David and Peter Witbeck faced life-threatening illness, painful procedures and discrimination, but left a lasting legacy in their community
The shocking discovery of hemophilia in David Witbeck followed circumcision in 1975. His mother, Carmelita, practiced inserting a needle into a ripe orange to acquire the necessary skill to infuse him intravenously with medicine to treat his recurrent bleeding episodes. A brother, Peter, was born three years later in 1978 who also had hemophilia.
Carmelita brought her two young sons and their infant sister 200 miles to our clinic on a greyhound bus, to learn how to care for them in the small logging town in the mountains where they lived in a little house with a dirt driveway. The painful repeated bleeding episodes were relieved by their mother’s infusions of medicine. The mother sold her piano to help pay for medical expenses.
In 1985, when the brothers were ages ten and seven, tests revealed that they had become infected with HIV from the medicine they had received. To be closer to a hospital where they could receive medical care, the family moved from the mountains into a larger town. However, their admission to the public school was opposed by the parents of other school children because of the fear of AIDS. To avoid stressful confrontation, the brothers and their family returned to their mountain community where they previously lived.
The two brothers died of AIDS, one day apart, the day after Christmas in 1992. David was seventeen; Peter was fourteen.
Their lives had a profound effect on their community. Despite their many days of pain and illness, they never complained–although they suffered from two life-threatening medical burdens, hemophilia and AIDS. Their lives were a message of the importance of love. The local newspaper and the little town where they lived in the mountains proclaimed them as heroes.
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