On October 2, 1985, Rock Hudson died at his Beverly Hills home at age 59, becoming the first major American celebrity to die of AIDS-related complications. His death came ten weeks after his publicist confirmed the diagnosis from a hospital in Paris, and it instantly turned a disease the country had been ignoring into front-page…
On August 26, 1985, thirteen-year-old Ryan White — a hemophiliac who had contracted HIV through contaminated blood products — began attending eighth-grade classes at Western Middle School in Indiana via a speakerphone at his home. School officials had banned him from attending in person, setting off a yearlong legal battle that made Ryan the most…
On April 7, 1990, while Ryan White lay dying in an Indianapolis hospital bed, his friend Elton John stepped onto the stage at the Hoosier Dome and did something nobody expected. He wasn’t on the bill. He wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near Farm Aid IV. But grief has a way of rewriting schedules, and…
