Wilma Petersen chaired the social concerns committee in her church. She also headed an action group that lobbied the state legislature on senior citizen issues; she served on the regional Commission on Aging and was secretary of a city task force that was seeking a government grant to build low income housing. When the doctor told her she needed gallbladder surgery, the first thing she said was, "How long will I be laid up?" When she was assured it would only be four to six weeks, she said, "Oh, that won't be so bad, I can write letters and make phone calls while I'm recovering." The doctor frowned, but he didn't say anything; he didn't think it would do any good. Wilma was a determined woman. It would take a lot more than a doctor's warning and a little thing like gallbladder surgery to slow her down.
Ten weeks later, Wilma was feeling worse than she had before the operation. She couldn't understand why she wasn't getting better. The doctor suggested that she come in for tests. When the results came back, he came immediately into her room and broke the news to her as gently as he could.
"Wilma, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but the blood tests show that you have AIDS."
Wilma couldn't believe her ears. How could a 70-year-old woman get AIDS? "It was in the blood transfusion you received during your surgery," he said. Wilma just couldn't believe it. What was she going to do?
It wasn't that she was afraid of dying. Wilma was prepared for death, even a slow, painful death, if that's the way it came. That was the way of the world. She had seen enough of death to know that no one was spared. Her husband had died of lung cancer and she had lost a son to polio. It was the thought of telling her family and friends. What would they think . . . that she had been indiscreet?
She didn't tell anyone at first, but as the disease progressed she decided that people had a right to know. It was an incident with a needle that convinced her to tell. A nurse in the doctor's office had been about to give her an injection one day when the needle slipped and she pricked her own finger. The fact that it occurred before the injection spared the nurse any danger of infection, but Wilma could see that it had been very upsetting to her. The nurse knew she had AIDS. Wilma decided that everyone else who came into contact with her had a right to know, too.
The word spread fast. There were many expressions of caring; phone calls, cards, letters and quiet conversations with neighbors and friends. People were horrified for her and sympathetic at the same time -- or so it seemed. She felt no sense of rejection until the following Sunday morning when she went to church. She sat in her usual pew but the people who always sat beside her, or in the pews around her, sat elsewhere. She was beginning to think no one was going to sit near her at all, when Kevin Holmstead, that nice young man from the bank who usually sat near the back, came in and sat beside her on the end of the pew next to the aisle in the same spot her husband Frank had always sat when he was alive. Kevin greeted her pleasantly as if nothing had changed. "Maybe he hasn't heard yet," she thought to herself, but something about his manner told her that he sat beside her because he had heard. That was the beginning of their special friendship. From then on Kevin sat beside her every Sunday that she was able to go to church.
Wilma lived just three years from the time her AIDS was diagnosed -- and much of the last few months of her life she was in bed at home or in the hospital, too weak to move around on her own. During that time her family members and several volunteers, organized by Kevin, took care of all of her bodily needs. They bathed and fed her and helped her with her toilet, changing her diapers when there was need. They took turns pushing her around in her wheelchair and carrying her from the bed to the couch and back again. But during the first two-and-a-half years of her illness, before she was bedridden, Wilma was very much the crusader that she had been all of her life. She organized a support group for persons like herself who were living with AIDS. She visited AIDS patients in their homes, in hospitals and hospices. Many of them told how they had been forsaken by family and friends, how they had lost their homes and their jobs, how difficult it was to get the medical treatment they needed, and how insurance companies and the government denied them financial assistance. She wrote to congresspersons and state legislators about the needs of persons with AIDS. She lobbied the city council to pass an ordinance which would prevent landlords and employers from discriminating against persons with AIDS. She spoke to church and civic groups, pleading with them to support the human rights of all persons.
On the day that she died, Wilma asked Kevin if he would help to carry on her work. He promised her that he would, and he thanked her for all that she had done. He said, "It will be easier for me because of you."
On the Sunday following Wilma's funeral, Kevin stood up in church during the time for expressing prayer concerns and said, "You all know how important Wilma's work has been in this community. Will you help me to continue what she has started? There are many persons with AIDS among us who need our love and support. A great many of them are members of the gay and lesbian community, as I am. Will you stand with us in our time of need?"