What Terry Taught Us<META NAME="description" CONTENT="column on AIDS-related death of teaching colleague"><META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="column, death of teacher, AIDS">

"THE HARD LESSON TERRY HAD TO TEACH US"

Published in the Johnson County (Ind.) Daily Journal, Aug. 26, 1992 ©

Terry was a teacher and our friend.

And it was his misfortune to teach us the hardest lessons of all during this past year.

We came to know Terry two years ago and, while we probably never saw him at his best, he showed us he was a bright, capable teacher that first year. It was only in the past year that he became noticeably ill.

Until then, we enjoyed his company, this thin, smiling man with short dark hair and a thin mustache that ran along his upper lip like a well-trimmed hedgerow. He was a very private man who usually ate lunch in his office rather than with the boisterous crowd of colleagues in the lunchroom. But he was by nature congenial, pleasant to chat with and one who truly seemed to enjoy the personal kidding and practical jokes that made his work environment more pleasant and invigorating than most.

Unfortunately, for his last few months, there was much less occasion for chats and jokes, and we had no choice but to watch our friend Terry die.

He was by then becoming increasingly emaciated. Probably never a enormously robust young man, he progressively grew thinner and weaker. His clothes began to hang loosely on him, like rented theatrical costumes. He was in and out of the hospital, and he often used a cane when he made his slow, agonized walks into work.

That he came to work at all astonished most of us. He obviously didn't feel well enough to do that, but he came anyway, partly because he was a consummate professional and perhaps partly because he never wanted to let go of the feeling of belonging he sensed when he came into our building.

Terry felt, we have to believe, that he was part of this family away from home. We felt it, too.

It was not easy, though, for him or for us. Sometimes, he was so weak that he had to lie on the floor in the middle of a meeting because he was too weak to sit up in a chair. When we showed our obvious concern, he simply admonished us gently by saying, "I'm okay...really."

He wasn't okay; we all knew it. But that was the first part of the lesson he taught us all, that courage is not the private reserve of the Audie Murphy- and Bo Gritz-types who fling themselves against a perceived enemy in the name of flag and national policy. There is also as much courage in actively defending one's character and dignity against unseen armies of pain.

The pain ended last week when our dear friend Terry died. The official cause of death was cancer, but only because, technically, no one dies of AIDS.

That's the ironic cruelty of this modern-day plague. It doesn't do the killing itself; it simply stands by, like a guard at some ancient arena, and opens the gate and lets out the predators to devour the defenseless victims.

And its accomplice is silence. Its name seldom appears on the death certificates, in the published reports. So AIDS becomes little more than a spectator sport, one we follow through the TV and newspaper stories on the better-known victims, the celebrities of AIDS like Rock Hudson and Tim Richmond and Liberace and Peter Allen and Robert Reed and Ryan White and Kim Bergalis and, eventually, Magic Johnson and Arthur Ashe and so many more.

But this planetary crisis isn't about celebrity. Or sexual politics. Or quotes from the Bible. Or bureacratic roadblocks. And it definitely isn't about keeping it quiet until it goes away.

It won't go away. Only its victims do that. Like our brave friend Terry, who, like so many, was a man who drew very little attention to himself. That was part of his personal integrity, but it can't really be a part of ours, those of us who can only stand by and watch.

This isn't something that ends when we turn off the TV or put down our newspaper. The plague is among us now and, as it was with the "good Germans" of the Nazi era, there may be no one left to speak out when it reaches our own doorstep.

This is the ultimate lesson of Terry's passing. He didn't exactly prepare the lesson plan for it, and we didn't formally enroll in the class. But we learned it anyhow, the hard way.

The AIDS issue isn't political; it is personal. And it thrives on our ignorance, our indifference and our silence. If we have learned that finally, we have a teacher like our friend Terry to thank for it.

Tragically, his is the hardest lesson we will ever have.

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