Miami Herald - Sunday, July 18, 1999
Ajowa Nzinga Ifateyo - Herald Staff Writer

That's the day Darrious' father, Ronnie Nanton, then 38 and already the breadwinner, became the sole caretaker of his son, who also had fallen victim to the HIV virus, which had started to compromise his immune system.

That was the day that a grieving and frightened father traces to the beginning of an education by fire. It led Nanton to start an organization of dads who, like himself, were thrust into roles that they were as little prepared for as the deaths of the women in their lives.

"I am a warrior," said Nanton, who last year started FATHERS Voices, a support and advocacy group of men who, by themselves, are raising children infected by HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. FATHERS is an acronym for Fathers Association Team for HIV Education Resource and Services.

"This thing has changed me," said Nanton, now 41, of Miami Beach. "I'm not the same person who came into this, dumb, ignorant, not caring, not willing to understand the process. Today I am open for anything that can help better the [HIV/AIDS] situation and combat it to the point of eradication."

Three years after the death of his live-in girlfriend, Nanton heads an organization that AIDS education and advocacy groups say is unique and much needed. FATHERS Voices has about a dozen men from Miami Shores, Miami Beach, South Miami, Liberty City and Carol City who meet twice monthly in such places as Jay's Drugs and Our God Reigns Center and Ministries, both in Liberty City. The members hear one another's stories, exchange tips, and plan ways to make it easier to obtain the help they need. Fathers need classes

That help could be training health care workers not to look over their shoulders for a woman when fathers take their children for medical help. Or it could mean including them in HIV/AIDS literature, which they say is geared toward gay men, women and children. Or providing parenting classes specifically for men, especially those caring for girls who are infected.

The Journal of American Medicine, in a Dec. 1992 article, projected that 24,600 children and 21,000 adolescents would lose their mothers to AIDS by 1995. By 2000 that number for both is expected to exceed 80,000, JAMA said. The Centers for Disease Control, the Miami-Dade Health Department and the National Pediatric Aids Foundation do not keep records.

Jennifer Lange, program administrator with the state Department of Children and Families, said that 693 single men who head households in Miami-Dade County are caring for children. She did not know how many were AIDS-related.

Statistics on the number of fathers raising kids after their mothers died of AIDS are not kept, Nanton said. Health officials see a need for such information.

"People need to acknowledge that there are fathers out there who do what mothers traditionally used to do," said Clarence Cryer, senior health educator for the Miami-Dade County Health Department's Office of HIV/AIDS Services.

Cryer said Nanton's work with FATHERS Voices is extremely important and is long overdue for a segment of people in the HIV arena who have been overlooked by those who provide services.

"He's breaking ground," Cryer said. "There's nothing like it in the state of Florida."

Conference spurs group

Nanton -- who has not contracted the disease -- is also respected in Washington where he first conceived the idea for FATHERS Voices while at a national conference on HIV/AIDS.

"Rodney is one of the best advocates I've met," said David Harvey, executive director of the AIDS Policy Center for Children, Youth and Families. "He's articulate. He is organized. He is unrelentless. He's terrific."

The national training and education center, based in the nation's capital, sponsored the conference in 1998. There Nanton met other fathers from New York and Detroit in circumstances similar to his.

Nanton and Lenny Rabb, a Brooklyn father whose wife left him alone with five kids, one of whom was infected with HIV, asked if they could conduct a workshop. It received rave reviews. The fathers stayed in touch, producing a national newsletter.

"Without Ronnie I could not have done this by myself," Rabb said. "It's a miracle I met someone like him who was able to be on the same page I was on."

Nanton is now certified by the state of Florida to train and counsel people about HIV/AIDS. He is also a board member of the National AIDS Policy Center. He goes out at night with the Miami-Dade County Health Department to Liberty City drug holes and prostitute hang-outs to talk about being safe and to pass out condoms.

All of this concern stems from his love for his son.

Darrious had contracted AIDS before his first birthday. He has mold on his lungs, and requires 13 different pills twice a day. A tube in his stomach pumps extra nutrients into him overnight to keep his strength up. Clueless on child care

Nanton said his girlfriend had not told him what she had been doing to take care of their child.

"She was trying to save me from the trauma of seeing her dying," he said. "She was trying to get me to leave."

But Nanton did not leave.

In the months before she died, Nanton cared for his girlfriend, whose name he doesn't want to reveal out of respect for her family.

"I had to take care of her and him, bathe her, feed her, tote her from one room to the next," he said. "When she died she actually died in my arms."

Before she died, he said he assured her that he would take care of their son.

"I was completely lost in terms of what to do," he said. "There was no support in place to help. It was more than putting food in his mouth and clothes on his back. I had to learn to keep my house, make sure he got his medication, make sure I stayed mentally stable myself, connect myself with support groups to be able to talk about my fears, concerns and things I didn't understand."

He asked all kinds of questions of the doctors at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Pediatric Immunology Center, where Darrious was enrolled. He took classes. He went to conferences and talked with others.

Once when Darrious broke out in warts and in chicken pox, Nanton was confronted with a tough decision. What was more important: his son or his job?

Son comes first

He was then a live-in monitor for the Commitment Home for Juvenile Offenders in Fort Lauderdale, bringing home $1,800 a month.

"I really had to stop everything and tend to his care," he said of his son.

His income plummeted. He was receiving a $484 Social Security check for Darrious and $180 from the state for Aid to Families With Dependent Children -- a total of $664 -- to make rent, buy food and care for a sick son.

"That was a very humbling experience -- when you're used to working and not having to rely on the system and then all of a sudden you're not able to work anymore; your finances are not there and the system is not very friendly toward you trying to be an individual out there caring for a child," he said.

The reaction from many social workers was that he was a big, strong man and he should be working, he said.

"At the time my son needed me more than I needed to be working," he said.

That attitude among social workers is not the same toward women, who are afforded all kinds of help, Nanton said. One worker even offered him an option of putting his child in foster care so he could be adopted.

"I felt like they didn't see me as being the caretaker, or me having a great interest in maintaining that role at that time," he said.

July 15, 1999

Today, Nanton is fighting for his child's life and the lives of other children, born and unborn. Last month, University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Pediatric Immunology Center hired him as a peer educator to work with fathers of kids with HIV.

Darrious now is "high-spirited," he said. "Sometimes you really question if he's really sick. He is always playful and wants you to give him hugs and kisses and he manipulates you to pick him up."

Darrious loves the beach, playing Nintendo and Power Rangers. And he remembers his mother. "He still today often tells me he misses his mother," Nanton said. "He doesn't want her to be dead; he wants her to come back. I have to explain that it doesn't work like that."

The love Nanton puts into action fuels a passion, which, say those who know him, gives him a "million ideas" and makes him eager to get the word out to others who could end up like him.

"He has become a soldier and an advocate in the HIV/AIDS arena," said Cryer, the health department worker. "He's out there everyday trying to make a difference."

e-mail: aifateyo@herald.com
990718
MH990703

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