Chicago Tribune - May 5, 2002
James Janega, Tribune staff reporter

For days, in coffee shops, church vestibules and highway roadhouses, most conversations drifted toward the 18-year-old college student from Chicago--how he had come to play center on Huron University's basketball team, been diagnosed with HIV, and been the first to be charged with a felony under South Dakota law for allegedly keeping word of his illness from a new girlfriend as they had sex five times in three weeks.

Beyond touching off a public health investigation that so far has identified three others infected with the disease (the girlfriend is not among them), and inflammatory comments from Gov. Bill Janklow that frightened South Dakotans and brought out-of-town reporters flocking to Huron, Briteramos' arrest seemed to signal the end of the town's status as a haven from the troubles of the wider world.

"It's become a big city here, all in the last few days," said Marion Dring, 60, a neighbor and frequent visitor to Huron.

"It's too bad."

America of earlier time

In the middle of rolling rangeland and two hours' drive from either Pierre or Sioux Falls, Huron still looks like the innocent America of an earlier time.

On one road into town, a driver passes the World's Largest Bull's Head, a carved wooden monstrosity atop a butte near Porter, S.D., then past road signs advertising Wall Drug (free ice water!), Tractors to Treasures, Reptile Gardens, and the (world's only) Corn Palace in Mitchell, S.D., which proudly boasts "We Are All Ears."

Huron is still distinguished as Home of the World's Largest Pheasant, a sculpture that gazes through fiberglass eyes at Ravine Lake northeast of town.

But even Huron has its challenges.

With a population in decline since a few major employers left town in the early-1990s, and a preponderance of video poker machines, it continues to face teen pregnancy rates high enough to hint at promiscuity among the town's youth--a social problem that became much more serious last week. As part of that, once-ignored relationships between college and high school students--some even say between college and middle school students--can no longer be overlooked.

Such was the undertone at the Huron High School prom the Saturday after Briteramos' charges were announced.

In a comforting seasonal ritual, the whole town packed a basketball arena to watch teens in tuxedos and evening dresses walk up a spotlighted red carpet during the prom's hourlong Grand March.

Families cheered as their children's names were announced. Someone tooted an air horn. A self-appointed wit among the students bellowed out nicknames.

But much of that was show, said Ron Russell, 45, father of one of the girls at the prom.

"It's not forgotten," he said of the charges against Briteramos and the HIV scare they touched off. "I just think it's put away for the night."

Angry reactions

A few hours before the prom started, little else was discussed in the Prime Time Tavern.

A popular restaurant on the south edge of town, Prime Time has steer horns over the cash register, a small casino in back, and steak dinners that, at this time of year, draw college students and kids in prom clothes, young men in camouflage jackets, and middle-aged couples in sweaters and dress shirts.

"The people I've been talking to are kind of [ticked] off," said Russ Dring, 64, who stopped with his wife for dinner on their way from Sioux Falls to their home in Redfield "If [Briteramos] knew about it and passed it around, he ought to be put away."

Ruth Hiles, the tavern's 32-year-old bartender, said some in town had already discussed the kind of punishment Briteramos should get if convicted.

"You know what I think? I think he should be locked up with none of the medication he'll need for his disease," she said as a teenage couple sat down at a nearby table. "He screwed up."

At the core of such harsh words is the place Huron University has within Huron itself.

Only a few blocks from the downtown area, the college is perhaps the largest economic engine in town, said Huron Mayor Mary Pearson. Among its 400 students are lifelong Huron residents seeking higher education.

Many high schoolers date them, and so several of them had already been tested for HIV.

"I think it hit home," Pearson said. Within hours of the charges against Briteramos being made public on April 25, classes had been canceled at both the college and the high school to hold HIV seminars. Pearson and state public health officials hurriedly scheduled a town meeting that evening in the high school auditorium, and free HIV testing was conducted at several sites around town.

"We wanted to be proactive on this, knowing that if we did not open the doors to have these questions answered, it would be blown out of proportion," Pearson said.

`They'd rather not know'

For the most part, she said, the plan seems to have worked.

By the time Briteramos appeared in court last Monday, the number of people tested for HIV each day had dropped from 75 on Friday, to 10 on Saturday, to one on Sunday.

Nevertheless, the influx of information did little to alter reactions among the mostly elderly population in town, for whom any public talk of intimate matters was clearly nerve-racking, said Beth Palleria, 23, a Huron resident who works in her family's coffee shop on the south end of town.

"People around here, they don't talk about sex, and they like to not know about it. They'd rather not know," Palleria said.
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