The Volunteer Wore Valentino

Mrs. Peabody in 1999 with her husband, Samuel P. Peabody

The New York Times has a moving article remembering Judith Peabody, a socialite and philanthropist who helped AIDS patients when most would not. She died at 80 on July 25.

Guy Trebaby writes:

As early as 1985, Mrs. Peabody ... turned up unannounced at the Gay Men’s Health Crisis office to offer herself as a volunteer.

She was invited to sit in on the Drop-In Care Partners group, of which she would eventually become a leader. The group was open to people with the primary responsibility for the care of a person with AIDS and focused on what one reporter called “the emotional difficulties, practical problems, and turmoil” that those people faced.

It may seem far-fetched now to suggest that there was anything unusual about clasping the hand of a person with AIDS. But, as Marjorie J. Hill, the director of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, said, even some medical personnel were fearful of touch.

“Judy would go into hospitals, immaculately, spectacularly dressed in Dior and Gucci, and she would see a meal tray sitting outside a room,” where an orderly had left it. “And Judy, with her mink coat in her arm, would bring dignity to the situation by letting everyone know that she was best friends with the chief of the board of the hospital and that they had better get that tray into the room.”

What really set Judy apart is that, from the early ’80s, when nobody knew what the facts were, she looked at these people who were not being cared for and saw them as individuals and not a disease,” said Sean Driscoll, an owner of Glorious Foods, the catering company that dominated the New York charity-ball circuit for decades.

Read the full article HERE.