Ryan White Was Barred From School for His AIDS Diagnosis. His Story Changed History.

Yahoo

08-04-2025

My new book examines the life, death, and legacies of Ryan White, the Indiana teenager with hemophilia who contracted HIV through contaminated blood products in the early to mid-1980s. White became perhaps the most famous person with AIDS in the United States, if not the world, after he was barred from attending his middle school because of his condition. Ryan White's curious celebrity and perceived innocence helped shift dominant conceptions of HIV/AIDS as a 'gay plague' or an illness for 'junkies.' Yet his story also reinforced existing prejudices against men who have sex with men and people who use intravenous drugs. The selected excerpt details Ryan's highly publicized struggle to return to school in Indiana. The excerpt from The Life and Death of Ryan White spotlights themes that will resonate with many young readers, including the sting of rejection, the appeal of 'normality,' and the search for community.
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On the surface, Ryan White seemed like just another seventh grader at Western Middle School (WMS). He was new to WMS in the fall of 1984, having moved to Kokomo earlier that year from Windfall, Indiana, about eighteen miles away. While living in Windfall, Ryan attended Tri-Central Junior High in nearby Sharpsville, where he earned mostly As and Bs (and a couple of Cs). He received similar grades (plus one D) in his first semester at Western Middle School. As WMS principal Ron Colby put it, 'Ryan was functioning at an average to above average level the 1st and 2nd 6 weeks [sic] grading period at Western Middle School the fall semester of 1984–85,' just before his hospitalization and subsequent AIDS diagnosis in December 1984. The boy also exhibited no 'abnormal emotional behavior' and 'appeared to socialize with his peers in a normal fashion for a 7th grader new to the school system.'
Though Ryan had severe hemophilia, Jeanne White had advised Colby and school nurse Bev Ashcraft on her son's condition. Despite the potential dangers that a child with hemophilia might face in a middle school setting—namely horseplay and other activities that could cause internal bleeding—Colby, Ashcraft, and other WMS officials seemed confident in their ability to care for Ryan. According to Colby, there had been some 'concern when school first started in '84,' but Ryan's severe hemophilia ultimately presented 'no major problem[s] until Nov[ember]—when we could not stop [a] nosebleed.' Ryan ultimately survived that incident, just as he survived so many other health scares.
In early 1985, teachers, administrators, and others in the Kokomo area learned that Ryan had acquired HIV through contaminated blood products and that he was now living with AIDS.
By that point, the medical community had more or less confirmed that HIV spread mainly through particular sexual activities, needle-sharing, blood products, and blood transfusions—and not through casual contact. Nevertheless, many area parents and school administrators sought clarity on the specific issue of students with AIDS in schools. In the run-up to the 1985–86 academic year, local teachers and administrators awaited guidance from local, state, or federal health officials on the matter. The Indiana State Board of Health (ISBH) supplied such guidance only in late July 1985, less than a month before the new school year was to begin and just days before students were to formally enroll at WMS.
Released on July 30, 1985, the ISBH report—spurred by Ryan's case and based on similar guidelines developed in Connecticut and Florida—strongly affirmed the right of children with AIDS to attend school. 'No evidence exists to support transmission of the disease by casual contact or by the airborne route,' the ISBH guidelines read. 'All evidence regarding the transmission of AIDS indicates that the type of contact between persons which normally occurs in a school setting should not result in the transmission of the AIDS virus.' That same day, possibly before he had the state guidelines in hand, Western School Corporation superintendent J. O. Smith announced that Ryan would be barred from attending WMS in person.
Smith and his supporters justified the decision in several interlocking ways. First and foremost, they pointed to lingering questions about HIV's potential modes of transmission. Next, they argued that Ryan's physical attendance could threaten the health and well-being of everyone in the school (including Ryan himself) and in the surrounding community. Finally, they contended that the onerous safeguards recommended by the ISBH would be difficult to implement and also spoke to the potential communicability of HIV.
Smith cited 'unknowns and uncertainties [about AIDS]' as a reason to keep Ryan out of school, and he insisted that the ISBH guidelines raised more questions than they answered. 'There's the misconception that there's only one way to catch AIDS[:] through sexual intercourse,' Smith told the Kokomo Tribune shortly after the ISBH released its recommendations. 'But the guidelines we've received indicate that the exchange of certain other body fluids could present a danger to other students.' As Smith put it on the CBS Evening News on July 31, 'What we know about it, combined with what we don't know, just makes it too big a problem and too many question marks.' Western School Board president Dan Carter sounded similar notes in an interview with the Tribune. 'As long as we have any question that might affect the health of any student, we have to take a safe route' by keeping Ryan out of school.
WSC officials certainly had plenty of questions. A week after the release of the state guidelines, WSC representatives submitted an extensive list of queries to the ISBH. Their exacting questions sowed confusion about the communicability of HIV/AIDS and thus cast doubt on the validity of the ISBH's claims. 'Is AIDS a communicable disease?' the authors of the WSC memo asked. 'Is AIDS transmittable by saliva? coughing? sneezing? perspiration?' While the ISBH guidelines had specified that HIV could not be transmitted through 'casual contact,' WSC officials wondered, 'What constitutes 'casual contact'?' and 'Is there a difference between 'casual contact' at home and at school?' That the ISBH identified certain precautions to be taken in the event of a 'spill' involving the bodily fluids of a child with AIDS raised red flags. Some observers interpreted this as proof of HIV's extreme transmissibility. Smith also suggested that these recommended safeguards—namely the use of 'gloves, bleach, and leakproof bags'—were burdensome, presumably because the school corporation was rural, fairly small, and in financial straits. In Smith's words, Ryan's physical presence at WMS would be 'a situation we are not prepared to cope with.'
The decision to deny entry to Ryan might have remained a relatively minor local controversy had it not come down just as the world learned of actor Rock Hudson's bout with AIDS. Though Hudson had been diagnosed in 1984, news of his illness broke only in late July 1985. Hudson thus became, as the Indianapolis Star put it, 'the first person with international recognition to announce he has the disease.' Hudson's fame made his illness noteworthy and shocking, but so too did his status as a heterosexual icon. Hudson had long personified normative masculinity and heterosexuality on the big screen, especially during Hollywood's 'golden age'—starring alongside Elizabeth Taylor in the epic Giant (1956) and Doris Day in several popular romantic comedies, including Pillow Talk (1959). Accordingly, news of Hudson's diagnosis heightened public interest in the AIDS epidemic and stoked fears about the disease's movement beyond the established 'risk groups' (the so-called four Hs: homosexuals, hemophiliacs, heroin users, and Haitians). Just days after J. O. Smith's decision, the Indianapolis Star ran a front-page article (next to a story about Ryan White) spotlighting the public's growing concerns about AIDS. 'Now a Household Word,' the headline read, 'It's Invading 'Straight' World.'
Smith's decision brought national and international attention to Kokomo, Russiaville, and the small communities surrounding them. And because AIDS was 'now a household word,' Ryan White soon became a household name, a widely celebrated figure with a small army backing his bid to return to school. 'It all broke loose,' Dan Carter explained in a 2011 oral history interview. 'Then the whole country starts swooping down on us [saying], 'How dare you?'' Given how quiet this part of north-central Indiana was (and remains), it is easy to understand why locals might have been overwhelmed by the national and international news media coverage. Just two days after Smith's decision, the front page of the Kokomo Tribune included a short article called 'Case in the Spotlight,' which began, 'The case of Ryan White has gained attention nationwide through the news media.' The story—surrounded by three others related to the Ryan White saga—revealed just how unprecedented these developments were for people in the Kokomo area.
With this publicity came scrutiny and criticism, as Carter suggested, and also tremendous sympathy for Ryan. At a moment in which AIDS seemed to be on everyone's mind, Ryan emerged as a nearly unassailable figure without the presumed baggage of other people with AIDS. In the wake of Smith's decision, Ryan received encouraging letters and other forms of support from people around the world. By contrast, many of the letters sent to Smith and WMS principal Ron Colby in 1985 and beyond expressed admiration for White and disdain for school administrators and the residents of the Kokomo area, more generally. Ryan White's supporters often emphasized 'innocence' and the concept of 'normality' in their appeals, with some clearly motivated by pity for the young person with hemophilia—and now AIDS.
By September 1985, the inclusion of HIV-positive students and students with AIDS in the classroom had become a contentious national issue. Ryan White's youth, innocence, and compelling pursuit of normality indirectly forced President Ronald Reagan to address the AIDS crisis for the first time. Shortly after White and his family began waging their battle against the Western School Corporation, reporters at a September 17 press conference urged Reagan to discuss the controversy over students with AIDS. He did, although he refused to affirm the right of children with HIV/AIDS to attend school. When asked to imagine that he had younger children and to indicate whether he would 'send them to a school with a child who had AIDS,' Reagan equivocated. 'I can well understand the plight of the parents,' the president asserted. 'I also have compassion,' he continued, 'for the child that has this [AIDS] and doesn't know . . . why somehow he is now an outcast and can no longer associate with his playmates and schoolmates.' Reagan's comments disappointed health officials like Paul Volberding, an oncologist and the director of the AIDS clinic at San Francisco General Hospital. 'I don't think the President's remarks reflect what most experts in the field feel about that issue,' Volberding observed. 'Most of us feel that kids with AIDS should be allowed to participate in normal activities.' With little federal leadership on AIDS, debates about children with HIV/AIDS in schools would continue to rage in the courtroom, the press, and the interpersonal sphere, from Connecticut to the Bronx to Florida, where locals tormented and eventually banished the Ray brothers, who also had hemophilia. But the Ryan White case would loom the largest.
From The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America by Paul M. Renfro. Copyright © 2024 by Paul M. Renfro. Published by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. The audiobook version is now available for preorder.
Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
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