The Collegian (Hurst, Tex.), Vol. 7, No. 8, Ed. 1 Wednesday, October 26, 1994 Page: 5 of 12
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Feature
F The Collegian
October 26, 1994 • page 5«
■ A :■
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Elizabeth Hanmer
DW1
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Hanmer believes she contracted the
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doctor’s office,” she said. “He (the doctor)
came in and said, ‘You have tested positive
with the AIDS virus and have six months to
live. Now get the hell out of my office. If
you have any questions, my nurse will
answer them. Now go.’”
Hanmer was devastated, confused and
shaking.
“I was lucky the nurse knew a little
more than the doctor about the AIDS virus,”
she said. “She (the nurse) said I was not
going to die in six months and I could still
live a long and prosperous life with AIDS.”
Hanmer called her mother and told her
the news. Her mother told her to come
home so she could be taken of until she
died.
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Hanmer said her dad heard she was in a
half way house and called to tell her he was
proud of her, which he had never done
She and her father became close during
the last couple of years of his life. He died
when Hanmer was 28.
When Hanmer decided to speak openly
about herself and the AIDS virus, she
experienced many different reactions.
“I remember people throwing used
condoms at our house and glass bottles
through in the windows,” she said. “I grew
up in an upper middle-class neighborhood,
and the message I was getting was AIDS
was not going to be tolerated.”
After her illness progressed into full
blown AIDS, Hanmer met a man who did
not know of her illness. He took her to the
movies one night and felt something was
wrong with her and asked what it was.
“I knew I had to tell him. I had him
take me someplace not far from my house,
so I wouldn’t have too far to walk in case he
dumped me right there,” she said. “He was
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she said.
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to do something positive with herself and
enrolled in the mental health program at
TCJC.
“Unfortunately going to school did not
by Karen Bayless
nw campus news editor
It ’
I II
own waste,” she said. “I tried to get
down the hall to clean up before someone
saw me.”
A resident at the Samaritan house
saw her and ask what was wrong. When
she told him, he told her the day before
he had on a pair of white shorts when the
same thing happened to him in public.
They both laughed and then cried.
Hanmer said that many daily
functions normal people take for granted
do not function properly with full blown
AIDS.
“There are many indignities and
humiliations we are faced with daily
because of our illness,” she said.
Hanmer has turned her life around
and is speaking to high schools and
college students about the AIDS. She is
currently in the process of a divorce.
“I am still in school and liking
myself better now than I ever have,” she
said. “My teachers are reassuring and are
a great help to me, especially when I get
overtaxed and confusion sets in?’
Hanmer is finding out what a good
feeling it is to take care herself, and she
has a new car that she was able to buy
herself for the first time in her life.
“A friend had a car she was going to
sell and asked me if I would like to buy
it,” she said. “I told her I would have to
make installments on it, and she said
okay.”
“I made the decision to do something
with my life, and God has made the
provision,” she said.
When not in class or studying,
Hanmer seeks donations for the Samari-
tan House.
“I couldn’t make it without my mom,
sister and the folks at the Samaritan
House. They have been so supportive,”
she said. “I don’t blame those who are
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f ■ HE ANGER IS GONE.
HE ADDICTION IS GONE.
JL HE TROUBLED YOUTH IS GONE.
But the consequences of her early
life cannot be shaken and will ultimately
bring her death.
Nevertheless, Elizabeth Hanmer, a
36-year-old mental health major on NE
Campus, has spent the last six years
trying to help others who have been
diagnosed with the same disease—
AIDS.
In her youth in Connecticut,
| Hanmer was considered a problem child,
| and her parents could not control her.
“By the time I was in the third
I grade, I was seeing a psychiatrist and
1 was given medication for hyperactivity,”
i she said. “This is when my addiction
| started.”
Instead of taking the medication one
time a day, Hanmer would take three or
four a day to make her feel good.
“I knew that I hurt and did not
I understand why,” she said. “I felt fat,
I ugly and always out of place, like I just
I didn’t belong.”
When Hanmer told her sister that she
had AIDS, her sister replied, ’’What did you
“I’ve only used a dirty needle once, and expect with the kind of life you lived?”
the person who used it before me does not
have AIDS,” she said.
In 1988, Hanmer went to a halfway
house to seek help with her addiction. An
AIDS virus test was requested.
“I will never forget the day in the
u My parents finally gave up on
me.
say hello and not to call collect. My
mother was having to demonstrate
tough love by not giving in to me and before.
letting me tear their lives up
anymore. ”
Hanmer understands her sister’s
remarks now and is no longer angry.
“I know this had to be very hard for my
mother after all she has been through with
me. By this time she rarely acknowledged
me as her daughter,” Hanmer said. “My
family was not educated about the AIDS
virus. I had to wear rubber gloves and a
The only way I could call was to surgical mask at all times in their home.”
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so wonderful and understanding and wanted
to stick by me.”
The couple got married and did not
practice safe sex for several months.
“We justified our sex life by saying that
we could be together in life and death,” she
said. “When I came to my senses, I would
not allow this to go on.”
Hanmer and her husband found a new
meaning to their intimacy by exploring
other ways to satisfy each other without
intercourse.
“To know how to really please some-
one without intercourse is the ultimate in an
intimate relationship,” she said. “My
husband tested negative when he took the
AIDS test.”
Hanmer’s husband did not want her to
tell other family and friends of her illness.
“We told everyone I had leukemia,” she
said.
While living with her husband and
trying to live a normal life, Hanmer decided
a I will never forget the day in angry with me for not telling them of my
the doctor’s office. He (the doctor) disease. I do understand their anger. Ido
came in and said, You have tested
positive with the AIDS virus and have
six months to live. Now get the hell reports that AIDS in the U.S. has one
out of my office. ”
■ Elizabeth Hanmer
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AIDS victim attempts to help others
NE mental health majorfaces consequences ofjMiction.
help me cope with the silence I had to
keep, and I became ill and depressed,”
she said.
After four years of marriage,
Hanmer’s secret became more than she
could bare. Depression set in, and her
will to go on was starting to fade.
“I stayed sick and in the bed for a
month and a half,” she said. “I realized
one morning that God had not brought
me this far for nothing.”
Hanmer packed her things, left her
husband and moved to the Samaritan
House, a remodeled nursing facility that
is now a home for people with AIDS who
might otherwise be homeless.
“The first night I was there, I got up
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Elizabeth Hanmer, a 36-year-old NE Campus mental health major, of safe-sex and is a spokesperson as well as a resident of the
stands beside her newly acquired car. Hanmer is a recovering Samaritan House. Hanmer has just recently revealed her illness
addict and suffers from full-blown AIDS. She is a strong advocate of eight years to her friends and family.
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Hanmer was not doing very well
| academically, and her parents took her
I out of public school and put her into
| private school.
“My parents sent me to a boarding
school in New York when I was 15,” she
said. “I didn’t like it there because most
of the kids were there on a court order. I
felt I did not belong there.”
Hanmer ran away from there every
time her parents took her.
“Once I went from the front door to
the back door and hitchhiked home,” she
said. “I was sitting on the front steps of
my parents’ home in Connecticut before
| they got home from New York.”
Hanmer said her parents knew they
g had a problem but didn’t know where to
j turn. Her drug use was increasing along
I with the frustration in her life. She
I basically was kicked out the house.
“My parents finally gave up on me.
£ I The only way I could call was to say
| hello and not to call collect,” she said.
“My mother was having to demonstrate
tough love by not giving in to me and
letting me tear their lives up anymore.”
Hanmer’s mother and dad divorced
when she was 18.
“ My dad and I didn’t talk to each
other for nearly 10 years because he was
so fed up with me and my ways.”
Her mother moved to Texas to be
near her family after the divorce, and
Hanmer moved to Fort Worth and stayed
with her mom.
Hanmer decided to do something
about her addiction on her own without
much success.
“I would stay clean and then relapse
| over and over,” she said. “At the time I
I did not know one of my trips to get
g drugs would change my life,” she said.
!|a | “I had to go into a bad part of town and
!» J I was gang raped by three black men.”
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The Collegian (Hurst, Tex.), Vol. 7, No. 8, Ed. 1 Wednesday, October 26, 1994, newspaper, October 26, 1994; Hurst, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1351890/m1/5/?rotate=180: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Tarrant County College NE, Heritage Room.