Ryan White - My Own Story (21 page)

Roller skating takes up a lot of time, and it’s expensive. A pair of skates, the kind Andrea needed now, cost five hundred dollars. When she was still growing and needed new skates every year, Steve often forked out for them. Now Mom could go back to work, so she could afford lessons and new skates for Andrea. She and Andrea could start driving to the rink in Indianapolis again for practice and lessons, and going away to meets on the weekends.

Andrea had to recoup all the practice time she’d lost before she could start winning again. But she was already a big hit at the rink. All the younger skaters idolized her; as far as they were concerned, she had always been a star. Besides, Andrea’s really good with little kids. She would invite some of the girls to sleep over at our house, or she’d leave notes for them on their parents’ cars when they were having trouble with a move. “Don’t worry about your double lutz,” Andrea would write. “You
will
get it.”

Jeanne and Ryan at home in Cicero, 1989.

Ryan’s 1990 yearbook picture that Jeanne placed beside his bed during his last illness and that stood on Elton’s piano during the funeral.

Andrea and Jeanne say good-bye to Ryan at funeral home. Behind them from left to right: Ryan’s Uncle Tom, his grandfather, Michael Jackson, and Elton John.

That fall the three of us took another trip to California for a week. This time Grandma and Grandpa got to come too. We were invited out to Los Angeles by Athletes and Entertainers for Kids. This is a non-profit group of sports stars and various entertainers, who work with kids who are very ill or who might drop out of school and join gangs. For instance, Howie Long, from the Los Angeles Raiders, heads up Howie’s Heros, a program which sends celebrities to visit kids in hospitals. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who scored more points than any other basketball star ever when he was playing for the Los Angeles Lakers, heads up Kareem’s Kids, to keep kids in school and off the streets.

Now Athletes and Entertainers for Kids was launching a new program that they were going to call the Ryan White National Educational Program. It sent teams of celebrities and AIDS experts into schools to talk to kids—so there would be no more Ryan White stories.

Sounded good to me. They wanted me to be at the press conference that would launch the Fund. Andrea brought a video camera to the press conference and played TV reporter, taping Mom and Grandpa and Grandma in the audience. I was supposed to make a short speech, but I had laryngitis. Instead, Howie Long heaved me up over his head to make victory signs. Compared to me, Howie’s about twelve feet tall, so I had quite a view of the crowd. Everyone cheered and whistled.

I thanked Howie for the lift.

“Nothing to it, man,” he said. “I play football for a living. What
you
did—that was
something
.”

What was really something, as far as I was concerned, was the earthquake that happened while we were in our hotel, early the next morning. We were watching local TV, and we saw the newscaster’s desk start to shake! He looked all around, trying to figure out what was happening. Then he ducked under the desk and went on broadcasting! Finally the screen went black. The whole thing was hilarious, but Grandpa and Grandma were too shook up to laugh.

“This is California!” I told them. “The complete experience!” I wasn’t scared at all.

Grandpa did perk up when we went to a Dodger game.

Dodger Stadium is high up in the hills above Los Angeles. You can tell you’re in California because you can buy nachos in the stands, not just hot dogs. There’s a famous vendor at Dodger Stadium who can throw you a pack of peanuts from behind his back, over his shoulder, any which way—even if you’re sitting high above him. There was also a big video screen opposite our seats, flashing messages. One of them was “WELCOME RYAN WHITE FAMILY.” We cheered, and people turned around and smiled at us.

Los Angeles Raider Howie Long lifts Ryan as Athletes and Entertainers for Kids launches the Ryan White National Educational Program, 1987.

Coming from Indiana, which doesn’t have a major league team, we really appreciated being at a big game. The West Coast
is
different, though. Cubs fans are committed. The ones who live close to Wrigley Field watch games from their roofs. Cubs fans are colorful. They wear bathing suits and call themselves “bleacher bums.” The chief announcer used to sit in the stands along with the bums to sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretch.

Not West Coast fans. Like you always hear, they’re laid back. They don’t arrive until the second inning, they leave during the seventh, and in between they sit on their hands. Grandpa was the most devoted Dodger fan there.

Dodger Stadium has something Wrigley Field doesn’t. When the players step up to the plate, there’s another screen staring right at them. The batter’s face appears, with all his statistics, and how he’s done so far in the game. Say you’re up at bat and there’s that screen, flashing “STRUCK OUT TWICE.” This could be pretty demoralizing.

A
LL ALONG
, we had been keeping in touch with Linda Otto and the Landsburg Company. They had been writing and rewriting the script for our movie, and working on hooking a network that would air it. They wanted Lukas Haas, who had played the boy in the movie
Witness,
to be me. While we were out in L.A., Linda had a party for us at her house on the beach in Malibu. Heather was along as my date, but Linda asked if there was anyone I wanted her to invite. There certainly was.

“Do you think Alyssa Milano would come?” I asked. Maybe she was working. Maybe she wouldn’t be interested. Maybe—maybe she’d be scared.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Linda promised.

When my family and I got to the party, we saw a ton of movie people. Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, Lukas Haas. Greg Louganis was there too. I felt a little lost in the crowd. Then I saw her. Alyssa was tiny—smaller than I am—and even prettier than I remembered. She had on jeans and a T-shirt, just like me.

Bruce Willis, Andrea, and Ryan at Linda Otto’s party, 1987.

Alyssa Milano and Ryan at producer Linda Otto’s home in Malibu, 1987.

I told her she was my idol.

“Well, I think you’re a hero,” she smiled. “And where I go to school, everyone else thinks so too.”

“You mean they’re not scared of me?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” said Alyssa. “They admire you!” It felt good to know there was more than one high school where someone like me could fit in.

I had read everything I could find about Alyssa, so I knew a lot about her. I guess because I’ve spent so much time in front of TV, watching people act, I wanted to get behind the scenes. And I wanted to learn how actors and singers did their jobs. Alyssa was only a year younger than I was, but she’d been acting since she was eight—over half her life! She was close to her mom, just like me. I knew Alyssa’d said it was hard to be famous, because you get stupid stuff written about you. I’d hate to have the name of anyone I went on a date with in all the papers the next day. But at least she got recognition for her
work.
Not for being
ill.

So I asked Alyssa every question I could think of—about the show and her job and what her day was like. As every teenager knows, Alyssa plays Samantha on
Who’s the Boss?
That’s Tony Danza’s teenage daughter. Alyssa said she was able to work and stay in school because she got tutored on the set three hours a day. She said the cast are very good friends now that they’ve worked together for so long. They rehearse Monday through Thursday, and then tape the show on Friday.