10A
Thursday, April 27, 1995
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
It Could Happen To Anyone
Continued from Page 1A.
Claire didn't have the flu, the doctors said. They began to run a litany of tests. Finally, Claire went to see a doctor of internal medicine who was a family friend. It was he who thought the unthinkable.
HIV-positive.
He ran some more tests and made his diag nosis:
It didn't happen because she shared needles.
It didn't happen because she slept around.
It happened when she was a student at KU and had sex with one man, the man she thought she would marry. That man was HIV-positive.
Claire could have blamed her exboyfriend for giving her AIDS, but she didn't, said her best friend, Wendy Palmer.
"She blamed herself as much as she blamed anyone else," Palmer said.
Claire told Palmer, "Wendy, I was smart enough to practice safe sex, and I didn't."
"It was the first man she was ever with in her life." Palmer said.
Now, her friends and family flatly refuse to talk about the ex-boyfriend. He wasn't a KU student, they say, and they don't know what happened to him. They assume he's dead. They're holding to Claire's dying wishes, they say.
For Mark Henderson, her brother, how and why she got AIDS is beside the point. It wouldn't do any good to wonder, he said.
Claire is dead.
Claire is not alone.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, AIDS has become the leading cause of death for adults 25-44. The number of women contracting AIDS is on the rise, the centers reported.
Sexually transmitted AIDS is happening to people who seem to innocent to get it, too.
Everything her family and friends remember about Claire is positive. They describe her with phrases like "magnetic," "loving," "well-rounded," "bubbly," "energetic" and "full of life."
"She radiated a lot of energy and a lot of joy." her mother remembers.
But perhaps no one remembers Claire as well as Palmer, who was best friends with Claire from junior high until her death.
Palmer said that Claire's personality was truly amazing.
"What couldn't she do?" Palmer wonders. "She could sing, she could dance, she could talk to a brick wall. We would walk into a restaurant or a bar, and people would just come right up to Claire."
It just wasn't fair that someone like Claire was dying when she was only 23 years old.
Not that anyone deserves AIDS. They don't, Palmer said, but somehow, Claire just seemed too perfect to get the disease.
"No. I want it to be different. I want this to go away," she thought.
Rosemary Henderson said that when she found out Claire was HIV-positive, her first reaction was absolute horror and great sadness.
But Claire tried not to deal with the question of why she got it, Palmer said.
"I don't think she ever questioned why she got it. She just accepted it and dealt with it," she said.
But it didn't go away.
Living with AIDS
Claire continued her life as normally as she could. She kept her job, continued to go out with friends and to have a good time.
Living normally was Claire's way of coping with her illness, her mother said. She could cope with it as long as life was normal. She didn't lose hope, even when she had "wretched" days because her medication was hard on her body.
But even though Claire was hopeful, she
was also realistic. She realized she did not want to form a long-term relationship with a man, and she realized that she could never have the career she wanted.
Even though Claire was hopeful, she felt frustration and anger, her mother said. She never wanted to speak at area high schools because she said if she started talking, the anger would come out. Claire wanted a group of people like her where she could vent some of her frustration and anger, her mother said.
But Palmer said that part of the reason Claire chose not to be involved in AIDS activism was because she didn't want to be reminded that she had AIDS.
"She didn't want to get close to a lot of people who were going to die," Palmer said.
Claire really didn't need an AIDS support group. She had her family, Palmer said.
"It was a totally unconditional place she could go and be herself. Her family's great," she said.
Chaire was afraid to tell people she was HIV-positive.
Claire's family has been open about her illness. Claire was not.
She wasn't ashamed. She was afraid of being discriminated against, her mother said:
"I don't know what I'd do the first time someone wouldn't touch me because they knew that I had AIDS," Claire told her mother.
She would have been treated differently, Palmer said, which was the last thing Claire wanted.
Only family and a few close friends knew that Claire was sick. Her father told the staff at his church so that they would know what he was facing. Other than that, Claire just
"I wanted them to gripe at me, nag at me, ask me to do things, not to treat me differently." Rosemary Henderson said. "It was hard enough for me to deal with it and the people who knew when they look at you with tears in their eyes. That's hard, and you don't want everyone you're dealing with to be that way."
But not telling people was difficult, Rosemary Henderson said.
When you've lived a life like Claire's, one so storybook, one so charmed, maybe it is just too hard to face the ugly death that will come with AIDS.
Dealing with AIDS wasn't new to Butch Henderson. He had been working with AIDS patients since he moved from Lawrence to California in August 1986.
Henderson is a pastor in the open and affirming United Church of Christ.
"That means that all persons are equally welcomed, joyfully received and affirmed here regardless of their sexual orientation," Henderson said. "Gay, straight or bisexual. This is a completely open church."
The church helped found a regional AIDS support network, and Henderson trained "buddies" people who help AIDS patients.
Henderson knew that AIDS could strike anywhere, but for some reason he still didn't think it would strike close to him.
On a sunny California day in early 1990, Butch was standing out on the back patio at home near the swimming pool, when his wife got the call on the cordless phone.
"I can still see the look of just utter anguish and pain on my wife's face. And I knew exactly what it was." Henderson said.
Henderson said that the experience made him realize that AIDS could hit anyone.
didn't want the pity, Palmer said.
"She just wanted to live her life, and she didn't want any sympathy, and she didn't want anyone to feel sorry for her," she said.
Claire told Palmer, "I've never sat down and said, 'Poor me I have AIDS, poor me.' I've sat down and said, 'Poor me, I can't go to aerobics. Poor me, I can't go out on a date and have a drink and have a normal time with someone.'"
Claire told Palmer, a friend of 13 years, that her hospital visits were because of a recurring staph infection. She finally told Palmer the truth in early 1993, a year and a half before she died.
There is an echo of Claire's isolation in her mother's voice. Her mother chose not to share her own plight with any of her friends because she didn't want to be treated any differently, either.
When you've lived a life like Claire's, one so storybook, one so charmed maybe it is just too hard to face the ugly death that will come with AIDS.
"I never expected it to come into my own home, I can tell you that for sure." Henderson said. "That's a part of the awareness. I think, 'Well, it's something I'm doing for somebody else, and this will not come near me.' And I now know that's wishful thinking."
"It made us much closer," her father said. "Claire was sort of the glue in our family. She was the one who wanted to be sure every one was getting along with everybody else."
One of the hardest things Butch Henderson ever has had to do was to tell his daughter that she was going to die
As Claire's illness progressed, her bond with her family, especially her father, grew stronger.
Dying with AIDS
On one hand, growing closer to Claire made her death easier to bear, but on the other, it made it that much harder.
Claire and her father made a promise to be completely honest with each other.
"She and I developed the kind of friendship I think that most parents yearn for with their adult children and sometimes don't really achieve," her father said. "We shared everything."
Her father kept his end of the promise, even when it meant he had to tell his daughter she was dying.
"When the doctor said her lungs were white, which meant she was not going to recover, I had to go in and say, 'Honey, this is it,' he said. "And her response to me was, 'Daddy, you're kidding.'"
Palmer flew to California to see Claire as soon as she was hospitalized, going to the hospital when visiting hours started at 7 a.m. and staying until Claire fell asleep. She spent the nights at a friend's apartment.
On Monday, Claire was sick but coherent, by Wednesday her condition was deteriorating. On Saturday, November 5, 1994, five days after she was hospitalized, Claire died. It wasn't a painful death, her father said. She just slipped into sleep and never woke up.
Her death was not totally unexpected, her brother said. She weighed about 100 pounds when she died.
"I never thought I would have to give the service at one of my children's funerals," her father said.
The service closed with KU's alma mater, "The Crimson and the Blue," and the guests released balloons outside to symbolize Claire's spirit "flying free."
Claire saved a lot of lives, Palmer says.
Knizht-Ridder Tribune
"I told Claire in the hospital, 'You don't realize how many lives you've saved,'" Palmer said.
"I hope so," Claire responded. "I hope that's true."
Life after Claire
ADNS affected more people than Claire's immediate friends and family. Her friends and family shared Claire's story with their friends and families.
"I have friends who never would have worn condoms that now do because of her," she said.
Many people who knew Claire have written to the Hendersons to say Claire's death made them take another look at their lives, her mother said.
After Claire died, Elaine Brady, coordinator of the spirit squad, dedicated an issue of the Megaphone, the newsletter for cheering alumni, to Claire. In it, girls who had cheered with Claire shared their memories
of her.
She was a squad leader, they said.
She always added energy to practices and was a friend to everyone, they said.
She made a difference wherever she was, they said.
In an effort to keep the memory of Claire alive, Brady is helping to establish a memorial for Claire. Along with members of her sorority, Gamma Phi Beta, Brady is trying to raise $3,000 to dedicate a bench to Claire. The bench will overlook Potter's Lake, the football stadium and the Gamma Phi Beta house.
Brady also hopes to raise $10,000 to establish an endowment for a Claire Henderson award. The award would go to a Crimson Girl each year who contributed, like Claire, to the squad.
Coping with Claire's death has not been easy for her friends and family.
"I'm not one to brush things under the rug, but I guess sometimes I just pretend it's not real," Palmer said. "You think you can pick up the phone and call her, and you can't."
Not a day goes by, Palmer says, when she does not think about Claire. There is something in everything she does that reminds her of her best friend.
Palmer said that she spent a lot of time being angry that Claire was dying. She wanted to know why her best friend had AIDS. But there was a point when she had to stop questioning in order to cope.
There is no reason why it happened to Claire, she now believes.
But she also believes that the purpose of everyone's life is to give something to someone and to love as much as a person can. Claire did that for as long as she could, Palmer said.
"I'm envious," she said, "because I don't know that in my lifetime I'm ever going to be able to give as much to people as she did or make an impact like she did."
But Claire left nothing concrete behind. She left no letters. She left no videotapes. It was as if she ignored her death, not wanting to accept that she would die young. Now all that remains is a plain plastic box about the size of a shoe box with her ashes inside.
Friends and family will gather to remember Claire again at 3 p.m. May 10. Her parents are bringing Claire's ashes home, back to Lawrence, for a memorial service at the Plymouth Congregational Church.
She will be buried here, in Lawrence, the town where everyone loved her, the town where she was a shining success story. Not the town where she died with AIDS.
Applications are now available for the Fall 1995 news staff.
Editorial Board Members
Positions available are:
Columnists
Cartoonists
Photographers
Graphic Artists
Applications are available in 111 Stauffer-Flint, and due May 2. Anyone may apply.
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