Captured on a WSJV-TV news tape, Ryan White struggles to hear his teacher on the phone as he learns remotely from in thr 1980s, not allowed in his Kokomo school because the teen caught AIDS from a blood transfusion. White would have turned 50 on Dec. 6, 2021. Photo provided
Rachael Stoeltje, director of the Indiana University Libraries Moving Image Archive, holds tapes from a former Elkhart TV station at IU's Ruth Lilly Auxillary Library Facility on Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021. Herald-Times photo by Rich Janzaruk
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The last three employees of Elkhart TV station WSJV didn’t savor the idea of letting 1,591 tapes of news footage land in a Dumpster.
But, tasked with clearing out the office in 2017, the options were slim. Luckily, an Indiana University archivist was eager to help.
So now you can go to a website that serves up the 1980s and 1990s — an unpredictable time warp. Out of the 116 tapes that are archived so far, all you know is the year stamped on the video link. Then there are dozen or more numbered links, almost all of which lack any label.
Among these finds — all of it somewhat raw local, state and national TV footage — IU students unearthed 10 minutes about Ryan White, the teen-aged Kokomo boy whose case of AIDS from a blood transfusion in the 1980s made him a poster child for fears about the poorly understood virus.
White, who died of AIDS at age 18 in 1990, would have turned 50 on Dec. 6.
Remembering the life of Ryan White:'He left a lasting legacy.'
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