Denying AIDS Its Sting: A Quilt of Life

 

By KATHERINE BISHOP, Special to the New York Times

  Published: October 5, 1987

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SAN FRANCISCO— Entering the storefront headquarters of the Names Project here, visitors are struck by the colorful fabric panels that cover the walls and floors: red velvet, pale-blue cotton, hot-pink satin, plain denim, rich brocade, ordinary felt, plaid wool. For just a moment, the visual impact masks the reality that each panel - there are thousands of them - represents a life lost to AIDS. 

 

The Names Project is a campaign to provide memorials to those lives by creating a huge quilt made up of individual panels, each 3 by 6 feet, that have been made by the families, friends and co-workers of those who died. Each of the nearly 3,000 panels, which have come from all over the country, bears the name of a victim of acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

 March on Washington 

Of the panels in hand, 1,920 are being sewn together by volunteers working 12 hours a day to make a quilt that will be displayed at the Mall in Washington on Oct. 11 as part of the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. 

Many panels depict aspects of the life of the person who died. Thus, some are made from shirts belonging to victims, others have teddy bears sewn onto them and one has an applique of a white chef's hat. 

''I get overwhelmed by the number of people this represents,'' said Sally Meiser, a volunteer with the project. ''But it's a juxtaposition of deep sadness with joyful creation.'' 

While the final creation will simply be stitched together and not padded and cross-stitched, or quilted, it is referred to as a quilt because it is being made in the folk-art tradition of patchwork quilts, which were created in sewing bees. 

Project organizers believe that the quilt, which will measure 150 by 500 feet, will be a striking visualization of a portion of the deaths from AIDS, which reached more than 24,000 nationwide as of September. Health officials expect the toll to reach 179,000 within three years. The organizers also hope to raise funds to take the quilt on a 35-city tour next year.

 Mourning Friends 

The Names Project's executive director is Cleve Jones, who helped found the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, a major resource and information center since the early years of the health crisis. 

Mr. Jones said he conceived the quilt idea during a memorial march in 1986 for Harvey Milk, a homosexual who was a member of the city's Board of Supervisors and who was shot to death in his City Hall office in 1978. Marchers carried placards with the names of those who had died of AIDS. 

For Mr. Jones, who is 32 years old, the project is also a way to mourn the death from AIDS last year of his best friend for 14 years. 

''I went through a period of real despair,'' he said. ''My past has been wiped out. I've lost all my friends from my youth.'' 

Ms. Meiser worked with a group of friends to make a panel for another young man who died of AIDS. They worked on it for eight nights and spent the time designing and sewing and talking about their friend. 

''It was a celebration of Stephen,'' Ms. Meiser said. ''We made his panel red with sequins. He was a quiet person, but he always wanted his name up in lights.'' 

The volunteers said they found themselves alternating between laughter and tears while assembling the quilt. 

''Some panels just stop you in your tracks,'' said Jack Kendrick. 

Nearly all the panels pay homage to gay men; one commemorates a New York woman, simply called Nancy, who was an intravenous drug user and died of AIDS. 

Each panel is accompanied by a letter from the maker, telling something about the person who died and about the feelings of the survivors. A letter on pale-blue paper from a woman in New Jersey who has seen two of her children die of the disease began, ''I hope it's acceptable for me to put the names of both my sons on a single panel.''

 Fear of Oppression 

A man in Colorado wrote of sitting with his brother as he died. 

''We laughed; we grew silent; we cursed the disease; we believed in miracles,'' he wrote. 

Some apologized for a crude first attempt at sewing. ''A rather ghastly job of stitching, not to mention the cutting,'' wrote a man from Oregon. 

Not all the panels carry the full name of the deceased, out of respect for family wishes or in cases in which the family never knew the true nature of the illness. Initials are used instead. 

One panel, decorated with a rainbow, flowers and a Star of David, carries this message: ''I have decorated this banner to honor my brother. Our parents did not want his name used publicly. The omission of his name represents the fear of oppression that AIDS victims and their families feel.'' 

Debra Resnik, who made a panel bearing only the initials of a friend who died, was busy at one of many sewing machines, piecing panels together. 

''I had wanted to do something for a long time,'' she said of the project, ''and this is a living memorial. It's a tremendous statement of how much life there was and how much life there still is.'' 

photos of volunteers at the Names Project in San Francisco; quilt panels with names of those who have died from AIDS; Cleve Jones, project organizer (NYT/Terrence McCarthy) 

Article from The New York Times