Youths’ Letters on AIDS to Raise Funds

Casey Paquett, an 11-year-old girl living in Ontario, Canada, has a simple message to get out with the help of the Dreams to Reality Foundation.

“I am not a scary person,” she wrote in a two-page letter to the foundation. “I can get hugs and I do not want people to be afraid of me when they hear HIV.”

The Burbank-based foundation has received several letters like Casey’s--either faxed or mailed--since actor Dean Butler, co-founder of the foundation announced on Geraldo Rivera’s television show in February that the agency is looking for accounts from children about how HIV and AIDS had affected their lives.

The letters will be a part of a Dreams to Reality fund-raiser, “Secrets and Letters,” scheduled Friday at the Wilshire Ebell Theater in Los Angeles. The event will feature a performance of the Kaiser Permanente AIDS educational play, “Secrets,” followed by a dramatic reading by professional actors of several of the letters.

“I think the ones that touched me the most were the ones that shocked you,” said Butler, best known for his role as Almanzo Wilder in the series “Little House on the Prairie.” “The ones that surprised me and moved me were the letters in which they talk about their experiences.”

The letter from Casey Paquett, who was born with a flawed heart and contracted the HIV virus through a blood transfusion, was one of the more touching letters for Butler, he said. But other letters cover a wide range of emotions and issues, from a gay 18-year-old in Texas dealing with bigotry to a 15-year-old girl from a Sacramento suburb who watched as a family friend slowly died from AIDS.

“We were touched that people would share those very personal experiences,” Butler said.

He added that the collection of letters shows that AIDS is “not just a gay disease. It affects people, families, companies. If it continues to advance unchecked the impact can be even more devastating than it’s already been on society.”

One teen-ager from Nashville, Tenn., wrote to say he had an older brother with AIDS and an uncle who had already died from the disease. Bravely, he started talking about AIDS in his English class, warning his classmates to beware of unprotected sex and intravenous drug use, which spread the disease.

But as he walked out, he overheard his classmates gossiping, “Hey, do you think Jeremy has AIDS?” or “Hey, is he gay?”

For Butler, the letter is an example of how little the general public has learned about the disease. “It speaks to the massive levels of ignorance. For as much as people think they know about this thing, they don’t really know.”

Dreams to Reality, which Butler founded two years ago with Christopher Spencer, a producer of local events and fund-raisers in Burbank, was created to raise money for AIDS awareness and help victims of the disease.

“If we can dream about curing this thing, our hope is that we can make that a reality,” said Butler, explaining the name. The foundation, a small organization, tackles other issues with the simple idea of trying to help people.

“I needed to feel like I was contributing something to society and creating this foundation was a way to do it,” Butler said.

The Wilshire Ebell Theater is at 4401 W. 8th St., Los Angeles. Tickets for the fund-raiser are $20. For those ordering through Ticketmaster, a $3 discount is available to cover the service charge. For more information call (800) 75-REALITY.