Jean Mayer, a renowned nutritionist who championed the expansion of the federal school-lunch and food-stamp programs, died after a heart attack Jan. 1. He was 72.
While serving as a consultant to the 1969 White House Conference on Food, Nutrition, and Health, Mr. Mayer argued that human achievement is linked directly to nutrition. The conference recommended that every needy child be provided a free lunch at school each day, leading the Nixon Administration to pledge increased support for the school-lunch program.
The conference also proposed a huge increase in funding for the food-stamp program.
At the time of his death, Mr. Mayer, a former president of Tufts University, was the university’s chancellor.
Ricky Ray, the eldest of three brothers with AIDS who successfully fought for the right to attend school in their Florida district, died Dec. 13 at his home in Orlando. He was 15.
Ricky and his brothers, Robert, 14, and Randy, 13, apparently were infected with the AIDS virus during blood transfusions to treat their hemophilia before the nation’s blood supply was monitored for the human immunodeficiency virus. In 1986, the DeSoto County school board barred them from attending Memorial Elementary School after learning they were H.I.V.-positive.
The Ray family filed suit and won the right to send the boys to school and received $1.1 million in damages. A separate suit against the pharmaceutical companies responsible for the H.I.V.-tainted medication was settled for $1 million.
Following the verdict against the district, parents marched in protest and withdrew their children from the school. The family also received death threats until their house was firebombed in 1987, and they moved to Sarasota.
Ricky Ray was diagnosed with AIDS in March 1991, more than a year after Robert’s diagnosis. Randy, though infected with the virus, has yet to develop symptoms.
