Terry Taylor, RN: Courageous HIV/AIDS Activist

Terry Sullivan Taylor, RN, was born in Charlotte in 1941 and graduated from Watts Hospital School of Nursing in Durham in 1959. While Taylor was in nursing school, her sister Tonda “came out” as a lesbian. Her parents reacted as many people reacted in 1959—they sent her to a psychiatrist to "get straightened out.” In the early 1980s, while working as an emergency room nurse at Charlotte Memorial Hospital, she cared for her first AIDSpatient. At that time, HIV/AIDS was commonly misunderstood and feared. The popular press called AIDS a disease of the “four H club” - homosexuals, heroin addicts, hemophiliacs, and Haitians. At the same time Taylor was learning about HIV/AIDS as a nurse, the disease became personal. Her heterosexual brother, who received tainted blood transfusions to fight cancer, and her physician father both died of HIV/AIDS.