Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 24, 1995 TAG: 9501240081
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDY HILL KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: CHARLOTTE, N.C. LENGTH: Long
LaGena Lookabill Greene looked out through the lacy curtains of a New York hotel room that fall day and made a decision.
She was 25. Her career was going well with roles in such TV shows as ``Remington Steele'' and ``St. Elsewhere.'' A full life stretched before her.
Now, eight years later, she believes she is dying because of her decision.
Tired of living in secrecy, Greene, 33, a former Charlotte debutante, beauty queen and actress, is going public with the fact she has AIDS, a disease she believes she contracted from race car driver Tim Richmond that September day in New York. Richmond died in 1989 of AIDS.
Greene's message is women need to be aware of the danger of AIDS. ``I want to alert women that they ultimately have to be responsible for their own health,'' she says. She suggests chastity before marriage, an AIDS test at the time of engagement and a follow-up AIDS test six months later, before marriage.
Richmond's sister, Sandy Welsh, says that while she agrees with the goal of education, ``Tim is not here to defend himself. I don't see the point of bringing Tim into it unless she can actually prove he gave it to her. Everyone is responsible for their own sexual decisions.''
Noting that on Saturday evening in 1986, Richmond was inducted into the Eastern Motorsports Hall of Fame in King of Prussia, Pa., she says, ``I'd like to focus on the positive things that Tim has done.''
Greene, then Lookabill, says she met Richmond in 1980 when she was the Miss World 600 beauty queen and he was Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year. They dated off and on for years, but she was in L.A. pursuing her acting career and he was on the East Coast racing.
When she came to Charlotte that summer to play a pit-crew whiz in the film ``Born to Race,'' she and Richmond resumed dating.
Then came Sept. 10, 1986. Here's how Greene remembers that day:
It began at 5 a.m. when Richmond called her from his home on Lake Norman in North Carolina. He was on a winning streak, and USA Today wanted to interview him in Baltimore that day. He begged her to go with him.
``I'll get you back in the evening, but bring your pink silk dress in case we go to dinner somewhere special,'' he told her.
After Baltimore, Richmond suggested they fly on to New York for dinner. He hinted he had something special to ask her.
Richmond had proposed earlier in the year, and she had turned him down, she says. Now he proposed again, telling her he had a $33,000 diamond waiting for her at a jeweler in Atlanta. He wanted it to be cut into a heart shape like her stage name at the time, LaGena Hart, her mother's maiden name.
``All throughout the day, it was just all love, promises,'' she said. He talked about quitting racing to begin an acting career. ``We'd make such a great team,'' he told her.
It was then ``that I surrendered to him.''
At that time, few women considered the danger of catching HIV from heterosexual sex. Because of female physiology, a woman's risk of becoming infected through sex with an HIV-positive man is 17.5 times greater than a man's risk of becoming infected by having sex with an HIV-positive woman, says the Center for Women Policy Studies.
Greene says her sexual history was ``extremely limited. ... I wasn't a virgin but I had been celibate with this man up until the point when he asked me to marry him ... When he asked me to marry him. ... I felt trusting enough to give myself to him physically because I knew, or I thought at that time that it wouldn't be that long before we got married.''
That afternoon they made love. Afterward he seemed withdrawn. And for the rest of the time together, their conversation was strained.
She returned to L.A.
They talked on the phone and met once after that. The day before Thanksgiving 1986, he was to fly to Los Angeles to see her. She says he never showed up. ``I was frantic.'' For months, she says she called him and his parents, leaving messages. No one returned her calls, she says. Richmond's father, Al Richmond, says he doesn't recall her or any phone calls.
|n n| On Dec. 8, 1986, three months after their New York visit, a sports publicity agent called to ask her about talk that Richmond was hospitalized with AIDS.
At first, she dismissed it as a vicious rumor by someone jealous of his success, she says. Unknown to her, Richmond was in fact at Ohio's Cleveland Clinic. On Dec. 10, 1986, he was diagnosed with AIDS, according to his family.
Dr. David Dodson, an internist and infectious-disease specialist in West Palm Beach, Fla., treated Richmond after the diagnosis. He says it is very likely Richmond was already infected with HIV in September 1986 since it usually takes years to go from HIV infection to full-blown AIDS. ``From what I knew of Tim Richmond he would not knowingly transmit this to anyone,'' Dodson adds.
After the call from the publicity agent, Greene became frightened. This could explain Richmond's failure to call, she thought.
She asked her gynecologist to test her. ``Women don't get AIDS,'' he told her. She insisted he test her anyway.
It came back negative.
``At that time in the epidemic, they did not realize that [there is a window period in which] you could test negative even though you were already infected with HIV,'' Greene said.
Even today, women often may not be aware they are ill. In one national study, 25 percent of women did not know their partners were engaging in high-risk behavior until a child was diagnosed with HIV and the woman in turn was found to be HIV-infected.
Greene put her concerns out of her mind.
The AIDS rumors continued. USA Today called to ask about Richmond's health. ``I thought, `These rumors aren't going away. And I still haven't heard from him. I am going to get tested again.' ''
On Sept. 10, 1987, a year to the day after the New York trip, she called her gynecologist to request another test.
A week later, she found a message on her answering machine from her doctor, asking her to call.
``My gynecologist gets on the phone. ... I could tell he'd been crying, and he said, `LaGena, I need you to sit down.' I floated down onto the couch because deep down I knew what he was going to tell me. ... He was weeping. And I was just numb.''
Greene was HIV positive.
For a week after the news, she just sat in her L.A. apartment and stared at the walls, barely able to eat.
|n n| She was 26 years old and had already accomplished a lot. Right out of high school in North Carolina - in the top 1 percent of her class - she'd been second runner-up in America's Junior Miss contest. After graduation from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with honors, she beat out 5,000 models to become the first Miss Hawaiian Tropic United States. Now she was getting roles in such movies as ``Million-Dollar Mystery'' and on TV shows like ``The Fall Guy.''
How could this be happening? ``I had never been promiscuous, used IV drugs or had a blood transfusion. I felt like I had been such a `good girl.' I decided that God must be punishing me for committing the sin of premarital sex.''
She began to have nightmares of killing herself.
Two weeks after the news, she told her agency she was leaving the acting business. Unable to bear the burden alone, she confided in actor Danny Greene, her best friend. It was several years before she told her parents. ``I didn't want to break their hearts,'' she says.
LaGena had met Danny Greene on the set of the film ``Weekend Warriors'' in 1985. They dated for more than a year, but went from a romantic relationship to a friendship over her frustration with his liaisons with other women.
Says Danny Greene, ``This was the worst news that I had ever heard. ... I mean for a sweet Southern belle like LaGena to test positive for HIV. It was a gay man's disease at that time. ... It was one of the ironies of life. There she was the one with morals and I had been sowing my oats.''
Danny Greene rigged up a speaker phone system between their two apartments in the same neighborhood so he could hear her if she cried out in the night.
When things seemed darkest, Danny Greene, who is Jewish, and LaGena, who grew up in a Methodist church, went to a Christian church service. It was then she decided to turn her problem over to God and to ``rededicate my life to the Lord.''
She says she began calling Richmond to tell him she was HIV positive and to get information, but that he did not call back.
|n n| In April 1988 she moved back to Charlotte to be near her family, Jackie and Gene Lookabill, and younger brother Gene Jr. They still didn't know she was HIV positive. She began working in advertising, marketing and promotions, including serving as account executive for the Speedway Club at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
A year later, Richmond began telephoning her, she says. The first call came at 4 in the morning. His speech was slurred, his manner casual. ``I haven't heard from this man in years and he is talking like we just spoke five minutes ago.''
(EDITORS: NEXT 11 GRAFS OPTIONAL)
The conversation went like this, she says.
``Tim, did you call me because you have something you really wanted to tell me?''
``Like what?''
``Like, I'm sorry?''
``What do I have to be sorry for?''
``Well, you have AIDS and you gave it to me and you never called to tell me. ... that I had been exposed.''
``I don't have AIDS.''
``You don't? Well, why are you talking so funny?''
``I had an accident.''
``So you're in the hospital, right?''
``Yeah.''
(END OPTIONAL TRIM)
The phone calls continued for the next 41/2 months, she says. ``It was like talking to someone in the Twilight Zone. ... I would talk about my health and I would talk about my faith and how it was helping me. And I would pray for him and with him.''
She wanted an apology, or at least an acknowledgment. Neither came. ``Inside, I was a boiling rage. But on the outside I was soothing. ... I zippered my lip because I wanted to be the good Christian girl.''
Somehow, she believes through the grace of the Holy Spirit, she finally was able to tell him over the phone, ``I forgive you.''
In a voice that Greene remembers as sounding like a 4-year-old, he said, ``Thank you.''
It was the last time they spoke. Two weeks later, he was dead of AIDS.
That final phone conversation made her feel she had helped him to die in peace, she says. The end was near for Richmond, she felt, and it would be easier to be far away, so she flew to London, then joined her friend Danny Greene in Africa where he was working on a film, ``Beyond Kilimanjaro.''
Tim Richmond died while she was gone, on Aug. 13, 1989, in West Palm Beach. LaGena had asked not to be told when he died. But she says, alone in her hotel room in London, she sensed his death. ``I felt a physical sensation of something being torn from my heart area. It felt like it just went out the window.'' Later she found out he died at the exact time she experienced the sensation.
|n n| When Danny Greene and LaGena returned from Africa, they talked seriously of marriage.
``In my mind there was such confusion,'' says Danny Greene. ``Do you marry someone that may not be around for too long? Do you marry someone that you probably won't get to have children with?
``As time went on, I had this ache in my gut and in my heart. ... I did not want her to go through the rest of her life without being held at night when she went to sleep. ... And the fact is, I was already in love with LaGena.''
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LaGena Greene says, ``My natural reaction was to think, `Oh, he wants to marry me because he feels sorry for me or he feels guilty.' And I don't want to get married under those circumstances.''
Finally, she became convinced his motive was love. She accepted his proposal on New Year's Eve of 1989 in a pouring rain outside the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, N.C.
(END OPTIONAL TRIM)
They married on Valentine's Day, 1990.
Today, the two live in Charlotte to be near her family. He works as a sales representative at Home Depot in Matthews, N.C. He says that, with the help of actor Burt Reynolds, he has gotten enough acting jobs to keep his Screen Actors Guild health insurance.
For the Greenes, there is the pain of knowing they will never have a child.
``As early as 7 years old, I was telling everybody that I was going to have two children, a boy and a girl,'' says LaGena Greene. ``They were going to be named Tiffany and Troy.''
And Danny Greene has had to give up his dream of a son riding on his shoulders, and of teaching him how to throw a football.
|n n| LaGena Greene has full-blown AIDS now, with accompanying physical problems. They have included migraines, skin rashes, dizziness, vomiting, extreme fatigue, two bouts with cervical cancer, hives, thrush, an enlarged spleen and uncontrollable diarrhea.
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``Every person with AIDS has a bunch of diarrhea stories,'' she says wryly. Hers is of soiling herself at the checkout counter of an L.A. health food store while wearing tennis whites.
``When you think about my past, being raised as a Southern lady, standing in a grocery line with uncontrollable diarrhea. ... If people could just put themselves in the position I was in, they could have compassion for anybody who is experiencing symptoms from AIDS.''
(END OPTIONAL TRIM)
The most serious illness was Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia this spring, which was nearly fatal.
Now she gets IV treatments every two weeks to head off another bout of pneumonia.
She and Danny Greene have been careful to take precautions, and he is HIV negative.
Through it all, the Greenes have kept the secret from everyone, except family members and a few close friends. Her family has been unfailingly supportive.
The secrecy hasn't been easy. During the pneumonia bout, she had a catheter in her arm. ``When I started feeling a little better, I would wrap it up with an Ace bandage. If we needed to go to some function, I would just tell people I twisted my arm lifting something.''
While she has maintained her privacy in Charlotte, LaGena Greene has spoken to groups on the West Coast about AIDS, sometimes anonymously and sometimes using the pseudonym Tiffany, the name she had hoped to give her daughter.
She is uneasy about going public, but believes it will be worth it. ``I am shedding my cocoon of shame and emerging as a butterfly, so I can live and die with dignity and grace,'' she says.
``I heard in a sermon a few weeks ago, `Revealing the feeling is the beginning of healing,' '' she says. ``And I love that. That's what I am doing.
``The most difficult person for me to forgive was myself... for making a bad decision that will most likely kill me, for trusting someone who said he loved me, ... most importantly it has been difficult for me to forgive myself for not following God's will for me,'' she says.
She also wants to remind people that anyone can get AIDS. She says she has been pained to hear a pastor say from the pulpit, ``Christians don't get AIDS,'' or to hear a politician say that people with AIDS deserve it.
She says ``I believe every person infected with AIDS deserves compassion and unconditional love.''
|n n| She and Danny Greene are determined to make the most of the time left. Often they talk long into the night. Recently they became certified as scuba divers.
Now she spends her days wrestling with insurance forms and doctors' visits, in prayer and Bible reading, and most of all with Danny Greene, her parents and her brother. She attends church. She charts her medical progress in a notebook. Last week she visited Sharon Memorial Park to see if her place at the mausoleum was ready.
She doesn't know how much longer she has. When she was tested in April, she had a count of 14 for her T-helper cells, an indication of the state of the immune system. A normal count is 800 to 1,200.
Says LaGena, ``The longest I have heard of someone living with zero T cells is three years.... The general length of the disease from the time of infection until the time of death is 10 or 11 years. It keeps getting longer because they keep coming up with more prophylactic medicine and treatment.''
Danny Greene hasn't thought much about the future. ``I can't really begin to think about it. Just driving down the road coming home from work at 11 o'clock at night, a certain song comes on the radio and it hits me. ... The thought of coming home to that house empty without her there is very painful.''
Says LaGena, ``Sometimes, he'll say, `Please don't ever leave me.' And I used to say, `I promise I won't.' I guess I thought I'd have some kind of miraculous healing. I've had to be more honest lately and say, `I can't promise that I won't ever leave you in my body, physically, but I know I'll see you again in heaven.
``And I will always, always be carried in his heart. We've become one.''
|File photo Before his death in 1989, Tim Richmond had a promising career.|
by CNB