SEQUIM – Twelve years after he left town, Lew Bartholomew came back for a visit last week — and found it hard to move.
People kept wrapping their arms around him.
Then they’d let go and gaze with unabashed admiration.
Friends remember Bartholomew from his work in the early 1990s as Sequim High School’s drama coach and as director and designer of community theater productions in Port Angeles and Sequim.
But they may not have expected to see him alive in 2006.
Bartholomew, 52, has been HIV-positive for 19 years.
Upon diagnosis, he was given a three-digit case number.
Most with such low numbers have died from AIDS-related illnesses, Bartholomew said.
At least one health practitioner has asked whether he’d left off a number, since survivors usually have case numbers of four digits or more.
“I’ve had some difficulty with that,” he said.
“It’s like being one survivor of a plane crash . . . why have I survived when so many others have gone?
“But I also feel that God’s not done with me.”
Canadian resident
Bartholomew now lives in Courtenay, British Columbia, about two hours’ drive north of Victoria.
He gives Canada’s health-care system and his British Columbia doctor, who updated his complex regimen of medications, much of the credit for his good health.
But after a few minutes with him, one wonders whether Bartholomew’s determination is also a factor.
During the early ’90s, Bartholomew gave presentations on AIDS to high school and middle school students, corporations and other groups as a volunteer for the Clallam County AIDS Service Project, or CLASP.
“I was the AIDS poster boy,” he said. “An incredible amount of parents gave me support,” including many who identified themselves as Christians.
But then the atmosphere changed.
In Sequim, “I faced a little bit of discrimination,” he remembered.
“There were some very vocal adults in the community” who objected to his teaching their teenagers.
“There was very little support, suddenly.”
He decided it was time to move.
“I had done my part,” he said. “I needed a big change.”
Today, Bartholomew said, he feels no bitterness about his departure.
“You can put that in bold, capital letters,” he said.
