'City Lights' lovingly remembers beloved journalist and supermodel Gail O'Neill

It’s customary in the media for end-of-year reflections to include stories about well-known people who passed away in the preceding months. Among those in Atlanta was Gail O’Neill, an enthusiastic supporter of WABE and a good friend of “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes. 

You may have known Gail as a writer and later an editor at Arts ATL. She hosted the Felipe Barral-produced program “Collective Knowledge,” a series of web interviews with thought leaders, and the tagline, “Spreading knowledge is the most altruistic thing we can do as human beings.” That sentence speaks volumes about Gail herself. Her intellect and curiosity sparked interest in a wide range of subjects, and her humanity was central to it all.

The other quality important to Gail was beauty, though NOT in terms of facial appearance or physical traits. Nature, art, music, dance, literature and examples of human dignity – were the things where Gail found beauty. Ironically, her physical beauty launched a successful international career that Gail never imagined for herself.