Letters to Ryan White

Have you ever posted words of encouragement on a friend’s social media page when they were going through tough times?

 

Indiana resident Ryan White was first diagnosed with AIDS in 1984 when he was 13, before the Internet was available to the general public. When his school banned him from in-person classes due to his disease, many TV and print news organizations shared Ryan’s story nationally and internationally. Ryan became well known in the media, and he received thousands of letters and cards in the mail from strangers around the world.

 

Ryan’s mother, Jeanne White Ginder, remembers, “It was the highlight of Ryan’s day, going out to the mailbox, bringing all the mail in. He would say, ‘Mom, I’m not fighting this alone. All these people are fighting with me.”

 

Sometime after this collection of more than 6,000 letters was donated to The Children’s Museum, a collaboration was formed with IUPUI to make the letters available to researchers online and to crowdsource their transcription into a searchable database. Today, the Ryan White Letters Project serves as an important resource for studying the history of pediatric AIDS and HIV.