Payson's story is truly inspirational
Late Weston swimmer Payson Corbiere didn't let AIDS alter his positive outlook on life
By Bill Keefe
SPORTS CORRESPONDENT
SPORTS CORRESPONDENT
Somebody tells you a secret and you cross your heart and pinky swear you'll never tell another soul. An hour passes, maybe a couple of hours. Chances are, there's at least one more soul that's in on this once-confidential piece of information.
Imagine you are 12 years old and the secret you're told is you're HIV-positive. Imagine keeping that secret to yourself for 15 years - all the while leading a happy, fulfilling life, a life that healthy people would envy except that your easy-going, make-others-comfortable manner makes you too likable to envy. It seems impossible. That was the life Payson Corbiere, 27, led until the moment he died on December 15 (2000). That was the life that was celebrated by a standing-room crowd of more than 500 people at a memorial at First Parish Church on Boston Post Road December 19. That is the life that people will remember, cherish, marvel at and smile about for years to come.
Payson was many things in his life. He was a loving son, brother and boyfriend. He was a great friend. He was a champion swimmer at Weston High and in college. He was the class of 1992's co-president. He was a huge Red Sox fan, and a big sports fan in general. He was successful in his career. He was a devoted coach.
He was happy, kind, funny, determined, resilient, caring and loyal. "Pay" was all these things and many more, while functioning with the specter of a one-day terminal condition languishing in his mind - AIDS. People knew Pay was a hemophiliac and that's all they knew. Through his treatment, Pay contracted HIV by receiving bad blood when he was in middle school. He decided it was a private matter. Other than a few necessary people along the way, Pay told no one, not even his closest friends.
Despite that heavy burden, Pay never showed any outward signs that would lead one to believe something was wrong. Just the opposite, everything seemed great. He had every reason to be angry, frustrated, bitter and every other negative emotion. He chose not to.
"He didn't do anything wrong," says Jamie Neher, Pay's friend from the day the Corbiere family moved to Weston from Connecticut when both were in seventh grade. "He didn't make a mistake. He didn't do the things they taught you not to do. Unlucky doesn't justify what he got. He was sick for as long as I knew him and I never knew. It's amazing he never had that one day where he was really close to saying something. I would guess that there was, but we were probably watching a game and the conversation would turn and he'd just think he'd do it another time. "It just shows you what an unbelievably courageous person he was to have that burden on you all the time and be the way he was with all his friends. It was really just amazing."
Payson was diagnosed at birth with hemophilia, a rare genetic blood disorder affecting an estimated 20,000 Americans where a protein needed for clotting is either missing or malfunctioning. He did an excellent job of controlling his condition through intravenous treatments he administered to himself. What he was putting into his body was a concentrate of the missing or malfunctioning clotting factor developed from pooled human plasma. After slowly and painfully learning about AIDS in the early '80s, this factor concentrate became screened for HIV. So much of it was contaminated, that approximately 80 percent of severe hemophiliacs, the most acute of the disease's three classifications, contracted HIV, according to Cathy Comell, executive director of the New England Chapter of the National Hemophiliac Foundation.
"It was devastating," Comell says. "There has been a tremendous amount of anger and resentment that this could have been avoided. There were precautions that were not taken. The industry, blood bankers, the (Food and Drug Administration) and doctors did not get on top of this soon enough. They did not take steps to err on the side of caution." The treatment for hemophiliacs was totally clean by 1988 and is now synthetically made, eliminating all risk. Payson tested positive the first time he was tested in 1984.
"It was this thing with him that he didn't want anybody's pity," says Payson's mother, Dottie, about his decision not to tell people. "It wasn't the, thing about AIDS, it just wasn't his identity to be sick. It wasn't who he was. That's why he was able to beat the disease for so long."
Payson got involved in swimming because of its lack of contact. If being HIV-positive wasn't enough, he also had shoulder surgery as an eighth grader. He overcame both obstacles to tie for the Dual County League championship in the 50-meter freestyle as a junior and won it as a senior. He was an all-scholastic as a member of the 200-freestyle relay as a junior and graduated as a member of three school-record relay teams. Payson went on to swim in college at Ohio Wesleyan. He was an All-American as a member of the school's 200-medley relay team and served as captain his senior year. He did this despite being diagnosed with full-blown AIDS as a freshman.
Mike Foley was a Weston High classmate and teammate of Payson's. Just this past summer, they went to a Red Sox game together and Foley never knew of Payson's condition. "It's an amazing story to think back of all that he accomplished knowing now he had that all that time in his mind," Foley says. "He was just outstanding. He was a tremendous leader in his actions and the way he conducted himself. If we knew then what he was going through, to be a tremendous athlete and person with what was going on, I'm just more impressed with him as a human being."
Foley recalls Pay's competitive spirit in the pool and the rivalry he had with the top swimmer from Acton-Boxboro. "He swam with so much heart, " Foley says." Acton-Boxboro was our big rival back then. We lost three years in a row to them and beat them our senior year. Pay got matched up against their superstar swimmer at the time. The A-B kid ended up being state champion. Pay always led the relay against him and the kid never beat him. "He'd get up and say 'I'm going to hand you guys the lead.' He had no business beating this kid. He knew what to do and he always got the job done."
Says Weston swim coach and athletic director Pete Foley, "He was just a little pint of peanuts and most of the sprinters are big guys. He had the best technique of anybody I coached. He had this impish grin he'd like to think he'd steal a race from guys. He loved the underdog role."
Payson always handled his situation with grace and ease. He never complained, he just did what he had to do to try to be like everybody else. “He got kicked inadvertently once at practice in the thigh,” says Foley. “The bruise wouldn’t go away. It looked like someone hit him in the leg with a baseball bat. Right before one of the big meets, he’s giving himself some shots and tells me ‘Just stand at the door, Coach.’ I’m almost getting nauseous watching him stick himself with needles. The pool manager walks by and says ‘What’s going on?’ Payson said, ‘I’m just getting my steroids before the race.’ That day he tied for the league championship.
While at college, Payson would call Foley every now and then to chat and see how the swim team was doing. After he graduated, Payson landed a good job at the headquarters of Abercrombie and Fitch. He made his way back to Boston, where he lived with his sister Caitlan, whose apartment was near Fenway Park, making it easier for Payson to go to games. When he came back, he worked with the Weston swim team as much as he could.
Foley always thought Payson would be a great coach. When he was in high school, he would sit down and talk strategy with Foley and the other coaches. He knew the sport, he cared and he knew how to reach the kids. “He really had a special bond with the kids in the program,” Foley says. “The hardest thing I ever had to do was tell the team he died.”
Payson was in the hospital for much of this past November. Foley talked to him on Thanksgiving. “I really don’t feel that good,” Payson told him, but I’m not spending the day in the hospital. I fooled them. I’m showered and shaved.” Foley says he considered himself “fortunate” that he visited Payson the day he died. Even then, Foley recalls, he wanted to talk about the swim team and Manny Ramirez.
“He must be like a test study to do the things he was able to do and perform at such a high level for so long,” Foley says. “He was always upbeat. He is easily the most courageous person I’ve been associated with in my 30-plus years in coaching.”
Neher, Pay's longtime friend, was one of the speakers at the memorial service. He told those in attendance of Payson's trip to Mississippi in November to watch him play in the second stage of the PGA Tour qualifying tournament. He thought he was going to be playing in Florida, but was switched to Jackson, Miss. He told Pay about the change, thinking he wouldn't come, but he did. "He was really, really sick," Neher says. "He watched the first day, it was good weather. Then for two days, it rained out. We had to play 27 holes the last two days. He couldn't walk around so he'd watch me tee off, make the turn and see me finish."
"I made a playoff and won it and Pay was there to watch that It was great to have him there. It was the last time I saw him. As sick as he was, all he was into was how well I was playing. He never told me anything. I knew he was sick, but I didn't know the severity of it. Maybe if I was the one guy he didn't have to talk to it about. He didn't offer it to me and I didn't want to ask. Maybe I'd be the one person he could just relax with. As sick as he was, he certainly didn't have to go. He was just being a totally selfless person being there for me, being a good guy. It was a perfect image of Payson because he was always like that. He was usually really laid back. When I won the playoff, he had this huge smile and gave me a hug. I was thinking it was the only time I ever hugged Payson and I'm glad he did it because I never would have had the chance."
Neher remembers high school health classes when, looking back, he learned about Pay's resolve. "When he had (HIV) at that time, we were learning about it in school. He's sitting in a classroom listening to it with all of his pals and he's got it. At that time, when you had it, it was accepted you were going to die. Our perception when we heard about it was you get HIV , then you get AIDS and then you die. "Walking out of that class after you hear that, how do you deal with that? I'd go home and say, 'Screw it I don't want to go to class. I'm going home and wait to die.' He went out and did the exact opposite and lived his life the way you'd want to."
In addition to Neher, the other speakers at the memorial were Pete Foley, Payson' s godfather David Hilyard and Dr. Arthur Pappas, the Red Sox physician and part owner and surgeon who operated on Payson's shoulder in eighth grade. The two were close ever since. At least 50 people from Payson's Weston High class of '92 were in attendance. People came from Chicago, California arid Paris. The Weston swim team's meet for the day was postponed and the members came. Weston swimmers from all different years were there. The school where Payson's mother teaches gave early dismissal so the faculty could go. Tom Wintle, the presiding minister, said he never saw so many people in the church.
"It's amazing to me that he touched so many lives," says Pay's mother, Dottie. There has been an outpouring of contributions in Payson' s name to the Hemophiliac Foundation and Pete Foley and Neher are working on developing a scholarship fund. Dottie thinks it's good for people to hear Payson' s story. She and her daughter rode bicycles in Alaska in an AIDS fundraiser. She said if Payson had come out that he had AIDS then, they could have raised 10 times as much money, but he wouldn't do it. Dottie worked at a now-closed AIDS hospice in Mission Hill.
"He never complained," she says. "He'd come home, fall asleep in his dinner and go to bed at 7. He'd say 'If any of my friends call, say I'm in the shower.' I'd say, 'If I say you're in the shower, they're going to call back, you got to think of something else. "He broke down a couple of times. Once when Magic Johnson said he had AIDS. He cried and cried and did not go to school the next day. He couldn't handle the kids in school talking about it. It was the only day he missed school.
"He could be grumpy to me. I remember saying, 'Payson, you won't have any friends if your going to act like this. He said, 'Mommy, I don't act like this outside of the house. 'It amazed me what incredible strength he had.'
Imagine you are 12 years old and the secret you're told is you're HIV-positive. Imagine keeping that secret to yourself for 15 years - all the while leading a happy, fulfilling life, a life that healthy people would envy except that your easy-going, make-others-comfortable manner makes you too likable to envy. It seems impossible. That was the life Payson Corbiere, 27, led until the moment he died on December 15 (2000). That was the life that was celebrated by a standing-room crowd of more than 500 people at a memorial at First Parish Church on Boston Post Road December 19. That is the life that people will remember, cherish, marvel at and smile about for years to come.
Payson was many things in his life. He was a loving son, brother and boyfriend. He was a great friend. He was a champion swimmer at Weston High and in college. He was the class of 1992's co-president. He was a huge Red Sox fan, and a big sports fan in general. He was successful in his career. He was a devoted coach.
He was happy, kind, funny, determined, resilient, caring and loyal. "Pay" was all these things and many more, while functioning with the specter of a one-day terminal condition languishing in his mind - AIDS. People knew Pay was a hemophiliac and that's all they knew. Through his treatment, Pay contracted HIV by receiving bad blood when he was in middle school. He decided it was a private matter. Other than a few necessary people along the way, Pay told no one, not even his closest friends.
Despite that heavy burden, Pay never showed any outward signs that would lead one to believe something was wrong. Just the opposite, everything seemed great. He had every reason to be angry, frustrated, bitter and every other negative emotion. He chose not to.
"He didn't do anything wrong," says Jamie Neher, Pay's friend from the day the Corbiere family moved to Weston from Connecticut when both were in seventh grade. "He didn't make a mistake. He didn't do the things they taught you not to do. Unlucky doesn't justify what he got. He was sick for as long as I knew him and I never knew. It's amazing he never had that one day where he was really close to saying something. I would guess that there was, but we were probably watching a game and the conversation would turn and he'd just think he'd do it another time. "It just shows you what an unbelievably courageous person he was to have that burden on you all the time and be the way he was with all his friends. It was really just amazing."
Payson was diagnosed at birth with hemophilia, a rare genetic blood disorder affecting an estimated 20,000 Americans where a protein needed for clotting is either missing or malfunctioning. He did an excellent job of controlling his condition through intravenous treatments he administered to himself. What he was putting into his body was a concentrate of the missing or malfunctioning clotting factor developed from pooled human plasma. After slowly and painfully learning about AIDS in the early '80s, this factor concentrate became screened for HIV. So much of it was contaminated, that approximately 80 percent of severe hemophiliacs, the most acute of the disease's three classifications, contracted HIV, according to Cathy Comell, executive director of the New England Chapter of the National Hemophiliac Foundation.
"It was devastating," Comell says. "There has been a tremendous amount of anger and resentment that this could have been avoided. There were precautions that were not taken. The industry, blood bankers, the (Food and Drug Administration) and doctors did not get on top of this soon enough. They did not take steps to err on the side of caution." The treatment for hemophiliacs was totally clean by 1988 and is now synthetically made, eliminating all risk. Payson tested positive the first time he was tested in 1984.
"It was this thing with him that he didn't want anybody's pity," says Payson's mother, Dottie, about his decision not to tell people. "It wasn't the, thing about AIDS, it just wasn't his identity to be sick. It wasn't who he was. That's why he was able to beat the disease for so long."
Payson got involved in swimming because of its lack of contact. If being HIV-positive wasn't enough, he also had shoulder surgery as an eighth grader. He overcame both obstacles to tie for the Dual County League championship in the 50-meter freestyle as a junior and won it as a senior. He was an all-scholastic as a member of the 200-freestyle relay as a junior and graduated as a member of three school-record relay teams. Payson went on to swim in college at Ohio Wesleyan. He was an All-American as a member of the school's 200-medley relay team and served as captain his senior year. He did this despite being diagnosed with full-blown AIDS as a freshman.
Mike Foley was a Weston High classmate and teammate of Payson's. Just this past summer, they went to a Red Sox game together and Foley never knew of Payson's condition. "It's an amazing story to think back of all that he accomplished knowing now he had that all that time in his mind," Foley says. "He was just outstanding. He was a tremendous leader in his actions and the way he conducted himself. If we knew then what he was going through, to be a tremendous athlete and person with what was going on, I'm just more impressed with him as a human being."
Foley recalls Pay's competitive spirit in the pool and the rivalry he had with the top swimmer from Acton-Boxboro. "He swam with so much heart, " Foley says." Acton-Boxboro was our big rival back then. We lost three years in a row to them and beat them our senior year. Pay got matched up against their superstar swimmer at the time. The A-B kid ended up being state champion. Pay always led the relay against him and the kid never beat him. "He'd get up and say 'I'm going to hand you guys the lead.' He had no business beating this kid. He knew what to do and he always got the job done."
Says Weston swim coach and athletic director Pete Foley, "He was just a little pint of peanuts and most of the sprinters are big guys. He had the best technique of anybody I coached. He had this impish grin he'd like to think he'd steal a race from guys. He loved the underdog role."
Payson always handled his situation with grace and ease. He never complained, he just did what he had to do to try to be like everybody else. “He got kicked inadvertently once at practice in the thigh,” says Foley. “The bruise wouldn’t go away. It looked like someone hit him in the leg with a baseball bat. Right before one of the big meets, he’s giving himself some shots and tells me ‘Just stand at the door, Coach.’ I’m almost getting nauseous watching him stick himself with needles. The pool manager walks by and says ‘What’s going on?’ Payson said, ‘I’m just getting my steroids before the race.’ That day he tied for the league championship.
While at college, Payson would call Foley every now and then to chat and see how the swim team was doing. After he graduated, Payson landed a good job at the headquarters of Abercrombie and Fitch. He made his way back to Boston, where he lived with his sister Caitlan, whose apartment was near Fenway Park, making it easier for Payson to go to games. When he came back, he worked with the Weston swim team as much as he could.
Foley always thought Payson would be a great coach. When he was in high school, he would sit down and talk strategy with Foley and the other coaches. He knew the sport, he cared and he knew how to reach the kids. “He really had a special bond with the kids in the program,” Foley says. “The hardest thing I ever had to do was tell the team he died.”
Payson was in the hospital for much of this past November. Foley talked to him on Thanksgiving. “I really don’t feel that good,” Payson told him, but I’m not spending the day in the hospital. I fooled them. I’m showered and shaved.” Foley says he considered himself “fortunate” that he visited Payson the day he died. Even then, Foley recalls, he wanted to talk about the swim team and Manny Ramirez.
“He must be like a test study to do the things he was able to do and perform at such a high level for so long,” Foley says. “He was always upbeat. He is easily the most courageous person I’ve been associated with in my 30-plus years in coaching.”
Neher, Pay's longtime friend, was one of the speakers at the memorial service. He told those in attendance of Payson's trip to Mississippi in November to watch him play in the second stage of the PGA Tour qualifying tournament. He thought he was going to be playing in Florida, but was switched to Jackson, Miss. He told Pay about the change, thinking he wouldn't come, but he did. "He was really, really sick," Neher says. "He watched the first day, it was good weather. Then for two days, it rained out. We had to play 27 holes the last two days. He couldn't walk around so he'd watch me tee off, make the turn and see me finish."
"I made a playoff and won it and Pay was there to watch that It was great to have him there. It was the last time I saw him. As sick as he was, all he was into was how well I was playing. He never told me anything. I knew he was sick, but I didn't know the severity of it. Maybe if I was the one guy he didn't have to talk to it about. He didn't offer it to me and I didn't want to ask. Maybe I'd be the one person he could just relax with. As sick as he was, he certainly didn't have to go. He was just being a totally selfless person being there for me, being a good guy. It was a perfect image of Payson because he was always like that. He was usually really laid back. When I won the playoff, he had this huge smile and gave me a hug. I was thinking it was the only time I ever hugged Payson and I'm glad he did it because I never would have had the chance."
Neher remembers high school health classes when, looking back, he learned about Pay's resolve. "When he had (HIV) at that time, we were learning about it in school. He's sitting in a classroom listening to it with all of his pals and he's got it. At that time, when you had it, it was accepted you were going to die. Our perception when we heard about it was you get HIV , then you get AIDS and then you die. "Walking out of that class after you hear that, how do you deal with that? I'd go home and say, 'Screw it I don't want to go to class. I'm going home and wait to die.' He went out and did the exact opposite and lived his life the way you'd want to."
In addition to Neher, the other speakers at the memorial were Pete Foley, Payson' s godfather David Hilyard and Dr. Arthur Pappas, the Red Sox physician and part owner and surgeon who operated on Payson's shoulder in eighth grade. The two were close ever since. At least 50 people from Payson's Weston High class of '92 were in attendance. People came from Chicago, California arid Paris. The Weston swim team's meet for the day was postponed and the members came. Weston swimmers from all different years were there. The school where Payson's mother teaches gave early dismissal so the faculty could go. Tom Wintle, the presiding minister, said he never saw so many people in the church.
"It's amazing to me that he touched so many lives," says Pay's mother, Dottie. There has been an outpouring of contributions in Payson' s name to the Hemophiliac Foundation and Pete Foley and Neher are working on developing a scholarship fund. Dottie thinks it's good for people to hear Payson' s story. She and her daughter rode bicycles in Alaska in an AIDS fundraiser. She said if Payson had come out that he had AIDS then, they could have raised 10 times as much money, but he wouldn't do it. Dottie worked at a now-closed AIDS hospice in Mission Hill.
"He never complained," she says. "He'd come home, fall asleep in his dinner and go to bed at 7. He'd say 'If any of my friends call, say I'm in the shower.' I'd say, 'If I say you're in the shower, they're going to call back, you got to think of something else. "He broke down a couple of times. Once when Magic Johnson said he had AIDS. He cried and cried and did not go to school the next day. He couldn't handle the kids in school talking about it. It was the only day he missed school.
"He could be grumpy to me. I remember saying, 'Payson, you won't have any friends if your going to act like this. He said, 'Mommy, I don't act like this outside of the house. 'It amazed me what incredible strength he had.'
