THE EMPTY HOUSE
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Margaret Gallimore is bitter. She knows she provides an extraordinary service for the sickest and most unwanted AIDS patients. Yet the beds at Mathis Hospice are seldom occupied. [Part 1 of 2]
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The Dallas Morning News-August 7, 1988
Author/Byline: Dusty Rhodes: The Dallas Morning News (DAL) + _____
Edition: HOME FINAL
Section: DALLAS LIFE
Page: 11
It's June 10 and Margaret Gallimore is in the White House, dining at Nancy Reagan's table. The luncheon is a small affair, honoring winners of the Presidential Volunteer Action Award. Of the 18 recipients, selected from more than 2,000 nominees, Ms. Gallimore is the only one being recognized for helping people with AIDS.
More than a year ago, Ms. Gallimore founded Mathis Hospice, Dallas' only hospice for AIDS patients. Drawing on her 20-odd years' experience as a private nurse -- and a deep sense of compassion -- she has provided housing, food, medical attention, reassurance and comfort for 22 men afflicted with acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Most of her clients have been indigent, and many have been abandoned by family and friends.
By all accounts, there is an urgent and growing need for the service Ms. Gallimore offers. Yet on this day, as she shakes the president's hand and accepts a sterling silver medallion, her eight-bed facility in Dallas stands virtually empty. The only man staying there on June 10 is a homeless cancer patient who does not have AIDS.
For Ms. Gallimore, the situation is perplexing but normal. While local civic leaders, hospital officials and AIDS patient advocates have lobbied long and loud for such a service, Mathis Hospice has never been fully utilized. In fact, it has been vacant for as long as a month at a stretch. Mathis Hospice has four bedrooms, painted in pastel colors that counter the dark, well-polished hardwood floors. The living room is spacious and neat, furnished with a television, a shelf full of books and a stack of games and puzzles for the residents' entertainment. There is also a Bible for those who seek such solace. In the large back yard, under a shade tree, there is a deck with a wheelchair ramp and a picnic table where Ms. Gallimore hosts weekend barbecues for her friends, the residents and their friends.
Ms. Gallimore is the first to admit the surroundings are not posh. The kitchen, for example, is dark and dingy. But it is stocked with soup, lunch meat, eggs, milk, bananas, soda, sweet rolls and ice cream to tempt waning appetites. Ms. Gallimore's sensitivity to the responsibility she has placed upon herself -- to provide a comfortable, caring environment in which an AIDS patient may spend his last days -- is evident throughout the house. It can be seen in the bedroom she painted blue because a patient named David said it was his favorite color.
David lived at Mathis two weeks. (His name, along with those of several other AIDS patients, their family members and friends, has been changed.) When David moved in April 12, he was welcomed with a meal of liverwurst sandwiches and two flavors of Ruffles potato chips -- a menu he requested because he wanted "a picnic.' He had arrived via ambulance but jumped off the stretcher when he saw Bandit, his cherished tricolored cat, which his mother had brought to Mathis. David had been afraid that, while he was hospitalized, Bandit had been put to sleep.
Ms. Gallimore quickly became fond of David: "Have you ever seen little kids that, as the old cliche goes, can get away with murder? Well, he was a grown-up. He wouldn't lie; he could just worm his way into your heart.'
She remembers walking him to the car the day he went to his last doctor's appointment. The doctor decided to keep David overnight for tests, Ms. Gallimore says, but called the next day to tell her David was about to die. "It was his heart,' she says. "It was overnight. It was like a Jekyll-and-Hyde thing. I felt a love-anger. I felt angry, because it was no warning.'
David died April 28. He was buried in a T-shirt his mother had made, a T-shirt with a big decal of a cat. Ms. Gallimore took care of Bandit for two more months, until David's brother sent for the pet.
When she started, Margaret Gallimore had no idea the job would entail keeping AIDS patients' orphaned pets. She also didn't know AIDS could be such a messy disease, that its victims would need their sheets changed a dozen times a day. She only knew many young men, sick and suffering, had no place to go, and she could provide a home and some medical care.
Mathis Hospice, named in memory of Ms. Gallimore's favorite aunt, Cleo Mathis, was conceived in March 1987. It happened while Ms. Gallimore was watching the evening news. She saw a segment about AIDS patients in need of housing and medical care, and heard the report as a call to arms. She picked up the phone and called Parkland Memorial Hospital, where she had once worked as a nurse's aide. She tried seven or eight numbers before she tracked down an AIDS clinic nurse who promised to inspect her facilities. And that night, when her teen-age daughter, Pam, got home, Ms. Gallimore sat her down and said, "I'm going to take care of people with AIDS.'
Her actions were hasty but not without thought. At the time, in the house next door, she was operating what the Department of Human Resources terms a "room and board' establishment for indigent persons suffering from injuries or illness. But, disenchanted with the way some clients abused the residence she had renovated, Ms. Gallimore decided her services could be put to better use by people with AIDS.
"It broke my heart to know they didn't have any place to go and be loved,' she says.
She gave them that place, and within a month was taking care of her first AIDS patient.
But where are those patients now?
Judging by the law of supply and demand, their absence seems curious. Yet it is consistent with a report issued recently by the Dallas AIDS Planning Commission calling for establishment of a board of health to address, among other problems, the lack of coordination of AIDS services.
Buck Buckingham, director of the Dallas AIDS/ARMS Network, says that, on any given day, 15 or more hospitalized persons with AIDS (PWAs) could be more appropriately placed in hospice care.
He estimates six or more of those patients are in Parkland, where they remain until they die. And at the publicly funded hospital, costs run about $900 per patient per day.
Mathis is not a licensed "hospice;' Ms. Gallimore does not claim it is. But Buckingham says Mathis almost certainly meets requirements for licensing as a "special care facility,' a new category designed with AIDS patients in mind. This proposed licensing is pending approval in Austin, and Ms. Gallimore plans to apply when it becomes available.
Houston has one facility, Omega House, that is similar to Mathis. (Also not a licensed hospice, Omega will probably be granted the same "special care facility' license Ms. Gallimore will seek.) Omega House has three beds, which are always full, and an additional four to 10 AIDS patients on a waiting list. "A lot of people call, hear about the list and don't even bother to put their name on it,' says house manager Patrick Springer.
There are other differences between Omega House and Mathis Hospice. Omega House accepts only indigent PWAs diagnosed as having less than six months to live; Ms. Gallimore accepts any PWA. Omega House doesn't charge its residents a fee; at Mathis Hospice, a non-profit agency, Ms. Gallimore uses a sliding scale based on the client's personal income. Of her 22 PWAs, 10 have paid nothing.
Also, Omega House is located in Montrose, the heart of Houston's gay community. Mathis Hospice is in South Dallas; when Ms. Gallimore gives callers directions, the landmarks she mentions are Fair Park and the Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center. Omega House is operated by Eleanor Munger, a white woman; Ms. Gallimore is black. Ms. Gallimore thinks these last two contrasts may explain why Mathis is empty and Omega House is full.
But there is another possible factor that has little to do with Ms. Gallimore's race or location. It's her passionate disposition, her aggressive, outspoken style. It has served her well in the midst of the grief and emotional turmoil she has experienced while watching AIDS patients die. But that same intense temperament seems to have alienated Ms. Gallimore from some leaders in Dallas' gay community. As the fifth of eight children, Margaret Gallimore was frequently sent to live with aging relatives. She learned, as a child, to attend to their needs. When she grew up, she studied to become a nurse but never took the final licensing exams. She has worked as a nurse's aide in hospitals in Dallas, New York and Los Angeles, and has also cared for elderly people in their homes. Four years ago she returned to Dallas to care for her aunt. Now 45, Ms. Gallimore is divorced and raising the youngest of her three children, Pam, 18.
Ms. Gallimore's singular personality -- a cross between Florence Nightingale and Whoopi Goldberg -- can charm innocent bystanders but stun her targets.
Dallas politicians recently felt her sting when, in the weeks following her acceptance of the presidential award, Ms. Gallimore received special recognition from county commissioners and the city council.
On June 20, after listening to Commissioner John Wiley Price read a flattering proclamation, she responded by insinuating the recognition was a bit overdue and accusing the commissioner of "jumping on the bandwagon.'
Days later, when Mayor Annette Strauss bestowed a similar honor, Ms. Gallimore gave a repeat performance of her pointed commissioners court speech, then delivered an encore, telling Councilwoman Diane Ragsdale, "I wish this fighting with the police department would stop.'
But the chief target of her anger these days is the AIDS Resource Center, a large and powerful arm of the Dallas Gay Alliance that offers a broad range of services to PWAs. Although the AIDS Resource Center and Ms. Gallimore appear to be fighting the same desperate war, she claims center officials have been reluctant to dip into their $500,000 budget to reimburse her for even the smallest expenses. She is bitter about their seeming disregard for her work: They don't invite her to meetings, fund-raisers or other functions, and only one center leader has ever visited her hospice. She even accuses them of keeping contributions earmarked for Mathis Hospice -- a charge center officials deny. The bottom line: Ms. Gallimore views the AIDS Resourc e Center leaders as men sitting behind desks, collecting donations and calling the shots, while she engages in hand-to-hand combat at the battlefront. A view from the trenches: Of the 22 PWAs who stayed at Mathis Hospice, four wer!
e black, two were Hispa nic, the rest were white. Some were gay, some were intravenous drug abusers, some were both. Among them were a church organist, a prostitute, a transvestite, a Ph.D. and a convicted arsonist.
But these men have three things in common: First, they represent the cases AIDS Resource Center officials call "hard-core' or "the bottom of the barrel,' which, in some instances, simply means they have no friends. Second, they all leave an indelible impression on their caretaker. And, of course, sooner or later, they all die.
Margaret Gallimore has seen four die in Mathis Hospice; two others died at Parkland within days of leaving her house. Of those six, four died within a six-week span over December '87 and January '88.
For her care, Ms. Gallimore has been paid anything from nothing to $600 per month. Normally, she collects whatever benefits her patients receive from welfare or Social Security, usually about $330 per month. When the money runs out, Ms. Gallimore works nights as a private nurse or cleans houses.
Her first AIDS patient was Jimmy, a 33-year-old gay man who lived in Mathis Hospice 33 days. "He was a very loving, affectionate guy,' she says. "He was upset because his mother had just died and his stepfather and stepsister had put him out of the house. He felt like he was a thrown-away object, not a person, until he came over here.'
She realized he was about to die when Jimmy started talking about death. "It was a mental thing and a physical thing,' Ms. Gallimore says. "His mind told his body, "Look, hey. Give it up.' And he wanted to be with his mother.
"Jimmy died like 3:30 in the afternoon. I remember because Pam was going to the prom that night, and I had ordered her a limousine. And Pam came over (to the hospice) that morning. She said, "Mommy, what we'll do, me and my date, we'll wash your car and take your car and you keep that $125 for the limousine because you're going to need it for Jimmy.' And that's what she did.'
That evening, Jimmy's stepfather and stepsister came to the hospice. "There's two sides to everything,' Ms. Gallimore says. "But with him dead, they were confessing to one another. Then I knew what Jimmy told me was right.
"At the funeral, I sat in the back like I always do, because I don't want to be with the hypocrites. And when I got up to speak, I said it's a shame the whole church is full of nothing but family and nobody but friends came over to see him. Two, at that.'
Joe, a 57-year-old gay man referred to Ms. Gallimore by the welfare department, was at Mathis only two weeks.
"But it felt like two years with Joe,' she says. "You'd look at Joe and you would think he had all the sense in the world, but then the dementia had set in so badly, you'd go in there, he'd be eating stools. He was very courteous; he'd offer you some. It would be in his hair, all over the walls, under his fingernails. There was never a dull moment, but you know they can't help themselves. Joe would put bananas in the urinal. Joe was a trip.
"But for some reason, you couldn't get angry with Joe. He was a very intelligent man, when you could break through the dementia.'
After two weeks, Joe was admitted to Parkland, where he died a week later. Ms. Gallimore laundered one of his shirts and planned to buy him a suit so he could be buried in nice clothes. But when she called the hospital, she was told that clothes are unnecessary for burials in the paupers' field.
"I almost fainted and fell on the floor,' she says. "I cried and cried. Then I had to go back over there next door and face James.'
James Santiso, a 38-year-old gay man, was sent to Mathis Hospice by the AIDS/ARMS Network, an umbrella organization that provides case management services for PWAs. The agency warned Ms. Gallimore that James had been convicted of arson.
"I said, "So? It doesn't bother me.' Everybody was afraid. Nobody wanted him. He slept out in the street.
"And that was my closest one. That was my heart.'
James came to Mathis Hospice in May '87. "They said James wouldn't live but a month. He lived seven months. He walked to the store every day.
"James read all those books that are over there. He could read fast, fast, fast,' Ms. Gallimore says. "And after he couldn't, I got books on tapes to play, because he didn't watch TV. So what I would do, while I was bathing him, I'd put a story on.'
James died at the hospice on Dec. 4. As he had requested, Ms. Gallimore had him cremated.
"I went and picked up his remains. I put him where he always sat. Then I said, "Pam, maybe since he liked to ride in my car, what we're going to do is just ride all through Irving, all around.'
"She said, "Mommy, if someone sees us looking down at a shopping bag talking, they'll think we're crazy.'
"I said, "They can think what they wanna think. I don't care.' He was my darling.' William Waybourn, president of the Dallas Gay Alliance, oversees all operations of the AIDS Resource Center. Craig Hess supervises the center's volunteers. Neither Waybourn nor Hess has visited Mathis Hospice, and both confess they know little about the facility or its clients. What they do know is that Ms. Gallimore will take the PWAs no one else wants.
"The majority of the people that she has don't have friends,' Hess says. "Like James being an arsonist and stuff like that. You've got some pretty hard-core cases that nobody's going to go see.'
The AIDS Resource Center was founded in 1985 as a cooperative effort of the Dallas Gay Alliance and its non-profit agency, the Foundation for Human Understanding. The resource center has seen its volunteer staff grow from "a handful' to almost 1,000, and its budget increase from $50,000 to more than a half million dollars.
The AIDS Resource Center offers a spectrum of services. PWAs can obtain emergency monetary relief through a Housing and Financial Assistance Fund. (Currently, the fund supplies 60 PWAs with a total of $12,000 a month.) The center operates a clothing bank, and a food pantry -- recently expanded and renovated through a $50,000 grant from the Meadows Foundation -- that resembles a small, well-stocked grocery store, complete with shopping carts. Other direct services include legal assistance, pentamidine mist, "safer sex' workshops, an AIDS information hotline and speakers bureau. The center's largest committee is the visitation committee, with about 90 volunteers providing companionship for 135 PWAs. There is even a committee called Pet Pals , a group of volunteers who takes care of AIDS patients' pets.
The relationship between the resource center and Ms. Gallimore began a bit late but seemed healthy at the start. She says she first heard of the center in September '87 (she had been taking in PWAs since April), when an Oak Lawn Counseling Center volunteer offered to take her to the center's food pantry. She began visiting the pantry every two weeks or so; she received some furniture as well.
As volunteer coordinator, Hess met Ms. Gallimore at the center, and was impressed.
"She was offering a service that nobody else had,' he says. "This was something she wanted to do, and no other organization, no other individual, had come forth. And she just said, "Here it is!' It was set up and running.'
He was also awed by her personality. "She's always laughing, always has a sense of humor, always has a story about something. And -- almost to the point of holding court -- she will come in (to the center) and everybody is kind of drawn over to her,' Hess says. "She's kind of like a magnet. Everybody gets attracted to her. It's hard not to. She can't be ignored. At all.'
Soon after she showed up at the center, Mike Richards, its founder and former director, nominated Ms. Gallimore for a National AIDS Network award. Ms. Gallimore was one of seven recipients of the network's Americans Who Care award, presented at the French embassy in Washington, D.C., in October 1987.
The presentation coincided with a gay rights/AIDS advocates' March on Washington, and Hess remembers Ms. Gallimore marching beside him, adjusting his Colonial costume when it became disarrayed.
But, within months, the cooperation between the AIDS Resource Center and Ms. Gallimore began to fade. The turning point came in January, after Hess had nominated her for a J.C. Penney Co. Golden Rule Award.
The center had three nominees who were finalists for the awards -- visitation committee chairman Douglas Crowder, the entire volunteer staff and Ms. Gallimore. The volunteer staff won one of the 10 $1,000 awards, and as finalists, Crowder and Ms. Gallimore each received a plaque and a check for $250.
At the awards luncheon, Ms. Gallimore sat with a group from the center. After the checks were presented, Ms. Gallimore says, Crowder kept telling her, "We might as well go ahead and give these to Bill (Waybourn).' She didn't understand what Crowder meant until she opened the envelope and saw that her check was made out not to her but to the AIDS Resource Center (as was Crowder's). She says she told Waybourn she would like to have that money, and he answered he would have to consult the cent er's board.
Ms. Gallimore says she went home and phoned the center, leaving several messages for Waybourn. Her final message: If Waybourn refused to give her the $250, she would contact the media. She says the last message got a prompt response. Waybourn issued a check for $250 that same day.
Waybourn has a different version of the Golden Rule Award episode: "She took it upon herself to say she wanted a check, and that was great. We had no problem with that,' Waybourn says. "I remember her being fussy about it. I mean, I can see that it would be a big deal to her. But the reality of all of it is -- Margaret was entitled to the money, and we were more than glad to give it to her.'
To Ms. Gallimore, the $250 wasn't the only problem; to her, the incident simply confirmed suspicions she had had for several months.
Beginning in September, Mathis Hospice was featured in newspaper and magazine articles, on local TV news and on Hour Magazine. In the wake of the publicity, Ms. Gallimore received several donations, including two washing machines and the backyard deck. But more than one AIDS Resource Center volunteer who came to her hospice told her other contributions designated for her were being kept by the center.
"I had heard that Margaret thought we had been getting donations in her name and then keeping them,' Hess says. "And I think the thing that really cemented that for her was the J.C. Penney award. I think she saw that and said, "See, it's true. Everything for me, you've been keeping.' And that hasn't been the case.'
Waybourn says he checked every contribution the center received around September and October, and concluded it had not kept anything meant for Ms. Gallimore.
After the award flap, Ms. Gallimore made one last visit to the AIDS Resource Center. The occasion was a volunteer meeting at which she stood and, she says, "read them the riot act.' She stopped using the center's food pantry.
Waybourn says: "If there is anything keeping Margaret from the AIDS Resource Center, it is Margaret . . . . There is no concerted effort to deny her anything. Margaret may believe there is, but she doesn't have any evidence to support it.' Whether or not it's a conscious effort, the AIDS Resource Center has been denying Ms. Gallimore the one thing she wants most: The opportunity to care for people with AIDS.
Part of the problem may be due to resource center officials' general lack of knowledge about her facility. Hess thought Mathis Hospice had only two beds (it has eight now and four others ready should the need arise), and he was surprised to learn the hospice was once occupied by five PWAs. "I guess that's just me not going there,' he says.
Another part of the problem may be due to a misunderstanding of the services Ms. Gallimore offers or, more specifically, the definition of "hospice.'
Hess believes Ms. Gallimore's facility is most appropriate for PWAs suffering the final ravages of the disease. "It's not a place to live; it's a place to die,' he says.
But the majority of Ms. Gallimore's clients used Mathis Hospice as a transitional place, a temporary harbor where they could be comfortable and comforted. Ms. Gallimore believes they came seeking the understanding and reassurance they couldn't get from family or friends.
Allen called twice before he came to Mathis. He had read an article about Ms. Gallimore in American Health magazine and called to get advice to "pass on to a friend.' Ms. Gallimore recalls: "He would say, "My friend has a sore under his tongue.' '
When he arrived, the 16-year-old was covered with sores. He stayed about a week, then went home to Arlington. A month later, she found his obituary in the newspaper.
"I guess he was going back to die, because he got off his chest his confession. He told me that he was a male prostitute. He said that he had been on the streets since he was 10. He told me he had a room -- he was still living at home -- and he told me he would be out until it was time for the family to come back in, then he stayed in his room. Sixteen,' she clucks. "And to me, he was a baby, regardless of what he did.'
A 30-year-old man Ms. Gallimore called "K' because she couldn't pronounce his name showed up "just to visit' every day for several weeks. His visits ceased for 10 days, then "K' returned.
"We sat on the front porch, and he told me he had been looking for a job but couldn't get hired because he was sick. I said, "Oh, yeah?'
"He said, "Yeah. I've just been diagnosed with AIDS.'
"He started crying, asked to stay. Stayed a couple of weeks, brought in a huge suitcase. Other guys brought his stuff in. All that's still over there. He left the same way he walked in: "I'm going to get some cigarettes.'
"I called the authorities, called all the numbers he'd given, but they were wrong, which is not unusual.'
Stephen called on Easter Sunday, while Ms. Gallimore was getting dressed for church. "He was crying. He said, "You don't know me, but I read about you.' I could tell in his voice that it was real hard for him to talk. So I told him, just take your time.
"He said he was going to kill himself. I said, "No. Why? Why don't you talk some more.' So we did. We talked about an hour and a half.'
The following day, Stephen left a message on Ms. Gallimore's answering machine. He was in Dallas (his hometown was near Houston) at the bus station. During the week he lived at Mathis Hospice, Stephen talked to Ms. Gallimore about how he should break the news to his mother. He told her his grandparents had some property they said he would inherit. But he knew he wouldn't live. "I told him, "Just tell them you need it now and you'll use it as long as you can. And if you ever need me, I'm here.' '
He phoned a few times and mailed her a card, but Ms. Gallimore hasn't heard from Stephen recently. "I just hope and pray he's doing well,' she says.
A good number of Ms. Gallimore's PWAs have moved in and out of Mathis Hospice almost like shadows.
Tyrone, a gay drug abuser, would dress as a woman at night and go out. "I said, "There's only one thing I want to ask you. You know you're infected. Please do not go out there and fool around.' But I think he was still going out and having sex. I have condoms all around this place, but he just did what he wanted to do.'
Luis, a gay 28-year-old, spent a week and a half at Mathis Hospice. "He had family,' Ms. Gallimore says. "The mother called me all the time. Her husband said he would divorce her if Luis came back in the house. She was trying to show me she still loved her child . . . so I told her I understood. You would have to. There is nothing else you can do.'
Luis left Mathis Hospice for an apartment near his family. But his mother continued to call, telling Ms. Gallimore that she would make soup and carry it out to Luis, waiting in his car. The AIDS Resource Center functions as a clearinghouse of services and information for PWAs. If an AIDS patient walks in, he's sure to find Craig Hess or a friendly volunteer ready to help him find almost anything he needs. And he may be handed a binder Hess calls "the referral book,' listing everything from doctors and lawyers to home health care providers to counseling centers.
Mathis Hospice was not in that book (newer agencies were) until the omission was pointed out.
"She (Ms. Gallimore) doesn't fit into any of the categories,' Waybourn had explained. His further response --"OK, so what?' -- is the question he frequently uses to answer Ms. Gallimore's complaints.
John went to the AIDS Resource Center last spring, seeking help for his friend Jim, who, weakened by AIDS, was no longer able to care for himself. Someone at the center suggested John take Jim to the PWA House, a 28-bed residential facility for ambulatory AIDS patients. But Jim, already bedridden, could not be admitted.
So a center staffer suggested perhaps Jim's family could move to Dallas -- from Iowa -- and assume responsibility for his care. "That was basically their only suggestion,' John says.
John also sought help from the AIDS/ARMS Network, and a care coordinator suggested Mathis. Wanting to make the best choice, John returned to the resource center and asked about Mathis.
"Their reaction was very skeptical and almost apologetic,' John says. "They said, "We would not blame you for going there, but we can't recommend it.' '
John decided to see for himself. He went to Mathis Hospice, met Ms. Gallimore, then returned with Jim.
"This lady here kind of took it upon herself to punish herself by asking me to come here,' Jim said in May at the house. "I like it. It's off the beaten path, but I've got somebody that will take care of me. I need the help.
"Sometimes she puts on her yellow gloves, depends on what we have to do. But as long as there's no blood, she treats me just like anybody else. She's not afraid. That's what I mean: I think I'm very lucky I got her.'
Jim died in June. Joe Caton, the inpatient social worker at Parkland's AIDS clinic, ticks off the options available to PWAs who cannot care for themselves: "There's the PWA House (for those who are ambulatory), and their own home and their own family.'
Anything else?
"There's a woman named Margaret Gallimore. Sometimes we mention her name.' Caton describes Ms. Gallimore's facility as "like a boardinghouse. She'll come over, you know, she'll cook and clean and help the patients as best she can. And she mothers them.' Caton also says: "There is no service available for the person that needs 24-hour nursing care.'
But family members of PWAs who have died at Mathis Hospice have no complaints about Ms. Gallimore's service. Martha, a schoolteacher who lives in East Texas, placed her son Sam in Ms. Gallimore's care for two months.
"I never had an instant's concern once he got over there,' she says. "If he woke up in the night, boy, she was right there. Everybody just felt we were so lucky that such a place existed, not just for the medical care, but the loving care . . . . It was invaluable to me. She's a national treasure, as far as I'm concerned.'
Sam died in Mathis Hospice in January.
Jean lives in Illinois. Her son, David, lived in Mathis Hospice 14 days and died in Parkland two days later with Ms. Gallimore at his bedside. In that brief time, Jean grew fond of Ms. Gallimore. David's family flew Ms. Gallimore to Illinois for his funeral and gave her a necklace, a small gold heart engraved, With love from Jean, Mark and David.
"I don't know what I would have done without her,' Jean says. "I think she's a living saint, and I don't say that lightly, because I'm Catholic and I go to church on Sunday.'
Kathy, a Dallas woman who had taken care of her brother Don in her own home until he was hospitalized, took her entire family (parents and siblings included) to Mathis Hospice to inspect the facilities. "We stayed all evening, drinking coffee. When we inquired how much it would cost, Ms. Gallimore told us, "If you don't have it, it costs nothing.' We went away from there feeling like we had known her all our lives,' ' Kathy says. "We felt: Here was a person we wished we had met in the beginning.'
Don had been an outpatient at Parkland for three months, but no one at the hospital had mentioned Mathis Hospice. An AIDS/ARMS care coordinator referred the family to Ms. Gallimore.
Don was discharged from Parkland on a Saturday night. He arrived at Mathis Hospice with a temperature of 103, barely able to talk and unable to swallow. Kathy says Ms. Gallimore bathed Don, cleaned his nose with a bulb designed for infants, placed pads on his knees and hips and gave him a massage.
"Within a few hours, she had him smelling like a newborn baby,' Kathy says. "She did little things for him that never once were done in the hospital. She made our brother comfortable.'
Don died the next night.
"My brother had literally nothing except his dignity,' Kathy says. "And Ms. Gallimore allowed him to keep that.' To explain the emptiness of Mathis Hospice, some sources point to the PWA House. In fact, it is a more attractive place to live.
Opened last summer, the house can provide apartment-style living for 28 men as well as emergency shelter for two more, who may be referred by the resource center. In exchange, the center donates $500 a month to the facility. House director Steve Pace says he has never had to formalize a waiting list, but the facility is usually full.
Although its Oak Cliff location is in a neighborhood very similar to that of Mathis Hospice, PWA House offers amenities Ms. Gallimore can't provide: in-house counseling, exercise equipment, a piano in the dining room. More than 100 volunteers contribute services ranging from home-cooked meals to repairs to haircuts to guitar lessons. PWA House's biggest attraction, however, seems to be the camaraderie, the love and support its residents freely share with each other.
But the PWA House is somewhat restricted in the type of clients it can admit. Pace must refuse all bedridden patients, PWAs with pulmonary tuberculosis and active intravenous drug abusers. Residents are expected to pay $160 to $250 in monthly rent and help with household chores if they can.
Robert, a current PWA House resident, lived at Mathis for three weeks last year. When he arrived at the PWA House, he says he heard residents saying Mathis was infested with roaches and rats.
"I heard all kinds of madness,' Robert says. "But at Ms. Gallimore's, I never saw a rat. No sign of a rat. I may have seen a couple of bugs now and then, but it wasn't infested like they say.'
He speculates her hospice is empty because of "who she is and where she is -- a minority in South Dallas.' Last September, Robert Casteel was admitted to Humana Hospital Medical City with AIDS-related pneumonia and a 105-degree temperature.
He says that one night, about 3 a.m., he asked to be taken to the hospital chapel. There, he unhooked his IV, knelt at the altar and said, "God, if you let me walk out of here, I'll do whatever I can for whomever I can.'
A month later, he was volunteering at the AIDS Resource Center, where he kept hearing other volunteers talk about Margaret Gallimore. Soon, he was volunteering at Mathis Hospice, too.
Right away, he noticed Ms. Gallimore's forceful personality. "I wouldn't want to tangle with her,' Casteel says. "I couldn't afford enough drugs to deal with the headache.'
But he also was impressed by her work. "She's doing a great job for what she's doing. She's doing it all by herself. She doesn't get any help from anybody.'
Volunteering at both places, Casteel soon became aware of conflicts between Ms. Gallimore and the resource center.
"I don't think she has been treated fairly,' he says. "I think Margaret -- being so verbal, being so frank, and possibly being so loud -- just intimidates the hell out of those little guys. They hear her coming and they run out the back door.'
Casteel says Ms. Gallimore has offered him a place to live, free of charge, if he ever needs it; Jan Barton, another resource center volunteer, has given him the same pledge. "And the AIDS Resource Center paid my rent last month, so I can't point fingers at anyone,' Casteel says. "They all have to be very special people to do what they're doing.
"But, all the way around, people are losing sight of what this is about,' he says. "A lot of people have insinuated that the AIDS Resource Center doesn't need Margaret Gallimore anymore; all they need is the PWA House. But this epidemic has just started. We're going to need Margaret and we're going to need the PWA House and the AIDS Resource Center and whoever else can help.
"It's a shame they don't get along. If they did, they could do twice as much good.'
Dusty Rhodes is a regular contributor to Dallas Life Magazine.
PHOTOS: 1. (Cover) Margaret Gallimore (DMN: Lon Cooper) 2. When she started her Mathis Hospice, Margaret Gallimore only knew that many young men, sick and suffering, had no place to go. (DMN: John F. Rhodes) 3. Ms. Gallimore receives the Presidential Volunteer Action Award from Ronald and Nancy Reagan -- the only recipient among the 18 chosen nationwide who cares for people with AIDS. (AP) 4. Ms. Gallimore celebrates her trip to the capital. Tom Brandow, right, had a brother who lived at Mathis and died of AIDS. (DMN: Lon Cooper) 5. Craig Hess, who supervises AIDS Resource Center volunteers, says Ms. Gallimore took the "hard-core" AIDS sufferers, offering "a service that nobody else had." (DMN: John F. Rhodes)
Index Terms: MARGARET GALLIMORE; AIDS PATIENTS; AIDS HOSPICES
Record Number: DAL666578*1 DAL666578*2
Copyright 1988 The Dallas Morning News Company