20 celebrities you didn’t know contracted HIV (With Pics)

14. Jerry Smith

Via nfl.com.

For American football fans, Jerry Smith was a former NFL player who had been a star at Arizona State University. He went on to have a strong and successful career with the Washington Redskins. When he passed away in 1986, during the heart of the period of fear and misunderstanding about AIDS, he was actually the first professional athlete to die of this disease.