Mercy and Kindness : Health: Tuesday’s Child, a nonprofit group in Culver City, offers support to families with seriously ill children, including those with AIDS.

Doing volunteer work at a Los Angeles AIDS clinic, Barry Horton noticed that low-income families with HIV-positive children often lacked baby food, diapers and cribs.

He decided to do something about it.

Thus was born Tuesday’s Child, a nonprofit group that distributes non-medical necessities for children exposed to the AIDS virus and also underwrites funeral costs for youngsters who have died of AIDS. Named for a line in a nursery rhyme (“Tuesday’s child is full of grace”), the Culver City-based group is the first organization of its kind in the Los Angeles area, county officials say.

Horton, a Georgia native, said he began seeking donations to create Tuesday’s Child in the late 1980s after the AIDS clinic made him realize how important volunteer work can be.

“Once you do work with people that really impacts lives, there is a shift of consciousness,” said Horton, 47. “You become aware of why we are here (on Earth).”

Tuesday’s Child clients say the organization has made an enormous difference.

Olivia, an immigrant from Zimbabwe who was infected with HIV through her boyfriend four years ago, lost her 18-month-old child to AIDS in March, 1993. She says she would not be alive today without Horton’s support and friendship throughout the ordeal of seeing her son, Branden, die.

“Barry and his staff are a godsend,” Olivia said. If it weren’t for Horton, she added, “maybe I would have taken my life.”

Olivia’s story mirrors those of many who seek help from Tuesday’s Child. The father of her child abandoned her when she was five months pregnant. Living in Massachusetts at the time, she packed her bags and joined her sister and brother-in-law in Los Angeles.

Two months after the baby was born he became gravely ill, and doctors tested the infant and Olivia for HIV. They both tested positive. She believes the father was aware he was HIV-positive when he passed the virus on to her.

“Deep down in my heart, I think he knew and he didn’t want to deal with me having the disease or with the baby,” she said without a trace of resentment in her voice. Olivia, who says she has not seen or spoken to the father since he left her, has since married.

After her infant died, Tuesday’s Child paid for the burial. They provided her with diapers, baby formula, furniture and strollers when Branden was alive. One of the few positive things to come out of her son’s sickness, Olivia said, was that she got to know people such as Horton.

“My baby made me meet a lot of people. I didn’t know a lot of people in Los Angeles. He made me realize that I could make true friends,” said Olivia, who was referred to Tuesday’s Child by a social worker.

Horton says Tuesday’s Child tries to offer more than material help by giving families personal attention. Staff members in most cases know all of the children and families by name. Horton is godfather to many of the children. And the agency coordinates Halloween parties, Thanksgiving basket distributions, Christmas parties and Christmas gift donations in addition to daily support services.

Horton and his staff of 12 serve about 400 families in all on a $1-million budget, 90% of which is raised through donations.

According to Ken Tiratira, senior deputy to Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, Tuesday’s Child is the only service organization in the county to offer such support services on a daily basis.

“They receive very little county money and rely on private donations in a very difficult arena,” Tiratira said. “They do yeoman’s work. We wish there were more agencies like them because they are definitely in need.”

The agency’s work is also valued by social workers, who often refer patients to Tuesday’s Child.

Anna Almaguel, a social worker associate at Childrens Hospital, said: “We refer all of our families with low incomes to (Tuesday’s Child). Without Tuesday’s Child, our families would be in dire straits when they have emergency financial needs.”

Horton acknowledges that getting close to children who are in many cases dying takes a toll on him and his staff.

But Horton says he has had to learn to accept it.

“It has become commonplace to sit at a bedside and pray for that person to find the light and go to it,” he said. “You (have to) come to terms with death. It is not the end, there is something beyond it.”

In the meantime, he says, his job is to ease the hardship and humiliation caused by AIDS. “If we have made a difference in the lives that we come across, then Tuesday’s Child has been a success.”