Back in 1988, Phil and Diane Stiles’ then-34-year-old son, Jamie, called from Washington, D.C., to say he was in the hospital. His doctors thought he’d had a bad asthma attack.

He’d be all right, he said.

The next day, he called to say the diagnosis had changed: Walking pneumonia. He was OK. He’d get over it.

On the third day, Jamie’s friend Michael called.

“He said, ‘You should come. Jamie is very sick,'” said Diane Stiles, 68.

Jamie Stiles had full-blown AIDS. He would die two and a half years later.

“I’d thought that Jamie was gay,” Diane Stiles said, sitting on a small couch in the couple’s living room. “But we’d not talked about it. I didn’t know what to say.”

“I wasn’t sure,” said 70-year-old Phil Stiles, who worked for the U.S. Postal Service for 32 years before retiring in July of 1988, a month before Jamie’s diagnosis.

“If someone had asked me how I would have handled something like this, I wouldn’t have known what to say — it’s the most disastrous thing that can happen to a parent,” said Diane Stiles. “But now that we’ve been through it, I think we’ve grown. I think we’re better people; I know we’ve helped a lot of parents and gay men by talking about it.”

Phil and Diane Stiles' son died of AIDS 12 years ago, and they have since become advocates for families of gays and lesbians. The Stileses are pictured on Thursday with a portrait of their son, Jamie, in their Lawrence home.

Opening up

For most of the 1990s, the Stileses shared their story with dozens of school, university and church groups — Methodists, mostly — in Kansas.

“We found that by our talking about it, others were able to talk about it,” Diane Stiles said.

She said that after meeting with a Sunday school class in Olathe, a husband and wife shared — for the first time — that their son, too, had died from AIDS.

“They hadn’t told anybody because they were afraid,” Diane Stiles said. “They didn’t know how people would react, but they needed to be able to talk about it.”

¢ AIDS increase is first in decade¢Stiles’ AIDS Memorial Quilt panel¢Centers for Disease Control Divisions of HIV/AIDS Prevention¢Douglas County AIDS Project¢ Obituary: Jamie Lynn Stiles

She paused. “I know that for me, being able to talk about it has been my saving grace,” she added.

Several times, the Stileses said, they’ve been asked whether they regretted Jamie’s being homosexual.

“We tell them, ‘Not at all,'” Diane Stiles said. “We loved Jamie for who he was, and his being gay was part of who he was. I can’t imagine a parent turning away their child because he or she happens to be homosexual.”

Powder keg

Jamie Stiles

Jamie Stiles graduated from Lawrence High School in 1972. After living in San Francisco and New York, he returned to Lawrence, earning a degree in architecture at Kansas University in 1986.

“He was the type of person who, once he set his mind to something, he got it done,” Phil Stiles said. “He was very smart, very creative, very funny. All the people he worked with said he would have been a great architect.”

Jamie Stiles was the oldest of the Stileses’ three boys. His brothers, Mark and Chris, are married and live in Prairie Village and Concordia, respectively. Each has two daughters.

Before Jamie Stiles’ death, he and Michael lived together for 13 years.

Diane Stiles said Jamie and Michael each insisted they had been monogamous throughout their relationship. Michael, who still lives in Washington, D.C., is HIV-negative.

Prior to Jamie’s AIDS diagnosis, Diane Stiles had been secretary at First United Methodist Church, 946 Vt., for 18 years.

“I had a son to take care of so I retired,” she said.

That’s not to say her contributions to the church lessened.

“The fact that they’ve been so willing to talk about their experiences has been a tremendous help,” said the Rev. Virgil Brady, pastor emeritus at First United Methodist.

Phil and Diane Stiles celebrate, rather than mourn, the life of their son, Jamie, who died of AIDS 12 years ago. Today, they are advocates for families with gay and lesbian members

“The issue of homosexuality within the church is a powder keg,” he said. “It’s a very divisive issue, but when people like the Stileses come forward and say ‘We’d like to talk about it,’ it helps break down that divisiveness. They move us forward.”

Because of the Stileses, Brady said, the church is having discussions that would have been unthinkable just 10 years ago.

“I’ll put it this way: I was around during the Civil Rights era and I saw the effect that it had on church,” Brady said. “That was nothing compared to this, in terms of potential divisiveness.”

The Stileses haven’t done much public speaking since Phil suffered a stroke four years ago.

“We’re ready to go back out,” Diane Stiles said. “We’re just waiting for somebody to ask.”