Ganga Stone died on June 2nd
The feeder of New York’s sick and housebound, founder of God’s Love We Deliver, was 79
SOMETIME IN 1985, when she was working as a volunteer at a hospice on the Lower East Side, Ganga Stone took a bag of groceries to an actor who was dying of AIDS. She parked her bicycle and walked up to his apartment, not without trepidation. AIDS was then ravaging the gay community in New York, and almost nothing was known about it. Its victims were stigmatised and isolated. When the man, Richard Sale, opened the door to her, he was stick-thin and covered with lesions. She had never seen anyone look that bad. And when she handed over the groceries, he deliberately dropped them on the floor. He was far too weak to cope with cooking them. One packet of bread-mix so frustrated him that he tossed it across the room.
This article appeared in the Obituary section of the print edition under the headline “Tales of love and death”
From the June 12th 2021 edition
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