RYAN WHITE HELPED `PUT A FACE' ON AIDS

Though the latest public figure to put a face on AIDS is Magic Johnson, Ryan White was the first.

Diagnosed in 1984, when he was just 13, White became nationally known as the boy who was barred from his Indiana school because he had contracted the disease.

He also became a national symbol of AIDS discrimination.

"We lived with AIDS every day for 5 years, and we were looked at under a microscope," his mother, Jeanne White said as she described the family's battle to allow Ryan the right to "live a normal life."

White, of Cicero, Ind., spoke to nearly 600 people Tuesday at Southeast Missouri State University. Her address was part of a weeklong university observance of the disease and issues surrounding it.

Though her son died in April 1990, White, 44, continues to participate in fund raising for AIDS research and promotes AIDS awareness.

When her son, a hemophiliac, was first diagnosed with the disease, she "thought it was the end of the world." It was Ryan's positive outlook on life that pulled her through, she said.

"Once somebody met Ryan White, they saw a quality in a person that cannot be overlooked," she said.

In 1984, little was known about how AIDS is transmitted, and in the small town of Kokomo, Ind., where the Whites lived, ignorance gave way to hysteria, she said.

The White's legal battles with the school district made national headlines, but Ryan was less affected by the media attention and public shunning than either she or her now 18-year-old daughter, Andrea, were, White said.

"His attitude was that maybe it happened to him so it wouldn't have to happen to anybody else," she said.

Ryan contracted the disease through Factor 8, a clotting agent made from blood that Ryan was given intravenously, his mother said.

White explained that because Ryan was injected with Factor 8 twice a week for years, he was exposed hundreds of times to HIV.,

"What (doctors) didn't know at the time is that if the factor had been heat-treated, that would have killed the virus," she said.

Though doctors predicted he would live only six months after his diagnoses, Ryan wanted to go to school. That was when the "chaos" began in Kokomo.

Ryan was labeled a troublemaker, she said, and she was tabbed an unfit mother. Ryan became the subject of "Ryan White jokes," the family's home was vandalized, and once, a bullet was shot through a window of the house, she said.

Ironically, she said, while several celebrities befriended Ryan during this time most notably Michael Jackson and Elton John he had few friends in his own school, where he had his own restroom, water fountain, wasn't allowed to take gym class, and ate his cafeteria lunch on disposable plates.

Ryan once told the Presidential AIDS Commission, his mother said, that it was his decision to "lead a normal life, go to school, and be with my friends."

White said that when the family moved to Cicero, 25 miles away, their lives changed for the better, and Ryan was accepted at his new school.

"Ryan was in such awe that these kids wanted him to go to school," she said.

Toward the end of her address, White urged "fight the disease on the people who have it."

She said AIDS should be considered "everyone's disease."

"I say this as a person who has dealt with AIDS issues from the beginning," she said. "Ryan was not the only person to die of AIDS; he was just in the spotlight."

She said for many people it took Magic Johnson's announcement that he is afflicted with HIV for the disease to seem like a real threat.