Barbara Bush's work in the '80s and '90s with AIDS patients fondly remembered

First Lady Barbara Bush holding a baby while two-year-old child takes photo with a toy camera at a hospice for children with AIDS.

See more photos of the first lady through the years... First Lady Barbara Bush holding a baby while two-year-old child takes photo with a toy camera at a hospice for children with AIDS.

See more photos of the first lady through the years... Photo: John Zich/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images Photo: John Zich/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images Image 1 of / 41 Caption Close Barbara Bush's work in the '80s and '90s with AIDS patients fondly remembered 1 / 41 Back to Gallery

As the whole world rallies around the family as matriarch Barbara Bush enters the sunset of her life, numerous stories are coming out now about her decades in the spotlight.

A tweet this week reminded social media users of an important event in Mrs. Bush's tenure as first lady, one of the most heartwarming and human of them all.

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Homelessness, teenage pregnancy, children's education and AIDS were some of the issues that she took on as the first lady starting in 1989 just after her husband's inauguration.

A First Lady has the power to make people think. In 1989 Barbara Bush visited a Washington hospice where abandoned infants with the AIDS virus were being cared for. Some folks were ignorant and thought you could get AIDS from touching someone. Mrs. Bush hugged and kissed the kids pic.twitter.com/V2w41XkXlR — West Wing Reports (@WestWingReport) April 17, 2018

A photo circulated by Paul Brandus with West Wing Reports shows Mrs. Bush holding a baby while a 2-year-old child nearby takes their photo with a toy camera. These were two kids at a Washington-area hospice for children with AIDS.

This was an age when nothing could be done medically for those with the disease. It was a death sentence and what's worse it came with a mountain of misinformation that only worked to separate those in need from those who might be ignorant of the facts.

At a time, Brandus notes, when some were worried about merely touching someone with the disease for fear of contracting it the first lady was treating them like she would have treated her own grandchildren or her own children before them.

Princess Diana had done something similar at New York's Harlem Hospital. Like Mrs. Bush, the princess had strived to make sure that the public understood that AIDS wasn't contracted through simple human gestures like hugs and handshakes. Mrs. Bush had toured the same hospital previously.

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Along the way Mrs. Bush also understood that it wasn't just the smallest, most innocent victims of the AIDS epidemic who deserved love.

A story from 2012, written by former Clinton and Gore staffer Tom Rosshirt, details Mrs. Bush's encounter with people very close to him in the late '80s and early '90s. This was a time, Rosshirt wrote, when people could still be fired if an employer discovered that they had done even volunteer work with AIDS patients.

His brother Matt had died of AIDS in Houston. Before he died, a local volunteer named Lou Tesconi had befriended Matt and the family, making frequent visits with the family as Matt's health declined.

A short time later at Grandma's House, a Washington, D.C., charity home for infants with AIDS, Tesconi was able to meet Mrs. Bush while she was there on a special visit. He was on a team of AIDS advocates who were tasked with speaking to Mrs. Bush.

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Rosshirt wrote that during a briefing behind the scenes he told the first lady that adults with AIDS needed affection and care too.

"Mrs. Bush, it is a fantastic thing that you are holding these babies with AIDS." Tesconi told Mrs. Bush. "But the country sees them as innocent and the rest of us with AIDS as guilty. The whole suffering AIDS community needs a collective embrace from you today."

Photo: Tim Graham/Tim Graham/Getty Images, Getty Images Princess Diana with First Lady Barbara Bush visiting The Middlesex...

Rosshirt wrote that just then Mrs. Bush walked over and hugged Tesconi. Later at a public press conference she repeated the gesture in front of reporters, embracing a gay man with AIDS for the world to see.

Two years later, as Tesconi was dying in a hospital, he received a letter from Mrs. Bush. In the letter, Rosshirt wrote, she told Tesconi that even though he was dying that he should know that his life mattered and that he did great work for those to follow.

Mrs. Bush wrote in her 1994 memoir that the Tesconi encounter deeply impacted her.

"I especially remember a young man who told us that he had been asked to leave his church studies when it was discovered he had AIDS," she wrote. "His parents had also disowned him, and he said he longed to be hugged again by his mother."

"A poor substitute, I hugged that darling young man and did it again in front of the cameras. But what he really needed was family."

Professor and historian Nancy Beck Young at the University of Houston told Chron.com this week that what Mrs. Bush did was monumental in the AIDS fight.

"Her message to the American people, who in the early days of the AIDS epidemic were afraid to be near those who were sick, was that there was no risk to individuals who had such casual contact," Young said.

"This message of compassion at a critical moment in the history of AIDS helped Americans to learn that AIDS was yet another disease to manage and not a death sentence. She brought needed publicity to the problems of those who suffered and helped humanize her husband's presidency."

Craig Hlavaty is a reporter for Chron.com and HoustonChronicle.com.