Compassion Was Her Greatest Gift What She Gave To Society Came From The Heart
On a raw winter night in 1994, Princess Diana dropped by a shelter called Off the Streets to comfort 40 prostitutes, drug addicts and other homeless Londoners.
As they waited, a swaggering 23-year-old told Paul George, the social worker in charge: “I don’t know about these royals. I think the IRA should shoot them all. She comes in here, we can give her a good one.”
“Then Diana walks in, and he’s the first person she sees in this big warehouse,” George remembers. “She walks over to him, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, this is going to be trouble!’
“But then Diana says: ‘It’s Ricky, isn’t it? Didn’t I meet you when you were sleeping down in the Strand?’ And he just melts. ‘That’s right,’ he says, ‘I’m getting myself together now …”’
That story is one of many surfacing that suggest Diana touched the sick and the down-and-out far more often and perhaps more deeply than was publicized during her lifetime. “It’s an example of how she disarms and charms,” George said, having trouble using the past tense.
The death of Diana, described by the London newspaper The Independent as “probably the most successful fund-raiser on the planet,” has set off a flood of new offers to her favorite charities. In response, Buckingham Palace set up an official memorial fund in her name on Tuesday to collect and administer them.
While welcoming that move, Britons involved in these causes said Diana’s true legacy is not the millions she raised with celebrity lunches and auctions but an irreplaceable compassion she brought directly to people she was helping.
The British-based Leprosy Mission and the National AIDS Trust credit Diana with easing the stigma of those diseases by embracing sufferers.
Diana went incognito to the Strand to visit vagrants sleeping on the pavement, George said, and a few months ago she brought her two sons to help prepare a meal and meet people staying at his shelter. He said these visits often involved elaborate security procedures, such as changing cars, to throw photographers off her trail.
Today, a wide range of ordinary Britons whose burdens she shared now feel free to speak about friendships that, until her death, had to be confidential.
Philip Woolcock, a 45-year-old social worker, told the Daily Telegraph that he and his wife had carried on a friendship with “the real Diana” since 1991, when the princess first learned through her charity work that their 18-year-old daughter Louise was dying of cancer.
After comforting the girl with calls and bedside visits until her death in 1992, Diana dropped in on the parents and confided, in tears, that her marriage was falling apart, Woolcock said.
“Judy and I simply couldn’t believe that here was the future queen confiding in us,” he told the newspaper. “She spoke to us with such honesty and compassion … That visit made us feel that life was probably still worth living after our terrible loss.”
Other Britons aided by Diana said they, too, felt her all the more empathetic because she did not hide the suffering in her own life. “She knows that homelessness can happen to anyone,” George said. “In a sense at some point she must have felt homeless herself.”
Among the mourners at Kensington Palace last week was Danielle Stephenson, 8, whom the princess had visited five times after the girl had heart surgery at London’s Royal Brompton Hospital in May. Diana had also given the child her direct phone number at the palace and taken her calls.
“She gave our patients what none of us was able to give - this magic,” said hospital spokeswoman Averil Slade. “She came here as often as three times a week. She’d bounce in unannounced, in jeans and trainers, sit on people’s beds and talk for hours.”
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: THE DIANA FUND An official charity fund in memory of Princess Diana was announced last week to receive memorial contributions to her causes. Among the beneficiaries are the Red Cross; Centrepoint, which helps young homeless people in Britain; the National AIDS Trust; and the Leprosy Mission. Administrators said checks should be made out to: “The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund” at Kensington Palace, London, W8 4PU, United Kingdom. Donations to the fund can also be sent to: PO Box 1, London, WC1B 5HW, United Kingdom.