Wrap It, Grandpa

Child, I haven't had sex in 40 years," says 64-year-old Lillian Cole, laughing unself-consciously. She's sitting in her wheelchair on the porch in front of the Don Bosco Senior Center, which faces a row of brick buildings in the historic Columbus Park neighborhood.

"I ain't missed it, either," Cole continues.

Don Bosco is a day center where disabled individuals and people over 60 meet for cheap lunches (the center requests a $1 donation), attend dance and exercise classes, play bingo and make new friends. Staff members estimate that they register as many as 600 regular visitors a year, most of whom take a special bus to and from the center. The people who pass time here — the men in high-waisted pants playing pool in the back room, the women gossiping in the lobby — aren't usually thought to be at risk for sexually transmitted diseases. But that might be changing.

Of the 138 new cases of HIV reported to the Kansas City Health Department this year, 11 of them have been people 60 years of age and older.

When it comes to the topic of sex among the elderly, Don Bosco Director Anne Miller doesn't blink.

"In less than 10 years, we've had six marriages," Miller says. Her center holds dances for its seniors on alternating Fridays. At the end of the events, she says, "We see some of the cutest couples leaving together. Sometimes one of them doesn't drive, so that's the excuse: 'I'm going to give them a ride home.' It's nice that people are enjoying each other's company in their later years."

Miller is proud that Don Bosco's seniors are examples of how it's possible to be active and happy in the sunset years. But medical experts are afraid that when the "greatest generation" hooks up, it's without much thought about safety. Women who have gone through menopause might shrug off the idea of using a condom. And some of these people went to school in an era when schools didn't teach sex-ed.

But Kansas City has one globe-trotting elder who has made it her goal to teach seniors and health professionals that young people aren't the only ones who get HIV.

Jane Fowler loves jewelry. Two chunky bracelets rattle on her wrist. The 73-year-old wears youthful sandals and bold, bright clothing — reds and pinks and polka dots.

A decade ago, the North Kansas City resident was appearing on 20/20 and Oprah and being interviewed by People magazine.

"I didn't have an opportunity to really meet Oprah," Fowler says modestly, though she spent a few minutes sitting across from Winfrey. "I don't know what I expected. You fly into Chicago the night before, find a restaurant or eat in the hotel, then you go on the show and you fly home."

A producer for 20/20 followed Fowler all around Kansas City before flying her to New York to be interviewed by Lynn Sherr — the People reporter from the Chicago bureau came to Kansas City to watch Fowler address a group of people who met in a church.

Now Fowler treks around the country, giving talks at national AIDS conferences and telling a story that she has told thousands of times.

When Fowler was a young woman in Kansas City in the 1950s, she knew of a home for unwed mothers near the Country Club Plaza. "We used to see the girls walking around, and our mothers would say, 'See? You don't want to be like that.' Good girls waited."

Fowler was a virgin on her wedding night in 1959. Two years earlier, she graduated from the University of Kansas with a degree in journalism. She was hired as a reporter and feature writer at The Kansas City Star. There, she met her husband, who also was a writer. They had a son.

Fowler describes her life as charmed — until the day, 24 years later, when her husband blindsided her with the news that he was leaving her for another woman.

It was 1983. Fowler was 48. She had never imagined that she would be divorced, but soon she was living in an apartment near Crown Center. She started dating for the first time in a quarter century (her first date was within walking distance, at the American Restaurant). She wasn't promiscuous, Fowler says. She didn't go to singles bars. "I went out with men my age, who, like myself, had been married and were divorced."

Fowler concentrated on her career and on raising her son, Stephen — until she opened a letter from an insurance company on January 6, 1991. She was trying to switch providers and had taken a blood test. The insurance company had sent over a medical technician. At Fowler's dining-room table, the technician had pricked Fowler's finger for the sample. Trying not to look at the needle, Fowler had turned away to look out the window, focusing on the concrete tower of the Liberty Memorial. She sat at that same table to read that the insurance provider was declining her coverage, citing a "significant blood abnormality."

Within hours, Fowler was in her longtime physician's office. The doctor looked at a fax from the insurance agency and told her, "Jane, this insurance company claims your blood tested positive for HIV."