Princess Diana Visits First Lady, Tours Children’s AIDS Center

Princess Diana visited two First Ladies Friday--one who lives in the White House and another, only 3 years old, who is infected with the AIDS virus.

The younger “First Lady” earned her nickname because she was the first child placed at Grandma’s House, a home for children with the deadly virus.

The girl, dressed in bright pink overalls for the occasion, grabbed Diana’s hand when they were introduced. The princess scooped her up, carried her upstairs during a tour of the Victorian row house and acquiesced when the girl asked for a ride around the block in Diana’s dark green Rolls-Royce.

As cameras flashed and whirred, the princess stepped out of the car with “the First Lady” in her arms--a symbolic picture that gratified the founders of Grandma’s House, who have kept its location unpublicized out of concern about prejudice and fear.

“That kind of picture . . . a person of her stature coming . . . “ said the Rev. Debbie Tate, president of a crisis housing organization that runs Grandma’s House. “It shows that it’s all right to love a person with AIDS, it’s all right to care about a person with AIDS, it’s all right to hug a person with AIDS. . . . It won’t hurt you.”

Diana’s whirlwind trip, her second solo visit to the United States, ended less than 24 hours after she arrived in the country.

She attended a gala Thursday night to benefit Grandma’s House and ballet companies in Washington and London, and she had coffee Friday morning at the White House with Barbara Bush and others before her motorcade went to the children’s residence.