The Forgotten Heroine of the AIDS Crisis: Caregiver and Advocate, Ruth Coker Burks

Deep in the Bible Belt, at the height of the AIDS epidemic in 1984, a young woman walked into the all-but-quarantined hospital room of a dying man. That patient, whose family had abandoned him and would later to refuse to bury him, became the first of nearly 1,000 young men that Ruth Coker Burks would care for during what was then known as the “gay plague” (1981-1995).

At the time, Burks was a young mother with no medical training, but she had a deep well of compassion. As word spread about her acts of love and kindness, she became a one-woman hospice for terminally ill gay men when no one else would take them. Her bravery was formidable; even in the face of a range of threats, including crosses being burned in her front yard on several occasions, she was undeterred and continued providing palliative care for gravely sick men. When she needed funds to care for the dying, drag queens would put on a show to raise money. When pharmacies refused to fill prescriptions for the men she cared for, she collected drugs from those who had passed away in order to help the living. When the men died, she buried their ashes with her own hands in the family cemetery plots she had inherited; the remains of approximately 40 men are interred there.

In time, better treatment and medication rendered much of Burks’ work unnecessary, but she continues her advocacy for HIV/AIDS patients through speaking and other activist work. Recently, funds were raised to create a memorial on the grounds of the family plot. Burks’ acts of love and kindness, are an abiding example of how one person can make an enormous difference in the lives of others.