AIDS is not a disgrace, it is a TRAGEDY
A grieving mother asks for compassion
On this day in 1995, a year after her son, Mark, died of AIDS at the age of 31, Patsy Clarke wrote the following letter to Jesse Helms, a family friend and US senator whose hostility towards gay people and AIDS-related initiatives had made him one of the most controversial politicians in America. Helms’s heartless response, in which he suggested that Mark had been “playing Russian roulette with his sexual activity,” inspired Clarke to join forces with another grieving mother and co-found Mothers Against Jesse in Congress, a grassroots campaign dedicated to unseating him.
June 5, 1995
Senator Jesse Helms
U.S. Senate
Washington, D.C.Dear Jesse,
When my husband (and your strong friend) Harry Clarke died in a plane crash at the Asheville airport on March 9, 1987, you called me in the night. You told me of your sorrow at our loss and of what Harry had meant to you as a friend. You placed your praise for him and his principles in the Congressional Record. You sent me the flag flown over the Capitol in his memory. You did all of these things and I am grateful.
Harry and I had a son, Mark, who was almost the image of his father, though much taller. He was blessed with great charm and intelligence, and we loved him. He was gay. On March 9, 1994, exactly seven years to the day that his father died, Mark followed him—a victim of AIDS. I sat by his bed, held his dear hand and sang through that long, last night the baby song that I had sung to all our children: “Rock-a-bye and don’t you cry, rock-a-bye little Mark...”
A few days before he died, Mark said these words: “This disease is not beating me. When I draw my last breath I will have defeated this disease—and I will be free.” I watched him take his last breath and claim his freedom. He was 31.
As I write these words, I relive the most difficult time of my life. The tears will smudge this if I don’t take care. No matter, I will type it so it is legible. My reason for writing to you is not to plead for funds, although I’d like to ask your support for AIDS research; it is not to accept a lifestyle which is abhorrent to you; it is rather to ask you not to pass judgment on other human beings as “deserving what they get.” No one deserves that. AIDS is not a disgrace, it is a TRAGEDY. Nor is homosexuality a disgrace; we so-called normal people make it a tragedy because of our own lack of understanding.
Mark gave me a great gift. A quote returns to me from long-ago forensic days: “I have no lamp to light my feet save the lamp of experience.” I think Patrick Henry said it. Mark’s life and death have illuminated my own, and I am grateful for him.
So that’s what this letter is about, and I hope I have written it well. I wish you had known Mark. His life was so much more eloquent than any words I might put on paper. I ask you to share his memory with me in compassion.
Gratefully,
Patsy M. Clarke
Letter excerpted from the book, Keep Singing: Two Mothers, Two Sons, and Their Fight Against Jesse Helms.
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Thank you from the bottom of my heart for posting this letter. I lost two brothers to AIDS - 1988 and 1995. We all endured an almost unfathomable era of tragedy during that time.
I'm a lifelong North Carolinian, and now a PFLAG mom and staunch mama bear... Jesse was the actual worst. Until the ones we have now.
I would've loved to know these ladies. They were badass. Thank you for sharing them. They were friends until the end.
https://www.theassemblync.com/news/politics/patsy-clarke-eloise-vaughn-jesse-helms/