 "The
AIDS virus is not a political creature. It
does not care whether you are Democrat or
Republican. It does not ask whether you are
Black or White, male or female, gay or
straight, young or old. Tonight I represent
an AIDS community whose members have been
reluctantly drafted from every segment of
American society. Though I am White, and a
mother, I am one with a Black infant
struggling with the tubes in a Philadelphia
hospital. Though I am female, and contracted
this disease in marriage, and enjoy the warm
support of my family, I am one with the
lonely gay man sheltering a flickering
candle from the cold wind of his family's
rejection… HIV asks only one thing of those
it attacks: Are you human? And this is the
right question: Are you human?"
So said Mary Fisher in a historic speech
entitled "A Whisper of AIDS" that moved the 1992 Republican National
Convention to stunned silence, touched
millions around the world, and launched her
into a new role: ambassador of compassion in
the fight against AIDS. My Name Is Mary
chronicles the emotional events leading up
to and following that momentous August
evening. In a memoir that exhibits the same
grace and unflinching honesty that moved the
nation, Mary Fisher shares the story of her
life. Here for the first time Fisher talks
about her experiences as a child of divorce,
as the daughter of an alcoholic family, and
of her own alcoholism.
Mary was adept at being the bright,
beautiful, perfect child, which armed her
for her stint as the woman "advanceman" in
the White House and for the job of
television producer, but which made the
admission that she needed help with her own
alcohol abuse even more difficult. As the
adopted daughter of Max Fisher, one of the
country's most influential men, Mary
traveled easily in the highest social
circles. She married a handsome artist with
whom she had two sons; when the marriage
ended in divorce, she pressed ahead as a
loving mother and promising artist.
Then in summer 1991 her world was turned
upside down by the news that her ex-husband
had AIDS, and the HIV test confirming that
she, too, was infected. Struggling against
fear, depression and anger, Mary ultimately
found a new mission: to educate others about
the need for compassion and activism in the
face of the AIDS epidemic. |
