The mother of Ryan White, a hemophiliac teenager who died of AIDS-related illness in 1990 after contracting HIV through a blood transfusion, mourns the loss of music icon Michael Jackson, who died from cardiac arrest on June 25, FOX 35 reports. Jackson befriended the teen in the late 1980s and, after Ryan’s death, dedicated a song to him titled “Gone Too Soon.”

Jeanne White remembers Jackson as a good-hearted person. “He worked so hard ever since he was a kid that he didn’t have a childhood, and when you went to Neverland [Jackson’s former home], you too would act as a kid,” she said.