[Editor's note: This is mostly a rebroadcast of an April program with an update.] Social worker Caitlin Ryan, Ph.D., was caring for AIDS patients in Atlanta early in the epidemic when she found her calling.
Her work included meeting the Southern, often conservative families of young men dying from the disease. "They would come to the bedsides of their dying children and many of them had no idea that this young gay or bisexual man was gay or bisexual or had AIDS," Ryan tells listeners on this week's Out in the Bay radio show and podcast. "They would learn those two things at the same time.
And they were devastated." While some of those families rejected their children, others would have done anything to help their dying loved ones.