Arcadias’ AIDS Children : Florida Town Shuns Ill Boys, Tries to Rebuild Image

In a back room of the Total Elegance beauty and tanning parlor, behind the rows of hair dryers and women in curlers, Bob Werner works the phones, promoting Citizens Against AIDS in Schools.

He wears a red T-shirt emblazoned with an American flag and the words: “I’m Proud to Live in Arcadia.” He is trying to counter the bad image the town earned when it sought to keep three hemophiliac brothers who’d been exposed to the AIDS virus from attending Memorial Elementary School.

The Ray Brothers, Ricky, 10, Robert, 9, and Randy, 8, went to school for a week under federal court order, but many other parents kept their children away and two bomb threats forced evacuations. Clifford and Louise Ray, the brothers’ parents, reported threatening telephone calls.

On Aug. 28, after the first week of classes, fire destroyed the Ray home while the family was out of town. Clifford Ray’s brother, Andy, who was alone in the house, was not hurt. The Rays left Arcadia for good but remain in Florida at an undisclosed location. The fire is under investigation by the DeSoto County sheriff and the state fire marshal.

Back Room Office

Janet Tew runs the beauty salon and turned over her back room for Citizens Against Aids in Schools’ headquarters. Her husband, Danny, is president of the organization, which writes to state lawmakers and circulates petitions seeking support for mandatory AIDS testing in schools and public access to the information.

Werner had his T-shirt hastily made up in a local store because he was upset about Arcadia and its 6,000 residents’ being tagged the city without pity, illiterate and ignorant, redneck and vigilante.

People who live here describe this as a friendly and caring town. Few believe the fire was set by townspeople opposed to the Ray children’s attending school. Judith S. Kavanaugh, the Rays’ attorney, says she’s heard a half-dozen theories about the fire, including one that Clifford Ray himself was involved.

“It’s ludicrous, all rumors,” she said. The sheriff’s office “is trying to vindicate Arcadia, to save Arcadia’s good name, instead of trying to figure out what happened. Even if it was an accident, you don’t see anyone saying to the Rays, ‘Come back.’ ”

Members of Citizens Against Aids in Schools say that they offered the Rays clothing and furniture after the fire but that the family rejected the goods. The Rays have received more than $50,000 in donations from across the country, including $6,000 from people in Arcadia.

Kavanaugh said some money would be used to help the family resettle, and the bulk would go toward future medical care. The Rays have no health insurance.

Cadets Buried

As more proof that Arcadia is a caring town, residents point to the Oak Ridge Cemetery where 23 British Royal Air Force cadets who died in World War II training in southern Florida are buried and who are honored by the town every Memorial Day.

And when a native son, Army Brig. Gen. James L. Dozier, came home in February, 1982, after being freed by Italian police from Red Brigade terrorists, nearly the whole town turned out to welcome him. Throughout his 42 days of captivity, townspeople maintained a candlelight vigil in their homes.

Arcadia began as a small settlement along the Peace River in southwestern Florida and was incorporated in 1886. Legend has it that James Hendry, a traveling preacher and sawmill operator, named the town after a 12-year-old girl, Arcadia Albritton, who baked him a cake for his 45th birthday when the family took him in one night.

Cattle and vegetable farming and citrus production dominate the stable economy.

The town’s sudden notoriety has overshadowed a $1-million project to preserve and restore many of its magnificent stone business buildings, which feature Corinthian columns and large, arched window openings.

They lie within a 58-block district, listed in the National Register of Historic Places, encircled by Victorian Gothic, Queen Anne, classical revival and bungalow-style houses.

Old Businesses

Many of the businesses in the district are more than 50 years old, like Wheeler’s Cafe. which offers home-cooked meals including meat loaf, mullet, catfish, collard greens and grits. The Deep South Bar-B-Q has been in the Clement family for 30 years, and Nannalee Clement, the 73-year-old matriarch, still bakes the specialties--pecan torte and sweet potato pie.

Two drug stores, Arcadia and Koch’s, still have soda fountains and are popular not only for their hefty breakfasts and lunches but as places to get together with friends.

“Everybody’s just like a family,” said Beth Staton, 30, who has brought her two daughters, Staci, 12, and Kelli, 9, to the back room of Total Elegance to help make donation jugs that will be placed in stores to raise money for Citizens Against Aids in Schools.

“Everybody stood up for what they believed in like a big family would. I haven’t talked to one person who didn’t feel we should keep AIDS out of the schools.”

She repeated what many others have said: “We’re against AIDS in the schools. We weren’t going after the Rays. Their three boys could have been ours instead of theirs. How do we know that our children don’t have AIDS?”