One of the most shocking stories I have heard in 32 years of writing about HIV-AIDS as a journalist was from a lawyer in Houston, one of the cofounders of the Houston AIDS Project. He told me about a young gay man, in his early twenties, who had died from AIDS in the 1980s. His father, from somewhere else, told the Houston group to put his son's body in a Hefty bag and "leave it by the curb." THAT is only one story showing the degree to which people unfortunate enough to contract HIV were subjected by those who believe microbes have meaning. In the case of HIV, the meaning, for those who needed it, was that gay men, those who injected drugs, and anyone else who got in the virus's way, "deserved" the fate of disfiguring Kaposi's sarcoma lesions, brain cancer, suffocating pneumonia, and all the other horrors unleashed after HIV had overthrown the immune system. The stigma's main purpose was to protect its practitioners against their own fear by persuading them they were somehow better than, or different from, "those" people with HIV who had "brought it on themselves.This story about Hart Island was one of the saddest I've ever read. In fact it's shocking to know the vast number of human beings who, at their end, were abandoned because of fear and hatred. One only hopes their spirits dance together in a saner, safer other realm.
39
This site should be designated a national Memorial. Thank You for mentioning the project. There are tens of thousands of records that unless destroyed are available through the New York State and the New York City Department of Health, as well as the entire database from the HIV Uninsured Care programs (ADAP, ADAP Plus, Insurance) that should be available. In addition, there are also not only survivors of that time, but also the records of many community based organizations that could also assist. Since 1979 it was well known that a disease called junky's pneumonia was decimated the city's clinics. There are providers still alive that would be more that willing to talk know that no one is forcing them not to. Also, federal tax records would also be very useful.
14
Hart Island has been pre-approved for the National Historic Registry. However, the application is stalled pending City approval. The Department of Correction is not interested in having the property listed as a National Historic Site.
Legislation to transfer jurisdiction to Parks was introduced on May 9, 2018. This transfer is necessary in order to open access to this historic site and reconnect Hart Island with communities across the United States.
11
This story is sadly emblematic of how we reacted as a nation to the AIDS epidemic. It was an uncomfortable story of a terminal illness which afflicted mostly gays, whom most Americans considered taboo if not depraved. As a straight person, I recollect my seatmate on a transcontinental flight expressing outrage that gays had brought this disease into our society. As a Catholic, I am ashamed at my and other's lack of empathy for these victims. Folks feared that the disease was easily communicable; it was only a matter of time before straight couples would be affected. So we shunned the dying and the dead. The dying were consigned to a few hospices, run by churches and charities, which comforted them without judgment. The dead were abandoned by their families and interred without memory in potter's fields. One personal incident summarized this crisis. A family friend's only child had moved to San Francisco. She learned that he was in a Catholic hospice, dying of an unnamed terminal disease. He was so ashamed that he begged his mother not to visit him. He died soon thereafter without ever seeing his mother. That story, like this one about the AIDS victims, made me realize that something was evil where a son was so ashamed of his disease that he could not see his mother. There is a postscript to this story. My mother's friend lost her husband a few years later. When she died, she left her entire estate to the Catholic charity that took care of her beloved son.
40
By 1985 we knew how the virus spread. Yet some countries still had public health officials who insisted people with AIDS be buried in different conditions such as in this case. In Spain they mandated lead-lined coffins.
When scientists and leaders join the masses in their hysteria it does a disservice to us all.
21
What a sad story. These people got sick and died just as billions of humans before them but because of fear and loathing they were sick alone and then they died alone. Life can be nasty and cruel sometimes. Kind of like our current leader.
14
This is one of the most hauntingly sad articles I've ever read in the pages of the New York Times.
I don't know the geography of or access to Hart Island, however it would seem that it's high time that we place a memorial at this site for those who died from the AIDS epidemic and are buried here.
28
I've sailed around Hart Island for many years. It's really a pretty spot to have a Potter's Field. There are worse places to end up. Thanks for the interesting facts about the early victims of the AIDS crises. I'll be thinking about them the next time I'm sailing by the island.
17
This story surely cannot be told fully without recognition of how race and the rise of HIV/AIDS intersect. Despite the typical, popularized image of the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s as a white phenomenon -- of course in no small part due to the art from that time by wonderfully talented white writers, musicians, and artists -- recent research has shown that, measured by rates of death, the hardest hit members of the HIV/AIDS generation were black. See here, for example: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/HIV-and-AIDS-deaths-in-the-United-St...
27
My father is buried in one of the Hart Island trenches. He disappeared in the 1950s shortly after being release from the psychiatric ward of a VA Hospital in Palo Alto, California. He had been diagnosed as profoundly paranoid schizophrenic, but was released as an out-patient when the first anti-psychotic appeared. He assumed a new identify and apparently spent the remainder of his life in transient hotels in the Bronx. He was from an old New Orleans family, so my mother never thought to look for him in New York City. Several years ago I was able to locate a New York City death certificate when the city put its death certificates online. You can learn which Hart Island trench a family member is buried in, but after a few years have passed you cannot disinterred them because the bodies are not buried in coffins and rapidly decompose.
39
Once when asked his definition of happiness, Tennessee Williams said, "Insensitivity, I guess." The greed and materialism of the Reagan 80s no doubt influenced the initial response to AIDS...and I fear something similar could well happen in the Trump Age.
20
This is serious sin.
Not only did our government wait and do nothing about the epidemic until it was too late, but families abandoned their children to a Potter's field, unloved, unremembered.
Children continue to be abandoned today by the so-called "family values" people.
Churches and synagogues should go there and give these forgotten dead proper funeral rites, to show them the basic human dignity they were denied.
12
One reason I'm glad I'm an atheist is the smug hypocrisy and self-forgiveness/congratulation I find that cut across pretty much every religion. The so-called "winners" in today's society are as oblivious as they always were, and the dead do not need to be rescued, rehabilitated or prayed over by the likes of them. Only respected and mourned for who they once were and for who they dreamed of being.
21
A close to contemporaneous account of losing someone to Hart's Island can be found in Love's Work by Gillian Rose.
https://www.amazon.com/Loves-Work-Reckoning-Gillian-Rose/dp/0805210784
5
About two or three years ago I was astonished to see a photograph of a man, Mike, with whom I had worked back in the Sixties, smack dab on the front page of the New York Times. Even more astonishing -- and heartbreaking --
was that Mike, through the most unbelievable and Kafkaesque set of circumstances, was buried in a nameless trench on Hart's Island. I wrote Nina Bernstein, the brilliant investigative reporter who wrote the article, that I knew Mike and wanted to tell her that there was someone out there who could attest to this man's kindness and outstanding work ethic, and that he deserved better than the shameful way his body was treated, first as an experimental cadaver, and finally bagged and tossed into an umarked trench. He was man, with a wife and children, was lost track of by all.
24
Theater artists who are activists honor their friends & families in various ways. The Playwrights Sanctuary under the leadership of Dr Larry Myers is instituting a project about Hiv in its #Ialso unit. Newer & younger playwrights are to be mentored upon their writing about the aids phenomena. The loss of genius will not be forgotten. Myers (university professor 40 years, lately of St John's University was the second dramatists to write about aids. His Sanctuary hopes to work with Ed Sparan's Epiphany Theater in Fort Lauderdale. Sparan was Director of the Aids Museum.
The Sanctuary is premiering a play about Gilbert Baker -----creator of the rainbow flag in San Francisco. The late Edward Albee authorized the Playwrights Sanctuary.
9
Rachel was an angel in perpetual free fall. RIP Richard/Rachel Humphreys
16
Good story.
4
I was so lucky to have survived this period but nonetheless remember the horrific events surrounding life as a gay man during those years when I was just becoming sexually active and when the only truly "safe sex" was having none at all. It's been a while since my thoughts have turned back to those years, although the current threat to my rights that are coming from Washington today have reignited my sense of indignation over my lack of acceptance as a FULL member of society, who should be entitled to equality as an American IN EVERY WAY. The thought of dying of AIDS back then and being dumped in a mass grave chills me to the core. I survived by abstinence which was harder to maintain than one might imagine. Slowly I gained grudging acceptance and finally legal protections that are again under threat. Too many Americans (i.e. Trump supporters) would like to have all LGBT buried in mass graves, out of sight and mind. Looks like the only way to prevent our being treated to a mass grave is to continue fighting those that read this article and can't figure out what's wrong with the story it's telling.
60
William-
SO if I am a Trump supporter in that I want strong borders and I am sick of paying high taxes to support people who do not want to work, I must be a homophobe as well?
You need to rethink your attitude.
7
So you’re willing to support a President who will stack the Supreme Court with jurists who will reduce or eliminate LGBTQ protections just because you want lower taxes? You can’t simply ignore the threat Trump poses to someone like William and so many others. Supporting Trump is all-inclusive, you don’t get to rationalize his hateful rhetoric and policies that hurt so many Americans.
21
A dear college friend died of AIDS in the late 1980s. He was a brave, kind, and creative person - and a true friend. He died in Oregon. I still can't believe that a disease like this took so many young, promising, remarkable people before better treatment was available. I think of him fondly to this day and am so glad to have known him. RIP Mike.
40
Except for 17 sites, there are an estimated 1 million unmarked graves on Hart Island ?
"As a result, the initial 17 AIDS burials, each with its own tiny concrete marker bearing a number, are perhaps the only individually marked graves among the estimated 1 million bodies interred on the island."
omg.
What travesty.
15
What I don't understand is why it should be so difficult to trace identities, of those whose were known at death.
But I doubt that some of the people deeply criticizing the City's response would willingly handle the body of a person dying or dead of Ebola today - the US won't allow living people who show signs of infection into the country! That is a parallel to how fearful people were of AIDs.
Or -See it as the 20th C version of the Black Plague. MOST Funeral directors would not handle the bodies - for fear of infecting themselves and questions of safe handling of body fluids. Family members - if they could be located - often refused any involvement.
First, almost nothing was known about the nature of the disease; later as pieces fell together, there was a long time before the public accepted that the victims couldn't spread the disease casually. It really has taken getting to the point where most people infected with HIV live - with treatment. SO -- there is an enemy, it is us - not "them."
Also, in an epidemic , or a war, usually, getting bodies buried or cremated quickly is is a measure that is done on behalf of public health.
Marking the area with a plaque or monument does make sense, as a way of acknowledging the people. And perhaps, cleaning up Hart Island to look like a peaceful cemetery.
Just as long as we insure that the living get the care they need.
14
I have no disagreement that discrimination against gay people existed. It was a different time. Do not excuse it- many people knew better. I am more disappointed that it still exists because everyone should know better now.
But consider history in its time. Working in hospitals then was horrifying- these patients looked terrible, suffered, and we really could not help. But at the same time we had no idea how contagious it was, could it be spread by mosquitos, air, etc.... The public was rightfully scared.
Hindsight is 20:20. A lesson to be repeated regarding many issues today.
25
i remember visiting a friend dying from aids at ucla med center. i wore a mask to protect him, not me. he could not hold my hand in fear of infection to his greatly compromised immune system. the orderly instructed to take him to xray refused to enter the room. but i knew, that day in oct 1983, that michael’s devastating illness would not harm me. and in 1987, visiting kelly at baylor medical center, that fun and bright and caring 40 year old already in a coma and disfigured with kaposi’s... that aids would not harm me. the men and women who helped the victims are true heros.
33
Cass County-
Help we did. In any way possible. But until 1983 when the virus was isolated, and probably 1984-85ish, we did not know how easily it was to transmit.
You were honorable. Most healthcare providers were. And when we figured out the facts, we treated them even better.
7
"But at the same time we had no idea how contagious it was, could it be spread by mosquitos, air, etc.... The public was rightfully scared."
Actually, by 1985, we did have a pretty good idea of how contagious AIDS is, and isn't. I recall a fair amount of willful ignorance on the part of some members of the public.
21
Heartbreaking.
Whilst I weep for all those rejected by their families and those too poor and therefore easily forgotten, how much has really changed?
8
LOTS. I have lived quite well for over 17 years now with HIV. I could marry another guy if I wanted to. I even see churches with big signs saying I am welcome. Most of the shops in my area have signs or Pride flags again welcoming me. My current mayor and the last one - gay.
My first boyfriend died of AIDS within one year of infection back in the early 80's in San Francisco. People thought he had anorexia at first.
39
God bless you Tom. My youngest brother died of AIDS in 1995. I was heartbroken. Knowing about survivors like you who've managed to live a full, loving life is a true consolation. Be well.
8
I am sorry that you took my comment in such a context.
What I was alluding to was how much intolerance and downright hatred still pervades our lives.
That's all.
I wish it could be nothing.
4
I agree with many of the comments about the many others who are are also buried in common graves on Hart Island. However, special mention of the AIDS dead, and this article itself, is appropriate today: perhaps few recall that the New York Times' first mention of what would become the AIDS plague occurred on July 3, 1981 in a brief article titled "Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals" (the Times didn't yet allow the word "gay" to be used). So many of those who died of AIDS-related diseases were abandoned by their families after their diagnoses.
65
Thanks for remembering all who died. My brother John Meehan Walsh died at St Luke's Roosevelt in 1987 and his body was fortunately taken care of by Dwyer's Funeral Home in Tarrytown. The staff at the hospitals and the funeral directors were very scared at that time and did the best they could with the limited knowledge they had.
52
The treatment of people with AIDs is a very sad and shameful part of our history - but what does it matter where and how one's remains are buried? Once we are gone, we are gone, and it's best to have as few markers littering the landscape for future generations as possible. God knows, we are leaving enough of a legacy in millions of tons of non-disposable plastic.
16
A memorial is not just for the living to remember the dead, but to remember how and why the victims died — the shame of societal and government neglect, particularly.
20
One more shame. in what seems to an infinite succession.
18
This is a terribly sad account of what happened to these poor souls, all due to so much fear,misunderstanding, social bias and a lack of compassion, not only for those who suffered and died from AIDS but for their loved ones. Can you imagine how many people may have been searching for relatives for years not really knowing what happened to them? The ignorance about the disease during those days leaves a terrible black stain on how New York City officials responded to the AIDS crisis. No respect for a soul. Shameful.
11
The dead are dust. It is an historical shame but it was as it had to be. The dying, the caretakers, the undertakers, were all equally expectant that they were dealing with a possibly limitless plague.
6
Deeply, heartbreakingly sad that a burial ground such as Hart Island should exist in the first place, but to think it is the anonymous resting place of so many victims of the AIDS 'contagion' chills my blood.
10
The hurt caused by ignorance is so sad. It's like during the colonial era when victims of small pox were buried separately because settlers feared their graves emitted infectious 'miasma'.
14
>>“The parents would say, ‘It’s not our problem – just do what you have to do,’” he recalled. “These families were so disheartened by the lifestyle their son was living. Some said, ‘Just cremate him and mail us the ashes.’”
I‘m assuming the guy is on the older side, but: “disheartened by the lifestyle”? Oof. Those parents disowned their sons when they found out they were gay. They were either too ashamed to recover their bodies or they just didn’t care.
38
I think your (New York's) city government has been most honourable (honorable) in burying the bodies in the way they have. Paul Kirchmann, South Africa
6
On the one hand, it is historical.
The early era of AIDS was horrific to the vicims and the caregivers and the undertakers. I say blame no one.
Wish Fulfilled
(by Reid Welch in memory of Jean Pierre Oulette)
Honey, even then, his voice,
1
ringleting brown hair above
2
his Quebec-accented appeal of
3
nothing more to wish
4
for one another
5
Reid
6
don't
7
get
8
sick
9
like
10
this
11
—last words before the ventilator
12
Jean Pierre squeezed answers
13
to my hand from his
14
Then curare, muscle-paralyzing,
15
to conserve blood oxygen
16
Then nothing
17
______________________________
18
pneumocystis carinii pneumonia
19
AIDS March 1985
20
25
Someone please post this to the Aids Memorial on Instagram. Can't seem to do it from here.
9
A friend, an epidemiologist, recently shared with me that he had been working off and on with a professionally trained demographer to try to quantify the impact of the AIDS crises during the '80s and '90s. While quantifying the size of the gay male population -- one of the effected groups -- is reasonably doable, determining a defensible count of people who died directly or indirectly of AIDS is more difficult. The reasonably defenciable analysis seems to suggest that 30% to 40% of Baby-Boom generation gay men have died as a result of HIV. As a 60 year-old gay man, that number "feels" about right.
Bringing about a sense of justice and appreciation for a tragedy that at the time seemed to be almost wholly unnoticed or was disregarded with wide disinterest -- effecting people perceived by the powerful as people who did not matter -- is worthy. These efforts, in part, make me feel good and give me a measured spiritual sense of well deserved justice.
We spend a lot of energy to right the past wrongs of living memory, for such things as the Holocaust, Japanese-American interment, Ottoman extermination of the Armenians, and so on. Sadly, with the march of time, much older events of profound injustice such as the Circassian genocide and native American cultural assault and depopulation seem to drop to footnotes of history.
I am mindful that these exercises are much more for the living. To be truly meaningful, we must make them luminously relevant for the future.
36
As a 72 year old gay man I certainly concur although I'd have thought 50% mortality of baby boom gay people would be closer to the mark. It was a terrible time.
13
As a 72 year old gay man I concur with your conclusions but think that 50% of the baby boomer gay population died. It was a terrible time.
2
This is a sad story, but such a place must be filled with sad stories. Why not a monument to all the people buried there? And an accessible, solemn spot for meditation, respect and mourning that could be used by family members and others who want to remember and pay their respects to those who died of all causes and, sadly, ended up at Potter's Field?
As a gay man of a certain age, I remember when AIDS was stigmatized and those who had it - and homosexuals generally - were treated as "the other". In death, at least, that practice should end. Let the remains of those who died of AIDS rest in peace without being singled out as, once again, somehow different from other humans.
41
Hart Island has innumerable types of graves of all types, usually those with no traditional burial available. NYC has plenty of other Potter's Fields as well. Lamenting over this one in particular, on an island for untraditional burials, seems a bit indulgent.
10
Is that the alternative narrative?
10
Indulgent in what way? The story here is about how in particular people who died of AIDS were treated. Many of these people actually did have families who simply disowned them. In fact, society disowned these people, more so than others. Your point of view is exceptionally myopic.
19
There are certain ways to pass on blood borne diseases. It's not a social issue or an issue of prejudice. It's not victimization. It's science. Think prevention first, then cure.
6
A callous response, Lynn. It was and in many ways remains all of the things you mention. In fact, at the time of these burials it was least of all a "science" and very much about "social issues," "prejudice," and (depending upon one's definition) "victimization." Reagan's refusal to address HIV/AIDS made it very clear that it had socio-political implications which themselves are related to causes of further transmission. Remember that not much of the science of HIV was known back then, and also that blood-borne disease transmission itself is not uniform (think HIV vis-a-vis malaria or ebola).
32
Not callous, factual. Also, there were/are still well known preventive measures. Everyone need to take responsibility for their own actions, including those who purposefully slowed down responding to the epidemic due to personal prejudices.
We might want to spend our time worrying about the living especially people sleeping on our streets and less time worrying about corpses where the human being no longer resides. Also it seems that many of these were green burials, much better for the environment.
12
"We might want to spend our time worrying about... and less time..." Sadly, LGBT people have heard variations of that same phrase over and over and over again. We've been told to spend less time worrying about our job security and keeping our houses and our children. We've been told to spend less time worrying about our physical safety and providing for our partners when we die. And, back in the 1980s we got told A LOT about worrying less over the deaths of our friends and sons and brothers... and always because there are so many *legitimate* things to worry over. Well guess what, Mr. Cook: human beings can worry about more than one thing at a time. And, if some people wish to worry about the *dignity* denied a section of humanity and the peace of mind afforded to the people they left behind, I don't see why you have to act so threatened by it. As for the "much better for the environment" quip, the dead were not deposed of in the manner they were out of any great love for Mother Earth. They were eradicated as a pestilence.
67
As an HIV positive gay man whose partner died of AIDS I feel fairly comfortable with the comment that I made.
The corpses are a reminder of what happens when society doesn't care. As a straight woman, I, too, saw gay men I knew and cared about just disappear, go away, with no explanation only to find much later that they had died.
Because no one wanted to say out loud what was happening to them, they were left to manage on their own, or in a hospice if there was one, mostly abandoned by family and unknowing friends.
Memorials are reminders to us not to repeat mistakes.
47
Perhaps some Green Organization in New York City could help to organize the design, implementation, and endowed maintenance of some sort of fitting memorial at Potter's Field.
HELLEAU you know who you are!
Unfortunately the ultra small tombstones make it look like a pet cemetery. And even more oddly, someone has painted the trees like in the American South where they copy the limed trees of France.
And when one asks a Southerner why the trees are painted on the drive, the answer is often so that my husband has something to do. Ironically, the painted trees signal care more than anything else in the picture.
The fence is overgrown with grapevine. the tombstones, if present, are akimbo, and the lawn is not the greensward it is pretending to be.
However, someone at some time took the time to paint the trees for the look of it. It was a long time ago and since then, Potter's field is lucky to be mowed.
1
Great story. And there probably should be some sort of monument, denoting what happened.
"Even though some of those with AIDS had been dead for weeks or even months, the crews still feared being infected by bodily fluids.
So the medical examiner sent the corpses in body bags to prevent leakage and inmates wore protective jumpsuits that were disposed of after each burial, Mr. Ruppert said.
“(W)e didn’t know if they’d be contagious even after death,” Mr. Ruppert said."
This is one way that AIDS has indelibly changed the way we go about doing things. Before the crisis, no one wore gloves to put a Band-Aid on a kid's skinned knee. Now, the first thing paramedics do when they get out of their rigs is don gloves, as if everything around them is infested with deadly bacteria. Same thing happens in courtrooms, when lawyers don gloves before handling guns or knives or anything that might have had blood in it months or even years earlier. I don't recall that happening before AIDS.
9
I think that the widespread use of latex gloves is a bit more complex that you suggest. The gloves also prevent the spread of pathogens from the healthy care-giver/first responder to the injured. (Infection is a two-way street.) As for court-room and police work, gloves prevent the imposition of fingerprints and DNA that are not relevant to the case.
13
@Salix,
I didn't mean to discount that infection can be a two-way street, but, still, we didn't seem much on latex gloves until AIDS hit. Never saw basketball games stop because someone had a minor cut, never saw cuts bandaged on sidelines by trainers wearing gloves. The risk of contracting HIV from a needle stick when the needle in question is HIV-contaminated is .3 percent (chances are the same from HIV-contaminated blood coming in contact with open cuts), according to the CDC, meaning that you have a 99.7 percent chance of not getting HIV from getting stuck by a contaminated needle or from having a cut come in contact with infected blood. The chances of HIV infection from contaminated blood that falls on intact skin is zero. The odds of getting other infectious diseases, which were known and recognized a long time before AIDS came along, from such contact are much higher, but those odds still are small enough that we never, or rarely, saw latex gloves, which are probably a good thing--you can never be too safe--but were deemed unnecessary prior to AIDS and hysteria surrounding it.
As for courtroom evidence, by the time a gun or knife (or bloody spoon, for that matter) is entered into evidence in a trial and shown to a jury, which can ask to see it during deliberations without controls or expert supervision, it's already been tested for fingerprints and DNA and the like. They put the gloves on for fear of infection, which is far fetched months or years after the fact.
1
Here now we can see the full spectrum of the history. From these poor souls, victims of social bias, medical ignorance to some who patented tests and formulas and who's stock portfolios profited from the tragedy and even hold on to their reputations to this day. But, as Mr Keynes has been quoted as saying; "In the end, we're all dead"
6
Heartbreaking. It is understandable that staff were terrified- they had no information re contagion (was there any real information to be had at that time?). But Gay oppression, the brutality of poverty and institutional sexism towards the mothers - does bears blame.
So that is the past - NOW we can create decent markers for these lives lost to a terrifying epidemic: babies, adults, staff.
and a public record of their deaths. I especially regret the anonymity of those lives who left us at Rivington House.
25
I realize the article is addressing historical circumstances around people dying of AIDS and their burial on the island but I would hope that today they invested in a crematorium and simply cremate the deceased before being interred.
4
'simply cremate' And why? Do you know realize how much greenhouse gases a cremation produces? 'Natural' burial, no embalming chemicals, steel coffin, concrete vault, is the future. Isn't that happening in OR now? Do 'the google'.
3
Better still would be burial in the deep sea. After a time, nothing, literally ZERO, remains, not even bones.
It is unconscionable and irresponsible that multiple NY City agencies dealing with AIDS deaths and burials during what amounted to an unprecedented and historic epidemic did not keep detailed archival records.
50
You must not be familiar with how government operates: inefficiently and without attention to the detail you seek.
4
Not for anything but where was Mr. Soto's family when he died? If no family member could be found this is what happens to unclaimed bodies after death. If there was family around the time he died why didn't they pay for his burial in a proper cemetery?
12
As stated in the article - at the time it was frequently difficult to arrange private burials because the funeral homes either charged much higher fees or outright refused to take AIDS bodies. Mr. Soto's family could not afford what the private funeral homes were charging (or really - extorting) and Hart Island was their only option.
42
Read the article again, but this time with a kind heart. The Soto family did not have the money to pay for Norberto Soto's burial. He was buried in a mass grave with no specific designation as to exactly where to find his location. His family just found out that he was buried in Potter's Field.
For a long while, it was almost impossible to visit Hart Island to pay respects to one's lost loved ones.
And now they just know that he is in a large general area.
Poverty causes many kinds of sadness, do not add to this.
93
Read. The. Article.
>>Private burials were difficult to arrange because many funeral directors either refused to handle AIDS corpses or charged higher fees... Ms. Soto said her family had such a hard time finding an affordable funeral home that “Hart Island was literally our only option.”
4
I worked with AIDS patients until the mid 90s. It was an absolute massacre, unbelievable. What is being done to dignify these dead deserves recognition. They were all someone's child/ friend/ lover/ parent.
61