Doug Root

Here is the dream that kept coming back to Corey Whitman in the fall of 1991, a few weeks after he turned eleven: He and his parents and his four brothers and sisters are camping out in the woods in a motorhome, a spanking new vehicle with a powerful engine, a kitchen area, TV, stereo and bunk beds with spreads in the colors of his favorite pro football team, the Pittsburgh Steelers. But Corey doesn’t want to sleep in the trailer, he wants to be out under the stars. That is where the dream continues – at night, under the stars. Corey is lying on his sleeping bag at the edge of a campfire where the entire family – his Dad, George Whitman; his Mom, Christine Skubis; siblings, Ryan, now 16; Matthew, 11; and twins, Megan and Melody, 8 – has gathered around to sing songs. He dozes off to sleep to the sounds of their singing and is jolted awake to the sounds of the motorhome’s engine. Corey Whitman, 11, is physically healthy, but

Most Fridays, George Whitman doesn’t have the strength of will to take his four children to the community dinners for people affected by AIDS. There is the hour he spends in verbal combat with his two oldest boys – Corey, 15, and Ryan, 16, who want no part in the events. There is the hour’s bus ride each way from his family’s one-bedroom, run-down, rented home on the slopes of Pittsburgh’s South Side to the Episcopal church hall in the fashionable East End Shadyside district. Alone and confused, Melody, 8, follows her grieving mother into a bar across from the funeral home where her twin sister’s body was handled. Melody doesn’t outwardly dwell on the fact that she, too, has AIDS, but she will tell anyone who asks that she probably won’t live much longer. Often, he is just too tired to make the trek, a single parent with full-blown AIDS exhausted at the end of a long week working odd jobs at construction sites. He must work, he says, to pay the bills and

In the last three months of her life, Christine Skubis Whitman passed through the layers of dying from the AIDS virus in much the same way a newborn infant learns to live. Megan and Melody are six-year-olds fraternal twins living markedly different lives with the virus that causes AIDS. The virus was passed on by their parents who are also infected. The three remaining boys in the family are not infected. (Photo by Randy Olson) She had regressed to baby steps, which she attempted only with the help of the able-bodied propping her on each side. At first, the loss of control had her seething. Later, when that limited mobility deserted Chris and it came time for adult diapers, there was a defeated acceptance, then ceding of control, and finally, a defeated indifference. It was a shocking change in a woman once noted for her ability to catch the spotlight. Just after New Years Day of this year, she retreated into the fetal position on a pink-mattressed daybed, one of the prizes wangled from a