Saturday, September 21, 2024
Happening Now

All her sons: The Cemetery Angel

When the AIDS crisis hit in the 1980s, Ruth Coker Burks – who’d inherited 262 plots in a family cemetery in Hot Springs, Arkansas – became a mother of sorts to countless sons, many abandoned by families and churches because they were suffering from what was then called the “gay cancer.” Coker Burks became a one-woman AIDS help center: driving patients to appointments, trying to find doctors or drugs, or filling-out death certificates. And in many cases she gave them a final resting place. Seth Doane reports on the woman who has been called the “Cemetery Angel,” who gave – and received – so many precious gifts. Source

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