John,
For most of my life, I’ve been a "big" brother through Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, one of the largest volunteer mentoring programs in the country.
So I couldn’t let National Siblings Day go by without telling you about my "little" brother, Nick. The bond we share is one the most transformative relationships of my life. 🙏
I was finishing up grad school in rural Connecticut when I was paired with Nick, a young boy from a family in New Haven who was 8 years old.
Me and Nick circa 1993. Yea that’s hair on my head.
This little dude was so sweet and *incredibly* smart, and I felt so lucky to be his mentor. Nick had recently lost his father to AIDS, and his mother was dying from it, too.
I remember meeting Nick’s mom in bed, under a blanket. She was just skin and bones. It blew me away to think that my "little" would lose both of his parents before his 9th birthday. Right before she passed away in 1994, I promised Nick’s mom I would continue looking after her son and help him graduate from college.
By then, the HIV/AIDS epidemic had claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. America’s most vulnerable communities were decimated, while racist and homophobic stigma around the disease grew. In 1993, there were an estimated 2.5 million AIDS cases globally.
The Reagan White House tragically failed to take action a decade earlier, and even laughed off questions about the epidemic as it spread across the United States. The U.S. government’s failure to fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic resulted in unforgivable mass death and the destruction of families like Nick’s.
This core observation of our society upended everything I knew. To fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic — and the American disease of systemic inequality — we needed to invest more in essential safety net programs and policies that help working families. I started following a new path of public service to fight inequality — and that’s exactly what I’m *still* doing today.
Throughout the years and across different states, Nick and I maintained our "big" and "little" mentorship. And 15 years later, we both held up our ends of our promise. This is Nick’s graduation from college in Washington, PA with Gisele + Baby Karl in 2009. I had just won my second term as Braddock’s mayor — a path that Nick put me on.
Thanks for everything, John. I’m continually overwhelmed by your support.
John
John Fetterman
Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania
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Paid for by Fetterman for PA
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