Nice obit of Bill Blass from PlanetOut. I never met him, but I have a friend who was close to him, and another who worked for him for years.
In New York, Blass is also remembered as a generous and influential supporter of AIDS treatment services since the late 1980s."He was a major donor to Gay Men's Health Crisis at a time when prominent people were silent about AIDS," said Ronald Johnson, associate executive director at GMHC, a New York-based agency that serves people with AIDS. "His visibility was important in raising consciousness about HIV/AIDS."
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Jonathan Jacobs, executive director of the AIDS Care Center at New York Presbyterian Hospital, remembered that Blass first visited when the center was a "threadbare clinic" in 1988, and he became a major fund-raiser thereafter.
"He understood the spirit of what we were trying to do," Jacobs told the Gay.com/PlanetOut.com Network. He also praised Blass' attention to detail, noting that Blass quietly made sure there were beautiful flower arrangements in the center's waiting area each week for the past 14 years.
"We never had to ask him," Jacobs said. "He was always there for us."
