Judith Dunnington Peabody’s name likely never appeared before this at Daily Kos.
Her name (and countless photographs) did appear a whole lot in Women’s Wear Daily and New York Social Diary and in fashion and social columns in Vogue and The New York Times.
She grew up in a world of privilege, attended Miss Hewitt’s Classes in New York City and graduated from the Ethel Walker School in Connecticut. Her coming out party was held at the Piping Rock Club on Long Island. And, after two years at Bryn Mawr, Ms. Peabody married Samuel Peabody, the grandson of Endicott Peabody, the founder and headmaster at Groton whom Franklin Delano Roosevelt called among the great inspirations of his life.
She lived in a world almost none of us will ever know. And she died on Sunday, at the age of 80. And this is why we should remember her tonight.
Way back in 1985, before President Reagan ever mentioned the acronym AIDS, not too many years after the virus had stopped being called by the acronym GRID – Judy Peabody got involved. And not just in the charity-dinner circuit sort of way (although she did that, too), but in an actual way – with the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in NYC.
Read the press release from the GMHC here.
From a 1987 story in The New York Times:
She introduces herself to the members of her counseling group as Judy, or occasionally as Judy Peabody. Sometimes she tells the participants that she has been a volunteer at the Gay Men's Health Crisis for a year and a half, and once in a while she tells them she is a care partner, the increasingly common term for people who accept responsibility for helping a person with AIDS.
She gives no hint that in other circles in the city her formidable name would be instantly recognized. In any case, that would make little difference to those in whose lives she has come to figure so prominently.
In the fall of 1985 Mrs. Peabody . . . turned up unannounced at the Gay Men's Health Crisis.
(snip)
The group, which is open to the spouses, lovers, parents, siblings and roommates of people with AIDS - or to anyone else with the primary responsibility for the care of a person with AIDS - focuses on the emotional difficulties, practical problems and turmoil faced by care givers. In the group they can vent their feelings and help one another.
The group meets every other Friday evening and Mrs. Peabody is always there.
(snip)
Mrs. Peabody is also involved in improving services for people with AIDS . . . and in promoting research. She has met with Government officials and research scientists at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.
(snip)
She is helping solicit funds for these AIDS-related projects: the proposed expansion of the Gay Men's Health Crisis building, a laboratory for AIDS research at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, the supportive care program at St. Vincent's Hospital and Medical Center, and the People With AIDS Coalition.
(snip)
But when she is needed by any of the 10 people for whom she is a care partner, Mrs. Peabody said, she drops everything else.
"My number one concern is always my friends who have AIDS,'' she said, noting that for some of these friends she is not the only care partner. ''When someone is in the hospital, that becomes the focal point of my day. I visit them once and sometimes twice a day. It's what you would do for any loved one.''
Source ~ The New York Times
I remembered that story when I read about her death yesterday. I had admired her then not only for doing what she did, but for working to remove the stigma of AIDS and raising community and national support for a cure.
Mrs. Peabody belonged to what seems to be a disappearing demographic – privileged people who do not just acknowledge their blessings but dedicate parts of their lives to doing good for others.
In 1967, Mrs. Peabody and her husband, a former teacher and principal, founded Reality House, a drug rehabilitation center in Harlem, where she also worked as a discussion leader with former heroin users confronting addiction. She spent two years at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health, earning a certificate in psychological counseling.
She later worked with a group called the Renegades Housing Movement, a Hispanic youth gang that was trying to rechannel its energies into rebuilding a crumbling building in East Harlem.
From today’s obituary in The New York Times.
We do not, unfortunately, see too much of this same stalwart service today. Instead, we see people who have made their fortunes (often on the backs of working class Americans, for whom they could care less) and are content with flaunting their wealth in ridiculous houses and over-sized parties and idiotic reality TV shows. Way too many of them are, as Ministry of Truth wrote today Oligarchs whose only concerns are about keeping their money and power.
This was not the case with Mrs. Peabody. And never had been.
Mr. Peabody said that he met his wife at a dinner party when she was just 20 years old and that they were engaged a week later. She was working at a youth center for delinquents at the time, he said, and for one of their first dates he picked her up there.
“She said, ‘Please don’t tell my mother,’” Mr. Peabody recalled. “ ‘She thinks I’m having French lessons.’ ”
The New York Times
Mrs. Peabody is survived by her husband of 59 years, and by her daughter, Elizabeth Taylor Peabody.
She was a good American.
From the comments:
ridemybike
notes that Judith Peabody won the HAI Leadership Award:
The HAI Leadership Award is presented to individuals who have displayed outstanding vision, leadership, and courage in the worldwide struggle against AIDS.
Judith Peabody received the award in 1999 for her committed volunteer service to people living with AIDS and organizations that work on their behalf, particularly the Gay Men's Health Crisis. She worked for improving AIDS services and promoting AIDS research. She was a co-leader of Care-Partners Groups.
Link.