ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 14, 1995 TAG: 9512140008
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Beth Macy
SOURCE: BETH MACY
Peggy Booth has a basement full of her son's legacy - a $600 electric train, more than 100 teddy bears, a box full of fancy wire-ribbon spools and a giant St. Bernard puppy named Dolly Marie.
Christmas was Alan Booth's favorite time of year. Each year he had a huge holiday party at his home in Atlanta. He mailed his mom enough ornaments to fill a tree and made ribbon wreaths for almost everyone he knew.
``You wouldn't believe how he was into Christmas,'' the Roanoke County mother says.
Earlier this year Alan bought a train set to go around the tree. Then he bought a player piano. Then he went to Dollywood to see the shrine of his favorite entertainer, Dolly Parton.
Then he came home to his mother to die.
Peggy Booth's living room is back to normal now - no more hospital beds, no more IV fluids, no more jaunts outside to grill the barbecued ribs that were her son's favorite food.
She hasn't yet decorated for the holidays. Opening the box of ornaments will bring back too many memories. And she can't bear to look at the pictures from last Christmas, when her AIDS-stricken son looked so emaciated and gaunt.
``It hurt me so much to see him walk across the room,'' she says. ``He looked like he was going to break in half.
``Something about watching your own child die: We're supposed to let them bury us, not us bury them.''
Peggy Booth didn't call me to talk about her son. She didn't ask for a column on the man who captured headlines in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal with his crusade against a crooked home health-care company. Michael Alan Booth's Atlanta lawsuit resulted in the company's indictment last year after an FBI probe revealed a kickback scam that was pilfering his insurance policy - and those of other AIDS patients across the country.
Peggy Booth has a scrapbook full of clippings about the suit. She has a tape of him from March, when ``Prime Time Live'' aired its investigation of the fraud. The scrapbook ends with a blurb on the settlement, in which the company agreed to pay her son's medical bills for life.
Booth hasn't yet pasted in Alan's obituary from his Sept. 1 death. Too final.
But she is ready to part with some of his personal belongings. She called me a few weeks ago after reading about Bedford County counselor Patricia Ronk and her quest to help the poorest of the poor.
Through Ronk's program, Booth wants to donate her son's clothes and his teddy-bear collection.
``Reading about the kids who've never even been to McDonald's made me so sad,'' she says. ``It would make Alan happy for his things to go to someone less fortunate.
``He was the type of person who thought of everyone else first before himself.''
Booth and her youngest son, Tommy, aren't sure how they'll manage this Christmas without Alan. They're building a large L-shaped pen for his beloved St. Bernard, Dolly Marie, along with a Colonial-style dog house that matches their own home.
And they're remembering - not just his life, but the way he fought death and discrimination. ``I'm really proud of what he did for other AIDS patients and for the way he fought this disease,'' Peggy says. ``He went down fighting.''
When the 36-year-old lost his hair, he took it as an opportunity to wear fabulous hats. When he became thin and unsightly, he relished wearing thick bulky sweats.
``No one loved life more than Alan did,'' Peggy says.
The Roanoke AIDS Project needs donations of $10 grocery-store gift certificates for area people with AIDS. Also on its holiday wish list: new robes, pajamas and slippers for hospital patients (men's and women's, all sizes needed). Call the AIDS Project at 345-4840, or send gift certificates to The Roanoke AIDS Project, 331 King George Ave. S.W., Roanoke, Va. 24016.
LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: THE ADVOCATE. Christmas was Alan Booth's favorite timeby CNBof year. color.