you will. That’s why I tried not to think about it. Sometimes I’d forget I had it—except that people kept reminding me. All I wanted to do was go to school, because I didn’t know what was going to happen to me with AIDS.

April 10, our court date, finally rolled around and we drove out to the courthouse in Frankfort. The change of scene did us good. Truck drivers drove by honking and shouting, “Good luck, Ryan!” A friend of Mom’s from the plant had ordered a bunch of buttons that read “Friend of Ryan White,” and quite a few people besides my family were wearing them.

This judge got right to the point. In about half a minute, he overturned the lower court’s decision. “This restraining order is dissolved,” he announced. Effective immediately I could go back to school.

Ryan speaks to the press after a judge threw out a temporary injunction barring him from school, April 1986.

I jumped up and hugged Mom. It was the Concerned Citizens’ turn to cry. We drove straight to Western, and an hour later, I was back in class again.

Mr. Vaughan said we had set a precedent for kids with AIDS. We’d told them, “Yes, you can lead a normal life.”

A few parents wouldn’t give in. Twenty-two of them came right over to Western and yanked their kids out of junior high. One girl got taken out because she was supposed to have been my science lab partner. A couple of weeks later the parents opened their own school, the Russiaville Home Study School. For the last six weeks of school, their kids went to class in an old American Legion hall. I’d seen TV documentaries about white parents setting up separate schools when public schools in the South were being integrated. Kokomo had thought up another First—a new kind of segregation school!

But the way it turned out, being back at school was almost as lonely as being home. Heath was still my buddy, but he wasn’t in my grade. Other kids backed up against their lockers when they saw me coming, or they threw themselves against the hallway walls, shouting, “Watch out! Watch out! There he is!” Maybe some were putting me on. I think most of them were acting like that just to get to me, to make me mad mainly. I worked hard at pretending I didn’t see the kids who were making fun of me.

But it hurt that no one wanted to get close to me. “It’s okay for him to come to school, just as long as I don’t sit by him,” one boy said. Some kids were so afraid they wouldn’t walk in the same hall with me. I wasn’t even five feet and I weighed seventy-six pounds—quite chunky for me actually. But you’d think I was some big bruiser, the way kids ran when they saw me coming. When we had to team up in class, no one wanted to be my partner. One girl complained, “If people with measles and chicken pox can’t come to school, why should Ryan?” I called Mom every day at lunchtime, just to have someone to talk to.

A few days after I went back to school though, Mom, Andrea, and I had a nice break. We got another chance to go to New York, this time for five whole days. A big AIDS organization, the American Foundation for AIDS Research, known as AmFAR, was having a benefit party in New York with a bunch of celebrities. One was Elizabeth Taylor, who often helps AmFAR. AmFAR wanted me to pose in an ad for them with a whole crowd of stars, including Elizabeth Taylor and Marlo Thomas. It was going to be the first time I’d ever been around a lot of celebrities. Mom had to rent me a tuxedo. Of course, I wanted to wear it with my high-tops but Mom said, “No way.”

I told her, “Elton would.” I liked Elton John—he wasn’t afraid to be different.

Later, when we got to New York one of the first things we did was go on
Good Morning America
to talk about the AmFAR party. David Hartman asked me, “Which celebrity do you want to meet most tonight?”

I said, “Elton John, definitely.” I hoped Elizabeth Taylor wouldn’t be too upset with me.

One of the actors I posed with in the AmFAR ad was in the cast of
Cats,
the musical. Next time we came to New York, he said, we could see
Cats
and visit him backstage. I also went to see the headquarters where Marvel Comics are put together. I saw how all the drawings get made into one comic.

The AmFAR people made their party a lot of fun for Andrea and me. They made up special T-shirts for us to wear. Mine was black with a white and silver outline of the New York skyline, and it said, “Watch Out New York!” And they gave us sunglasses and moussed my bangs so I looked like I had a buzz cut. I decided that as soon as I got home, I was going to get a real buzz cut right away. Everyone at the AmFAR party was really nice to us, but Elton wasn’t there.

The next morning we had to catch a plane back to Indiana. AmFAR sent a limo to take us out to the airport. The limo had a phone in it, and we got a call. Mom answered.

“Hello, Jeanne, this is Elton John,” said a British accent.

Elton wanted to tell us that he’d been watching
Good Morning America,
and he’d heard what I’d told David Hartman. He wanted to apologize because he hadn’t been able to make the AmFAR party. But he was inviting all of us to his next concert, in Texas.

“Well, okay!” I said. I wanted to sound enthusiastic, because he was being so nice. But it was such a surprise, I hardly knew what to say, so I just talked as normally as possible. The plane ride home was less of a drag than usual, and I didn’t care what happened in school. I really had something to look forward to! I had a feeling my bad luck was going to change.

Andrea competes in the National Roller Skating Championships, August 1990.

Ryan and his prom date Dee Laux, spring 1989.

Top row, from left to right: Brian Green, Josie Davis, Joshua Harris, Christina Nigra, Ryan, a friend, Jeremy Licht, Benji Gregory, Danny Ponce. Bottom row, left to right: Stephen Dorff, Keith Coogan, Justin Whalin, Chad Allen.