Fernando Castillo, First Chef at Project Open Hand

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Fernando Castillo, First Chef at Project Open Hand
Fernando Castillo, First Chef at Project Open Hand

www.youtube.com/user/ProjectOpenHand?blend=12&ob=5#p/...


Ruth Brinker, 89; Gave AIDS Patients Meals
By DANIEL E. SLOTNIK
Published: August 21, 2011

Ruth Brinker, who founded one of the first social service agencies dedicated to providing meals to AIDS victims too weak or impoverished to feed themselves, died Aug. 8 at her home in San Francisco. She was 89.

The cause was complications of vascular dementia, her daughter Lisa said.

Ms. Brinker started the agency, Project Open Hand, in 1985 after trying to help a friend in San Francisco who had AIDS. The man's condition had deteriorated from malnutrition, so Ms. Brinker organized friends to provide him with food.

''We got together and divided up the month to make sure he would get meals every day,'' Ms. Brinker told The New York Times in 1987. ''It worked well at first, but then people would forget.''

Some of the Samaritans went on vacation and neglected to provide for the man's care. When they returned, he had died.

Ms. Brinker resolved never to let that happen again. She drew on her experience working in food service and later with Meals on Wheels to organize volunteers to deliver food to H.I.V. and AIDS patients in San Francisco.

''My friends thought I was crazy at first, exposing myself to people with this illness,'' Ms. Brinker told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2005. ''But I wasn't afraid.''

Her work inspired dozens of similar ventures across America.

Project Open Hand now uses $5.6 million in private donations annually and government financing to provide 2,600 meals a day, as well as groceries to people who can cook for themselves. In addition to AIDS patients, its services are now offered to the elderly and to people who are homebound with other illnesses.

Ruth Marie Appel was born in Hartford, S.D., on May 1, 1922. She moved to San Francisco in the mid-1950s and married Jack Brinker in 1957. They divorced in 1965.

In addition to her daughter Lisa, Ms. Brinker is survived by another daughter, Sara; a grandson; and a great-granddaughter.

query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F05EFDA1039F932A...

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Taken on: September 12, 2011
Sets appears in:   • Ruth Brinker Memorial San Francisco City Hall 9.12.11   
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