The main draw of the God’s Love We Deliver Golden Heart Awards is always do-gooding. This year, however, the venue was equally as enticing for many guests — which is saying a lot, considering it was quite a commute for most.
After several years downtown, the annual benefit, now in its 18th year, took over The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine for the Monday night affair.
“We wanted to mix it up,” said Michael Kors, God’s Love’s longtime supporter. “We’re almost at 40 years with God’s Love, and it’s really crazy when I think how things can come full circle. We started on the West Side in the ’70s, in the basement of a church, and now here we are in this cathedral. The organization has stepped up to the bat, regardless of what is thrown their way. And that’s due to the amazing, amazing volunteers. These volunteers are unbelievable. And the employees are just, I mean, it’s family. It really is family.”
The night recognized Sarah Jessica Parker with the Michael Kors Award for Outstanding Philanthropy, Megan Thee Stallion with the GenLove Award for Outstanding Philanthropy and Cole Escola with the Golden Heart Award for Special Achievements in the Arts.
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“All three of them I think are really prime examples of people who have empathy, care about their community, and care about the community at large,” Kors said during cocktail hour, as instrumental versions of songs like “Pink Pony Club” played overhead. “Sarah, to me, is just a female face of New York all around the world. Cole has lit this town on fire like nobody else. And I look at Megan and she’s just a ball of energy, but also a ball of compassion. So that’s what this is all about.”
Zoey Deutch arrived in a cream knit sweater and coordinating silk skirt, despite the warm October weather, enjoying a night off from her new Broadway show “Our Town,” which just began its run. “Sex and the City” original cast members Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon were there to support Parker, as was “And Just Like That” star Nicole Ari Parker. There were Bravo housewives including Dorinda Medley, Brynn Whitfield and Sai De Silva, actors Kaitlyn Dever, Michelle Buteau and Kristin Chenoweth and the night’s performer, Sam Smith, who arrived with boyfriend Christian Cowan.
Between courses of beet salad and beef filet, courtesy of Melba Wilson of Melba’s Restaurant in Harlem, the biggest auction in the history of the event took place, with Megan donating $100,000 and financier Sam and Dena Lombardo announcing a surprise $1 million match, in honor of one of their golden retrievers who had passed earlier that day, to total more than $4 million raised.
“I have watched this organization grow from a tiny building into an extraordinary institution of good,” Parker said. “From its inception in the midst of an unthinkable crisis I remember all too well, God’s Love We Deliver has shined its spotlight and focused all its will and resources on a community that was, and still occasionally is, too easily ignored.”
Megan The Stallion, who just revealed she’ll be releasing a new album on Friday, was recognized for the work her foundation, The Pete & Thomas Foundation, does in her hometown of Houston.
“I lost my mom. I lost my dad, and I lost my great-grandmother, and those are the people who really taught me the importance of giving back,” Megan told the room. “I never saw giving back as like a chore or a struggle — it was a normal thing. People would literally walk into my grandmother’s house and she’d just be passing out money and dollars and cookies and everything. Anything she could give, she would give. So I’m just continuing on the legacy of my family.”
Escola described understanding the healing power of people providing food for you when earlier this year, at the beginning of the run of their play “Oh, Mary!” their brother passed away.
“My friends all rallied around me providing support, mostly in the form of food. Having people see my basic needs without me having to say anything and then taking the time to plan and craft and deliver meals, to me was the warmest, most loving feeling,” Escola said. “At God’s Love We Deliver, they don’t do that just for their friends, they do that for complete strangers. People they don’t know yet, and I’m so moved when I think about their work, especially when I think about the early days, the first volunteers, when the queer community was being destroyed by the AIDS epidemic, and one of the many disgusting messages they were getting from the government and from society at large was that this was God’s punishment. It was people like Ganga Stone and Jane Best that said, ‘no, that’s not God. This is God.’”
With that, Sam Smith took the stage with stripped back versions of “Stay With Me,” “Unholy” and a cover of “Time After Time.”
