Boy With AIDS Welcomed to Different High School

ARCADIA, Ind. —  AIDS victim Ryan White was all smiles when he walked into Hamilton Heights High School on the first day of school today and found a welcome instead of the obstacles he faced at his old school.

Ryan, 15, was greeted by Principal Tony Cook and Hamilton Heights School Supt. Bob Carnal, along with several youngsters who showed him around.

As Ryan left home this morning he said he was “a little nervous.”

Jeanne White, Ryan’s mother, said he had an upset stomach this morning and hadn’t slept well. But when he walked to the family van to ride to school, he was smiling and said he was excited.

Carnal said he has had no complaints from parents, although he said the reactions among children, parents and teachers have varied.

“Frankly, what I’ve sensed is people saying, ‘I’d rather it not happen at our school . . . but we’re going to make the best of it,’ ” Carnal said.

Ryan, who enrolled as a freshman, and his family moved here from Kokomo during the summer to escape the lawsuits and protests of his former school district.

When he lived in Kokomo, Ryan fought a yearlong legal battle for the right to attend classes there. After being diagnosed as having acquired immune deficiency syndrome in December, 1984, he finally was allowed to start a normal school term with his classmates a year ago. Ryan, a hemophiliac, contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion.

The Whites now live 20 miles away in Cicero, a town of about 3,200 people.

Jeanne White said her son is healthier than he has been in some time. “His immune system is up,” she said.

For about two weeks, Ryan has been taking the experimental drug AZT, which does not cure AIDS but which reduces the frequency and severity of the infections that often kill people with the disease.

“His alertness seems to be a little better with the AZT,” Ryan’s mother said. “He just seems to be brighter. He’s not cold so much and he hasn’t run any fever at all.”