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The Kleiner Triplets

Graduating Seniors and Their Amazing Parents

I met the Kleiner triplets, Abby, Megan, and Sam, when they were in 1st grade in 2008. They were in my Sunday school class and it was really cool for me because I’d never known triplets before.

I taught them Sunday school until middle school. I watched a lot of kids grow up during those years (I will never teach 3rd grade boys again) and those three were rock-solid good kids the entire time.

Their mother, Jennifer (Jenny) Kleiner, and her mother, Barbara Butler, brought them to church each week. Jenny was always upbeat and garrulous, their grandmother friendly and open. I, like most congregants, assumed the father didn’t attend because he was working or was a different religion. After a few years I realized there must be more to their story. But I didn’t ask.

The triplets graduated from high school this June and will soon be unleashed into the world and given the freedom to become adults.

In David Foster Wallace’s famous 2005 graduation speech, “What is Water,”* he addresses this passage into adulthood. Specifically, he warns that our individual universe and daily routine often detracts from empathetic relationships, skewing our awareness of others.

David says “… [the] most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about,” and “…everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe." I figured if Jenny wanted me to know about her husband she’d tell me. But she didn’t. As the center of my universe, I overlooked the fact that her own routine and universe may have precluded her need to inform me or, rather, everyone with whom she may come into contact.

Now, I don’t condone voicing every query batting around one’s brain. But they seemed a stable, happy family so, well, I finally asked.

Turns out, their story is heart-breaking, courageous, and amazing. Further, they generously agreed to let me share it with readers.

Matthew Kleiner (Matt) was diagnosed with hemophilia in his youth. When he was 12, in the early 1980’s, he learned he had received a transfusion with HIV-tainted blood. At that time not much was known about HIV. In 1985, Ryan White, a teenager with hemophilia also acquired HIV through a contaminated blood transfusion. He was kicked out of school and died several years later.

To avoid the stigma and discrimination, Matt and his family kept his diagnosis secret. Matt completed high school and enrolled in Cornell University in 1989.

He continued his silence even as he witnessed the escalation of prejudice and misinformation on and off campus. But by his junior year he realized people’s ignorance could put them in danger of contracting HIV and he knew he was in a unique position to help protect them. With the support of peers and faculty he announced he was HIV positive.

He developed a “safe sex” program with the health department at Cornell in which he shared his story and educated audiences on facts and misconceptions about HIV. Audiences loved and learned from his presentations. Sharon Dittman, Associate Director of Cornell Health Services, wrote “His matter-of-fact approach, comedian's timing, sex-educator's frankness, counselor's sensitivity, insider's knowledge of Cornell student life, and occasional well-placed impatience made him an extraordinary educator.”

After graduating in 1993 he entered NYU Law and continued educating students and people around the country.

Jenny Butler met Matt during their first year of law school, in a Constitutional Law class. “He was very outgoing, I was more quiet. I thought he was adorable,” smiles Jen. One day toward the beginning of their shared class the professor asked students to “Look to your left. Now look to your right. Two of you are going to get married.”

As the prof prophesied, Jenny and Matt wed after law school in 1997. They went through several rounds of IVF with a doctor who specialized in HIV-discordant couples. Finally, in 2002 Jenny became pregnant. Several weeks into the pregnancy they had an ultrasound which revealed three beating hearts. Matt called out, “Now we’ve got a basketball team!”

At 28 weeks she checked into the hospital as a precaution. On New Year’s Day 2003 she delivered the babies due to her preeclampsia. They were 10 weeks early and sent to the NICU for two months for different reasons.

In mid-February, while the babies were still in the NICU, Matt became weak and confused due to his liver and was admitted to the same hospital. Jenny was concerned but he had been sick before and always recovered. “We visited the kids a lot in the hospital in January and February until he got admitted into a different hospital,” says Jenny. “Once he was admitted into the [other] hospital I spent most of the time at his hospital because I knew the kids were very well taken care of.” While he remained in the hospital, the babies began coming home one at a time.

But Matt never came home to join them. On the night of February 26, Jenny slept on his hospital bed with him. The next morning she lay beside him when he died of liver failure due to hepatitis C.

“He was so full of life. He got sick but he always got better,” Jenny recalls.

The triplets “were a lifeline, a reason to get up in the morning and keep going, says Jenny, then adds, “Sam looks a lot like him, he has some of his characteristics.”

With a baby nurse and many, many friends and relatives, Jenny continued practicing law and raising their babies.

She eventually moved to Westport to be near her mother (her father died in 1994.) The two of them raised the triplets, involving them in church, school activities, and sports. Uncles and grandfathers took the girls to father/daughter dances. Neighborhood dads took Sam to games with their kids.

This fall Abby heads to UConn, Megan to UMich, and Sam to Princeton.

When we peer outside of our universe and become truly aware of others, we learn there are incredible people who do incredible things, like admitting they having a “terrifying” disease so they can help others avoid it, and raising three children who would make any parent proud.

*Commencement speech to Kenyon College Class of 2005.

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