April 8th, 1990: While Michael Jackson was occupied at the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, he received news that his friend Ryan White had passed away. In a surreal scene, cameras captured Michael Jackson, with Trump in town, arriving at the Ryan White family home to pay condolences, with Michael Jackson even climbing inside Ryan’s Ford Mustang — which had been a gift from M.J. — as a copy of Bad played on the stereo. When asked by a reporter why the two men had appeared together, a Trump spokesperson answered, “Mr. Jackson spent the weekend at the Taj Mahal as Mr. Trump’s guest, and Michael Jackson asked him to come along.”
Ryan Wayne White (December 6, 1971 – April 8, 1990) was an American teenager from Kokomo, Indiana who became a national poster child for HIV/AIDS in the United States after being expelled from school because of his infection. A hemophiliac, he became infected with HIV from a contaminated blood treatment. Healthy for most of his childhood, he became extremely ill with pneumonia in December 1984. On December 17, 1984, during a partial-lung removal procedure, Ryan White was diagnosed with AIDS.
After the diagnosis, Ryan White was too ill to return to school, but by spring had begun to feel better. His mother asked if he could return to school, but was told by school officials that he should not. On June 30 1985, a formal request to permit re-admittance to school was denied by Western School Corporation superintendent James O. Smith, sparking a legal battle that lasted for eight months.
Though doctors said he posed no risk to other students, AIDS was poorly understood at the time, and when White tried to return to school, many parents and teachers in Kokomo rallied against his attendance. White’s school, Western Middle School in Russiaville, faced enormous pressure from many parents and faculty to bar him from the campus after his diagnosis became widely known. 117 parents (from a school of 360 total students) and 50 teachers signed a petition encouraging school leaders to ban White from school. Due to the widespread fear and ignorance about AIDS, the principal and later the school board assented.
The ways in which HIV spread were not fully understood in the 1980s. Scientists knew it spread via blood and was not transmittable by any sort of casual contact, but as recently as 1983, the American Medical Association had thought that “Evidence Suggests Household Contact May Transmit AIDS”, and the belief that the disease could spread easily persisted.
Many families in Kokomo believed Ryan’s presence posed an unacceptable risk. When he was permitted to return to school for one day in February 1986, 151 of 360 students stayed home. He also worked as a paperboy, and many of the people on his route canceled their subscriptions, believing that HIV could be transmitted through newsprint.
When White was finally readmitted in April, a group of families withdrew their children and started an alternative school. Threats of violence and lawsuits persisted. According to White’s mother, people on the street would often yell, “we know you’re queer” at Ryan.
Ryan White attended Western Middle School for eighth grade for the entire 1986-87 school year, but was deeply unhappy and had few friends. The school required him to eat with disposable utensils and use separate bathrooms. Threats continued. When a bullet was fired through the Whites’ living room window, the family decided to leave Kokomo. After finishing the school year, his family moved to Cicero, Indiana, where White enrolled at Hamilton Heights High School. On August 31, 1987, a “very nervous” White was greeted by school principal Tony Cook, school system superintendent Bob G. Carnal, and a handful of students who had been educated about AIDS and were unafraid to shake White’s hand.
Many celebrities appeared with White, starting during his trial and continuing for the rest of his life, to help publicly destigmatize socializing with people with AIDS – among them Elton John and Michael Jackson.
Doctors said White had only six months to live. Surprising his doctors, Ryan White lived five years longer than predicted and died in April 1990, shortly before he would have completed high school.
Imagine the 1980s. It was the time when everybody was panicky about AIDS as a new fatal and contagious disease and was highly on their guard with those who contracted it. People were afraid to sit next to AIDS victims and breathe the same air with them. And it was exactly at that time that Michael Jackson fearlessly invited the boy ill with AIDS to his home, dined with him and publicly embraced him inviting others not to be fearful of these people.
Is it possible for an ordinary person to understand why a mega-star like Michael would prefer the company of a gravely ill boy to numerous valuable things which make up a person’s life? An incredibly famous and busy young man would spend his precious spare time with ill children like Ryan White instead of going to parties or living a carefree life full of joy and self-indulgence? And would take the trouble of calling his small friend, arranging his trips, buying him presents and lavishing him with attention while all this time he could have taken care of himself or relaxed from his hard work?
Can any of us be really capable of anything like that? Not just once but on a regular basis and for a long time too? Can you? Seriously? And Michael Jackson could…Ryan´s mother speaks of their friendship..”Michael was amazed that Ryan never talked about his illness. And he said he never wanted anybody to feel sorry for him. So I think they really had this good communication of respect for each other”.
Q. You never had any hesitation about Ryan spending time with Michael Jackson? A. No!
… Michael was always interested in what Ryan was doing. He loved kids, and he didn’t care what race you were, what color you were, what was your handicap, what was your disease – Michael just loved all children.
Q. He did something incredibly special when he learned what Ryan’s favorite car was? A. We had a call from a car dealer who said they had a car for Ryan. [Michael did it] just to see the joy in the kid’s face.
[During the funeral] the car was sitting outside in the yard.. Michael started the car and “Man in the Mirror” was playing. The little things made Michael so happy. You could see in his eyes and he was smiling from ear to ear and said, “I was the last person that Ryan was listening to…?” and I said, “Yes”. Ryan just listened to it over and over again.
Three days after the funeral Michael called me and asked me how I was doing. I said, “What made you and Ryan so close?” Michael said, “…Nobody ever acts normal round me. Ryan knew how I wanted to be treated because that’s how he wanted to be treated. I can’t trust anyone because everyone wants something from me”. Then he said, “I promised Ryan he could be in my next video, but now that he is gone I can’t put him in my video. But could I do a video for him? I was like, “That’s unbelievable”. And he did a video called Gone too soon… that’s the memory that’ll stay forever”.
Michael Jackson statement about his friend Ryan White :
"I am not trying to be philosophical but I really think it’s my job to help them. I think it is my calling. I don’t care if people laugh or what they say.
[Children] don’t have a mouth to society and I think it is now their time. From here on out it is their time. They need the world’s awareness and they need issues to deal with, and this is for them. And if I can be that light, that pedestal just to shine some light on who they are, and the importance of who children are, that’s what I want to do. I don’t know how God chooses people, or plays chess with people, and he does put you in position and sets you up. Sometimes I feel like that, like this is my place.
Ryan White. The hardest for me is. . . I don’t understand when a child dies. I really don’t. I think there should be a window where there is a chance of dying but not in this window of time. When a child dies, or if the child is sick, I really don’t understand it.
But I listen to Ryan White, twelve years old at my dining room table at Neverland telling his mother how to bury him. He said, “Mom when I die, don’t put me in a suit and tie. I don’t want to be in a suit and tie. Put me in OshKosh jeans and a T-shirt.”
I said: ‘I have to use the bathroom,” and I ran to the bathroom and I cried my eyes out. Hearing this little boy telling his mother how to bury him. That hurt me. It was as if he was prepared for it and when he died he was in OshKosh jeans and a T-shirt and a watch that I gave him. How could your heart not go out to someone like that?
And I am sitting alone in this room with him and he is lying there and I felt so bad I just wanted to hold him and kiss him and say that I love him, which I did all those things when he was alive. I took care of him and he stayed at my house. But to see him just lying there … I spoke to him and I said, “Ryan, I promised you that I would do something in your honor on my next album. I will create a song for you. I will sing it. I want the world to know who you are.” I did Gone Too Soon . That was for him." #MichaelJackson
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