
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, May 31, 1990                   TAG: 9005310489
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

KUBLER-ROSS FEAR OF DYING IN HIGHLAND

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, world-renowned author of "On Death and Dying," is full of life despite a recent stroke. This summer at her Highland County farm, she's planning to open a center to train counselors for her death-and-dying workshops. It'll be an asset for the sparsely settled county, where sheep outnumber people.

Still, it is worth recalling that a different sort of project was to have opened there. Four years ago, Kubler-Ross announced plans to open a hospice for babies suffering with AIDS. The small, gray-haired woman, whose book has revolutionized treatment for the terminally ill, had been moved by the plight of fatally infected babies abandoned at hospitals by prostitutes and indigent mothers.

County residents were moved too, but in a different way. They didn't want to hear about the babies. All they were hearing was AIDS. As Ronald Malcolm, chairman of the Highland County Board of Supervisors, put it: "The people here don't want AIDS brought into the area." Someone cried wolf, and an ugly chorus ensued.

Some 2,000 of the county's 2,800 population signed a petition against the import of AIDS into Highland. A crowd showed up at a public meeting to oppose the clinic. Fear, perhaps as much as intolerance, motivated the opposition, but the effect was the same.

Kubler-Ross, a survivor, is not the sort to give up. She has remained on her Healing Waters Farm, where she moved in 1984, despite continuing distrust among some county residents. It is to her credit that she's persevering with plans for the counselor-training center.

Meantime, she gets along splendidly with some of her neighbors, but has been harassed by others. Shots, she says, were fired through her windows.

To the world Kubler-Ross is a doctor, lecturer, author of 11 books, purveyor of compassion and insight, possessor of laurels and honors. To Highland County residents, she's the AIDS lady.

Some of the stages of dying outlined in her 1969 book - denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance - might be applied to the fear of AIDS. For now, denial and anger prevail in Highland County as in many other places. Acceptance remains elusive, which isn't especially surprising.

AIDS, the modern-day Black Plague, delivers death. As George Santayana wrote: "The dark background which death supplies brings out the tender colors of life in all their purity." But it also brings out the not-so-tender.

Highland County has been not so hospitable to Kubler-Ross. It has no reported incidence of AIDS, but having to breathe the same county air as the AIDS-infected babies wouldn't have threatened residents' purity of health. AIDS, like death, is scary, but life can be scary too. Of the babies she has cared for, Kubler-Ross says: "I feel they're much easier than grown-ups."

by CNB