To the Editor:

I would like to let ISU students know how AIDS has affected my life. Currently my uncle is infected and has been for four years now.

My family has lost two friends to the disease, and I have lost two friends myself, one back home in Illinois and one here in Ames. Also, my best friend from high school is infected with HIV.

Since 1988 I have tried to speak with others about AIDS and its effect on not only the person infected but also those people close to that person. It is hard and stressful but continually educational.

In order to speak with others, people have to want to know more about it. For those readers that know people with AIDS or HIV, I would like to offer a focus group where we can get together and discuss the current issues surrounding this deadly disease.

The AIDS Coalition of Story County is willing to help support such an effort as well as help with updated statistics and education courses.

There is no cure, but there can be education on how to avoid AIDS and help those who have it. Those people interested in starting such a group, whether you know someone with AIDS or not, please write to me personally.

The input I receive from this letter will help form a focus group for those people who truly want and need the education to better understand this disease that kills, and to help them through a time where you never know when the person you love, such as my uncle, is going to die.

When I found out about him, the AIDS quilt happened to be here at ISU in 1991.

Thanks to the courage of T.R. Hotchkiss, I was better able to talk to my uncle about the disease and know his feelings of being infected. Not everyone has that opportunity to hear the words, “Be his friend.”

If interested please write to:

Tracey Eccles

Friley 5660 Lorch-Russell

Ames, IA 50012