Meet the Woman Who Cared for Hundreds of Abandoned Gay Men Dying of AIDS
Between 1984 and the mid-1990s, before better HIV drugs effectively rendered her obsolete, Ruth Coker Burks cared for hundreds of dying people, many of them gay men who had been abandoned by their families. She buried more than three dozen of them herself, after their families refused to claim their bodies. For many of those people, she is now the only person who knows the location of their graves.
It started in 1984, in a hospital hallway. Ruth Coker Burks was 25 and a young mother when she went to University Hospital in Little Rock, Ark., to help care for a friend who had cancer. Her friend eventually went through five surgeries, Burks said, so she spent a lot of time that year parked in hospitals. That’s where she was the day she noticed the door, one with “a big, red bag” over it. It was a patient’s room. “I would watch the nurses draw straws to see who would go in and check on him. It’d be: ‘Best two out of three,’ and then they’d say, ‘Can we draw again?’ ”
She knew what it probably was, even though it was early enough in the epidemic for the disease to be called GRID — gay-related immune deficiency — instead of AIDS. She had a gay cousin in Hawaii and had asked him about the stories of a gay plague after seeing a report on the news. He’d told her, “That’s just the leather guys in San Francisco. It’s not us. Don’t worry.” Still, in her concern for him, she’d read everything she could find about the disease over the previous months, hoping he was right.
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Much more:http://www.out.com/positive-voices/2016/5/19/meet-woman-who-cared-hundreds-abandoned-gay-men-dying-aids
A true hero. We are not worthy.
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Made me cry - and I can't remember the last time. Thank you for posting, this is a story that needed to be told. 
What a remarkable lady, and an outstanding display of human decency and goodness. The very best of any religion is doing your best by anyone, or anything in need, when they're at their most vulnerable.
Just smoke in my eyes, nothing to see, move along.
Before the research had been completed about HIV and AIDS, little was understood about the disease. Infected people were treated like lepers or worse, and of course it was mostly gay men in the early days. Until it was understood that the disease was transmitted by blood/saliva transmission, people were afraid to touch or go near the HIV patients. So this woman actually was risking her own life to care for them, for all she knew.
Even many funeral homes would refuse to care for the victims or bury their bodies in the early 1980s. It was a horrible time then, but science eventually won this battle. When enough resources were applied to studying the disease it became possible to manage patient care and make our blood-supply safer. (Donated blood had caused several cases of HIV in people who had no contact with gay men.)
I'm glad the story of this woman has been told. It's a good lesson for all of us.
"you really had to be there" to know the enormity of what this truly heroic woman did.
"Oh momma, I knew you'd come." And She did, the Goddess came in the person of Ruth.
MARCH 16, 2017
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But one woman, Ruth Coker Burks, cared for them, stood beside them on their deathbed and made sure they were buried with basic human dignity. Decades later, a GoFundMe campaign is close to its $75,000 goal to build an AIDS memorial in Arkansas to the 43 men Burks buried by herself in her family cemetery -- and to all those who died alone, unloved and unremembered.
"All I wanted was a memorial for them, a tombstone that said what happened back in 1984," Burks told EDGE from her home in Rogers, Arkansas. A grandmother now, she suffers from blood clots in both lungs and memory loss from a stroke five years ago.
Burks said that the AIDS memorial got its look from a meme featuring a "very touching image of an angel weeping." Now, she said, people come from Dallas and Tulsa looking for the cemetery.
"They'll drive up, and I'll get a text: 'Are we at the right cemetery; I don't see that angel?' That's why I decided that angel needs to be there, because that's what people are looking for. People are coming by from all over. It's a touchstone," she said.
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This month, Burks will speak at Washington State University -- something she said she is happy to do for any group that asks. She's also corresponding with a professor at the University of Arkansas, who she said is writing a book, and with a documentary filmmaker who wants to tell her story. She is heartened by the growing awareness.
"You have got to remember your past or you are doomed to repeat it," said Burks. "Especially in this political climate, you can be an activist by just doing one thing. You can change the world, even if you change just one person's life."
As of this writing, the Ruth Corker Burks AIDS Memorial is $6,000 away from reaching its goal. If you'd like to see this become a reality, consider donating to the GoFundMe campaign.
***,Kick n Rec & thank you Grits for this post. Maybe we can help get the $$ to $75,000
https://www.gofundme.com/RuthCokerBurks
