What Ryan White Taught Me about a COVID-19 Reopening

My View

This year marks the 31st anniversary of the passing of Ryan White. For those old enough to remember the grim and scary days of news reports about AIDS, the silence of the Reagan White House and the lack of clear information surrounding HIV/AIDS transmission, teenager Ryan and his fight to stay enrolled in school feels like an unearthed time capsule in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

After he died from AIDS at 18 in 1990, Jeanne White-Ginder donated all the contents of her young son’s bedroom and notably the fan letters he received to the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. The donation was in preparation for an exhibit titled “The Power of Children” highlighting Ryan’s life and struggle to attend school.

I was a young doctoral student in education when I happened upon the treasure trove of Ryan White’s fan mail and the sympathy notes to his mother. What I learned all those years ago, reading, rereading, categorizing and analyzing nearly 4,500 pieces of hand-written correspondence would guide my thinking as a superintendent reopening our school district during COVID-19.

The letters, composed following Ryan’s frequent television appearances, interviews in popular magazines and the film “The Ryan White Story,” highlighted thousands of men and women on the front lines of an epidemic as well as those struggling to overcome stigma and prejudice. Politically, schools in the United States faced tough decisions on how to enroll students with HIV/AIDS and were left to flail alone and dictate their own policy.