KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: In the early 1980s, CNN began a major effort to inform you about what was then the mysterious disease called AIDS. CNN's Chicago Bureau Chief Jeff Flock reflects on a turning point in that coverage.</s>ANNOUNCER: Bringing you the world for 20 years, this is</s>CNN. JEFF FLOCK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Brian White was a kid that really put a human face on AIDS. Up until that point, people thought that only people who were gay or were intravenous drug users could get AIDS and a lot of people didn't care about the disease. He was somebody who made people care, unfortunately because he just looked like any other kid. He was a kid, for one, and he wasn't a drug user. He wasn't gay. He was just a normal kid from a normal town yet he got AIDS. One of the saddest lessons on Ryan White's death is that for now no one beats AIDS. It was such an unusual thing for a middle class kid without any other characteristics to get the disease that people couldn't believe it and Michael Jackson befriended Ryan White. And Elton John became his pal. I remember that at the Farm Aid concert, there was a Farm Aid concert and Elton John performed "Candle In the Wind" as a tribute to Ryan White.</s>ELTON JOHN: This one's for Ryan.</s>FLOCK: Long before Princess Diana, "Candle In the Wind" for Ryan White, and the next day Ryan died.</s>DR. MARTIN KLEIMAN: It is with great sadness and deeply felt personal loss that I must inform you that Ryan White has died of the complications of his AIDS.
CNN20: Ryan White Dies, April 8, 1990