Answering AIDS in Orange County and at UNC, 1985–1994

By September 1985 state health educators had counted 29 AIDS cases in North Carolina that year, one of them in Orange County, while Student Health Service and the Carolina Gay and Lesbian Association said no case had been found at UNC. The Orange County Health Department was giving a blood test for exposure to the virus. In late February 1986 Chancellor Christopher C. Fordham III announced that under the UNC system's new AIDS policy no person with AIDS would be excluded from enrollment or employment, with any restriction made case by case on medical advice, and appointed an Advisory Committee on AIDS chaired by public health dean Michel A. Ibrahim to plan education programs; the Daily Tar Heel counted 101 cases in the state, four in Orange County and one on the campus. By September UNC's AIDS Task Force, one of those set up on all 16 UNC campuses after President William Friday created a system task force in 1985, had printed 5,000 brochures for students and employees and added an AIDS session to freshman orientation.

By March 17, 1987 the state had 197 reported cases, six of them in Orange County. County health director Jerry Robinson said the threat of jail, used with tuberculosis patients who refused medicine, might be useful for AIDS, as a House bill introduced April 6 proposed, though no such case had arisen in the county. On November 2 the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board voted unanimously that children who tested positive for AIDS should not be barred from school, leaving each case to a committee that included the child's physician, teacher and principal; officials knew of no infected child in the system. On November 16 the board adopted a health and safety policy that let the school system reassign an employee with a chronic communicable disease, such as hepatitis B or AIDS, to a position limiting contact with students and other employees. In January 1988 the School of Public Health opened what the Daily Tar Heel reported as its first course on the AIDS epidemic, a one-credit lecture course with about 100 students and 13 sessions, beginning with Dean Ibrahim on AIDS as a public health challenge.

By October 1988 Pepper's Pizza on Franklin Street had put condom vending machines in its restrooms, which Orange County Health Department director Daniel Reimer welcomed as help against AIDS. On April 24, 1989, after a December recommendation from UNC's AIDS Task Force and a Student Congress resolution passed April 19, University officials announced that condom machines would go into the public bathrooms of all residence halls and the Student Union by August 15; Dean of Students Frederic Schroeder said disease prevention depended on availability. Before the fall semester 44 machines selling condoms for 50 cents were installed in campus buildings.

By June 1989 ten volunteers led by health department educator Belinda Jones and Chapel Hill council member Joe Herzenberg had begun organizing a task force to coordinate what the county's health agencies offered AIDS patients, including help with money, housing and red tape. N.C. Memorial Hospital had treated 200 AIDS patients, many from elsewhere, while 26 county cases had been reported that year. At a meeting on September 5 called to hear neighbors of 110 Taylor Street, where an owner had offered to rent a house to up to four homeless AIDS patients who needed to be near the hospital, residents raised fears about their children, needles and an old septic tank and complained that no one could say who would run or supervise the house. By October 9 the Orange County AIDS Task Force had dropped the plan, saying it could not run a licensed family care home without first incorporating, which would take six months to a year; Reimer, its chairman, said the decision was independent of the neighbors' opposition.

In July 1990 the Orange County AIDS Task Force incorporated so that it could raise money, sign leases and keep up rent and utilities on a home for people with AIDS; it said it would not go back to the Taylor Street house. By November the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases had chosen the UNC School of Medicine to lead what the Daily Tar Heel called the first study of whether low doses of AZT and ddI together could keep the AIDS virus from becoming resistant, starting with a six-month pilot of about 100 patients. On December 1 the Carolina Union gallery and the Ackland Art Museum joined the second annual Day Without Art in tribute to artists lost to AIDS. By September 17, 1991 an $83,000 state grant under the federal Ryan White law had created the Piedmont HIV Health Care Consortium to pay for home, respite and dental care, support groups and transportation for people with HIV in Orange and six neighboring counties; the county then counted 43 recorded AIDS cases and about 400 people infected with HIV. On April 14, 1992 UNC Hospitals executive director Eric Munson said that at least 15 patients had been through invasive procedures with a health-care worker who had tested positive for HIV; all had been offered free testing, and the hospital released nothing about the worker or the patients. By early July the AIDS Service Agency of Orange County had bought a $50,000 parcel on Culbreth Road off U.S. 15-501 for a one-story, accessible house for up to six people with AIDS, with construction to wait for a $280,000 federal housing grant; chairwoman Jean Bolduc said no neighbors in nearby Glenmere had complained. After the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development rejected the steep Culbreth Road site, the agency applied on November 16 for a house at Greensboro Street and Robert Hunt Drive in Carrboro; UNC Hospitals was then following more than 750 patients with the AIDS virus.

In January 1993 the Carrboro Board of Aldermen turned down a petition from 33 neighbors for a half-mile spacing rule between group homes, which the town attorney said would conflict with fair-housing law, and on January 25 the town issued permits for the six-resident house at North Greensboro Street and Robert Hunt Drive. In March HUD turned down the agency's request for the house; its Greensboro housing official said the denial came from scarce funding and had nothing to do with the neighbors' protests. At a March 23 forum at Carrboro Baptist Church, run with the Dispute Settlement Center, agency officials told residents of the Quarterpath Trace neighborhood they would consider another site. In July the agency, with the Inter-Faith Council as co-sponsor, reapplied for the Robert Hunt Drive site while a planning group of four neighbors and two agency members discussed landscaping, staffing and relations with the neighbors, and on September 30, after two years and three applications, HUD granted $283,400 for the six-bed home and $17,600 a year for 20 years for its upkeep.

About 60 supporters gathered on April 30, 1994 for the groundbreaking of the Orange Community Residence, which the Daily Tar Heel called the area's first group home for people with AIDS. By late August it was under construction, and a benefit at Crook's Corner on September 26 netted nearly $22,000 for it. On October 1 the Orange County chapter of the American Red Cross opened a teen AIDS hotline staffed by trained high school and college volunteers, and on World AIDS Day, December 1, panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt were shown in the Great Hall while about 30 people held a candlelight vigil in the Pit and marched around campus.