Princess Diana ‘left people with the feeling they mattered and were important,’ one of the late royal’s most beloved patronages recalls on the 23rd anniversary of her death
- May Lloyd is widow of former national director of Leprosy Mission, Tony Lloyd
- She recalled how Princess Diana ‘left people with the feeling they mattered’
- Added how the late Princess of Wales also had ‘great empathy with people’
Princess Diana ‘left people with the feeling they mattered’, the widow of the former national director of one of the royal’s most beloved charity’s has recalled.
May Lloyd, the widow of the former national director of The Leprosy Mission, Tony Lloyd, has told how the late Princess of Wales had a skill for making people feel important – no matter who and where they were.
‘Diana left people with the feeling they mattered and were important, she understood what they were going through – whether she was speaking to a fellow mother or to a person affected by leprosy,’ she said, speaking to The Express.
May, who was speaking on the 23rd anniversary of Diana’s death, went on to praise Prince William and Harry’s later mother for having ‘great empathy,’ too.
May Lloyd, the widow of the former national director of The Leprosy Mission, Tony Lloyd, recalled how Princess Diana left people with the feeling they mattered.’ Pictured, The Princess Of Wales attends a charity event in London as patron of The ‘Leprosy Mission’
Princess Diana wearing a pink dress with blue polka dots and a pink jacket by Paul Costelloe, offers comfort to a hospital patient on March 4, 1993 in Kathmandu, Nepal
‘She had great empathy with people,’ May added. ‘She didn’t mind shaking hands, cuddling, sitting on the beds of people who were ill.’
In April 1987, Princess Diana shook hands with a gay man who was dying of AIDS.
The People’s Princess touched the unnamed man without wearing gloves, challenging the previously believed notion the disease could be passed via skin-to-skin contact.
She was quoted as saying: ‘HIV does not make people dangerous to know. You can shake their hands and give them a hug. Heaven knows they need it’.
Princess Diana with her sons Prince William and Prince Harry at Wetherby School on September 12, 1989 in London
Then, in 1989, Princess Diana was seen shaking hands and touching bandages of people affected by the disease while visiting a Leprosy Mission hospital in Sitanala, Indonesia.
May’s comments come days after it was revealed plans for a statue that was commissioned to mark the twentieth anniversary of Princess Diana’s death will now be installed at Kensington Palace next year.
A statement on behalf of the Duke of Sussex and Duke of Cambridge issued by Kensington Palace read: ‘The statue that Prince William and Prince Harry have commissioned to commemorate their mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, will be installed next year on what would have been her 60th birthday.’
It will be installed in the Sunken Garden of Kensington Palace on 1st July 2021, marking The Princess’s 60th birthday.
The brothers announced the commission of the statue two years ago on the 20th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death.
Princess Diana died at the age of 36 when the car she was travelling in crashed in a Paris tunnel on August 31, 1997.
The princess loved to walk in the palace gardens and would often stop to chat to the staff. Pictured, the Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace
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