In 1994, Doris Taussig was featured in episode 3 of the WNYC program “Heart of the City,” hosted by John F. Kennedy Jr. Then 81 years old, Doris was one of the oldest AIDS hotline volunteers at the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York City (GMHC), and likely one of the oldest AIDS volunteers in the country. How did a woman who, in her youth, was described as a ‘debutante daughter of millionaire Warren Sr.’ in the New York newspapers become an octogenarian AIDS volunteer? Born December 26, 1911 in New York City as Doris Madeline Smadbeck, she was briefly married at 21 to a good-looking Latin charmer from Cuba named Count Augitin Miguel Jose Mario Abalo. Days after their marriage, another New York socialite claimed Albalo had married her. The story made headlines. A few months later, her father helped Doris get an annulment. In 1939 Doris married Theodore “Ted’ Taussig. Her father was in real-estate and wanted to develop Fire Island. In 1952 her father's company, Home Guardian, began selling land in Fire Island’s Pines area. Doris’s husband Ted handled sales and didn’t want her to work, so she focused on entertaining, becoming great friends with the growing gay population of Fire Island. When Doris was 63, her husband suddenly died of a heart attack. Within four months, Doris managed to get her broker's license to hold onto the business, working seven days a week. Later she started a gay bar with three men. However, AIDS took a toll—hitting hard on Fire Island’s gay residents—and Doris lost her business partners and many of her friends to the disease. The death of her friend John from AIDS in 1981 hit her especially hard. It was then that—at age 70—that she went to GMHC as a volunteer, working the hotline. For many years, she volunteered at GMHC and other New York hospitals and organizations, focusing on helping people with AIDS, treating them with love, kindness, and respect. In the 1994 interview, Doris states that she lost hundreds of friends to AIDS. Click on the link to read more about Doris Taussig.

click here