COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- For nine years, Michael Boyle lived a double
life.

   A trusted aide to Sen. Strom Thurmond, the 30-year-old Boyle shared
the South Carolina Republican's conservative ideology and rural
upbringing. But what he didn't share with Thurmond for years was the
knowledge that he was gay and infected with the AIDS virus.

   Finally, in 1991, he told Thurmond. From then until his death on
April 22, he worked to teach people about the disease that took his
life.

   "When he told me he had AIDS, I was just surprised and felt sorry
for him," Thurmond said in an interview published in The (Columbia)
State newspaper Sunday.

   "And I just hate to see a man of the qualities he had -- he had
ability, he was very courteous and capable -- I just hate to see
someone like that have AIDS and die from it."

   Boyle lived with the Thurmond family for a time, caring for the
senator's children. At his funeral in Aiken, Thurmond sat in the second
row, although the senator had buried his 22-year-old daughter, Nancy
Moore, just the week before.

   Boyle knew he was gay early on, but he said he also knew that in his
hometown of Aiken he had to remain in the closet if he wanted to
fulfill his dream of a political career.

   So the scholar and community activist led a double life, dating
pretty girls while a student at the University of South Carolina, but
always getting them home by 11 p.m. so he could go meet gay partners
later in the evening.

   Boyle was working for Thurmond in 1986 when he learned he had the
AIDS virus.

   "I was infected with HIV early in the epidemic not because I am a
gay man, but because I engaged in high-risk behavior," he once said. "I
did not know that this activity would put me at risk for anything, much
less cut short my life. I was 23 years old. I was going to live forever
and make a great success of my life."

   It was two years before he told his lover and four years before he
told Thurmond.

   After he went public he plunged into volunteer work for different
AIDS organizations and at a health center at Virginia's George Mason
University.

   "He truly had a mission. If his truth was going to help someone
else, they should know it -- so that none of the children would have to
sit in the chair where he was 10 years from now," said Penny Lane,
director of the Northern Virginia AIDS Ministry.

   Boyle's politics also changed. The lifelong Republican began to
speak out against funding cuts for AIDS education, and last year he
voted for Bill Clinton for president.