Grandma: Aids Activist



Grandma was the first AIDs activist I knew. As early as the mid-eighties, when announcers on tv were talking about the “new gay men’s disease,” Grandma was writing out checks for AIDs research.

We found out one day when Grandma was having trouble balancing her checking account and asked us to check her math. Phew…there was a check made out for $500 for AIDs research.

Hey Grandma, you gave $500 for AIDs research? Wow, that’s a lot of money.

“Yes, it is, but not nearly enough to fight that bastard virus. Wish I could give more. You should send some money too. Even five dollars helps. That virus is going to catch on like wildfire if we don’t find ways to stop it.”

But isn’t it just gay men that get AIDs?


“I’m surprised at you girls. I thought you used your brains better than that. Viruses don’t make moral judgments – they attack when and where they can and it’s ridiculous in this day and age for people to think that any virus is picking its victims because of their sexual orientation. There’s a scientific reason for why any virus attacks any human being and it isn’t whether they’re gay or not. Now that’s what they have to find out. That’s why I’m donating money because mark my words, you’re going to see women get it and regular married people get it and children get it who have never had sex. ”

Grandma was sensitive to the situation because she’d lived through something similar. Many people thought the polio virus was a dirty person’s disease; that it came from poor hygiene and if one bathed religiously, one wouldn’t get polio.

Unfortunately that wasn’t true. You could live in a bathtub and still get polio. Grandma’s first daughter Patty, came down with the disease when she was only four years old and Grandma remembered well how the church ladies and her once friendly neighbors wouldn’t go near her, her children or her house.

“Oh I understood in the very beginning, we were under a quarantine of sorts. Patty was in the hospital and all we could do is look at her through a window. We couldn’t go in her room and touch her or kiss her. But that was only a short time – maybe 6 weeks or so, though it seemed like years. After that, you usually are no longer contagious. They tested her to see if the virus was active in her system, but it had gone and what was left was her poor little leg, twisted and atrophied. She went for therapy for years to work those muscles and that’s why today you would never know she ever had polio.

The neighbors – they kept their kids away for months…all summer and all fall. By winter, most people believed that you couldn’t catch polio in the cold months – so a few children would wander in our yard, but weren’t allowed to come inside.

“Poor Patty, she missed her friends. She missed playing outside, but she was still weak and frail. Once, Mrs. Smith let her daughter Carol come over for a visit, but Carol carried her own cup with her because her mother told her if she needed a drink, not to use any of our cups or glasses. The poor kid was so scared and uncomfortable, I told her that Patty needed to rest so she could leave without feeling badly.”

That must have been rough on you Grandma. Must have been very hard to see your child suffer not only from a disease, but from the ignorance of other people.

“I thanked God every day that no one on our street ever contracted polio, for if they had, we would have been blamed. I thanked God every day that Patty never had to be in an iron lung. That was a terrible sight to see. I spent years volunteering at Englewood Crippled Children’s Hospital, and the little ones trapped in that iron lung…it made you so thankful your child wouldn’t have to live like that. I’d go and read them stories and pet their foreheads and sing them songs…I owed it to them.”

You’re a good woman Grandma. You were so kind to volunteer time to other kids when you had a sick one of your own.

“No,” Grandma said. “I wasn’t that good at all. I was just fulfilling a bargain I’d made with the angels, that if Patty could come out of this a normal child, I’d volunteer at the hospital and help others. Volunteers were hard to come by due to people thinking they were going to catch polio…so those little ones spent lots of time alone, without the comfort of a soothing voice or a gentle touch.”

Well it worked Grandma. Your bargain worked and Patty’s fine.

“Yes, she is. But if I was really good, like you think I am, I’d be volunteering to work with AIDs patients now…and I’m not. Too old I guess. Bones too sore and my feet ache when I’m on them for just a short time. Lately I’ve got this indigestion that wakes me up at night. No, not much is working right on my body now…

“Except, I can still write a check,” Grandma said. “That I can still do.”

And she did. She continued to donate to AIDs research until she moved to the nursing home and after she died, we found numerous thank you letters from people who had been helped by Grandma’s checks.

You might have thought of Grandma as an apple-pie maker, funny story teller and first class grandmother, but I’ll always remember her as an AIDs activist too.

Way to go, Grandma.