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Three giant panels of the National AIDS Memorial Quilt will be on display at Haverhill’s Universalist Unitarian Church beginning Sunday, along with information about local resources.
The quilt sections on display connect the story of AIDS directly to raise greater awareness about HIV/AIDS today. Organizers say the quilt offers important reflection about the tremendous loss of life, allowing us to remember those we’ve lost, ensure their lives are never forgotten and provide hope for the future.
“The quilt is a powerful teaching tool that shares the story of HIV/AIDS, the lives lost, and the hope, healing, activism and remembrance that it inspires.” says John Cunningham, CEO of the National AIDS Memorial.
More than a dozen local organizations are offering information about their work in the Haverhill area, including the North Shore Health Project, Merrimack Valley PFLAG, Greater Haverhill YWCA and Community Action. Joanna Corea, local librarian, will be leading a Children’s Storytime focused on welcome and inclusion.
The free exhibit is open Sunday Dec. 1, from 1-3 p.m., and Monday, Dec. 2, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., at the Universalist Unitarian Church, 16 Ashland St., Haverhill. Sunday’s exhibit will also feature a Community Resource Fair, a Children’s Storytime and local musician Delia Black providing flute music.
The quilt was created during the 1980s during the most difficult days of the AIDS pandemic by gay rights activist Cleve Jones. While planning a march in 1985, he was devastated by the thousands of lives that had been lost to AIDS in San Francisco and asked each of his fellow marchers to write on placards the names of friends and loved ones who had died. Jones and others stood on ladders taping these placards to the walls of the San Francisco Federal Building. The wall of names looked like a patchwork quilt and, inspired by this sight, Jones and friends made plans for a larger memorial. In 1987, a group of strangers began gathering in a San Francisco storefront to document the lives they feared history would neglect.
Their goal was to create a memorial for those who had died of AIDS, and to thereby help people understand the devastating impact of the disease. This served as the foundation of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt and later that year, nearly 2,000 of its panels were displayed on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
The quilt has grown to more than 50,000 panels, with more than 110,000 names stitched within its fabric. It stretches more than 50 miles in length, and is the largest community-arts project in the world. The quilt is now part of the National AIDS Memorial and can be viewed in its entirety, along with the ability to search names, at aidsmemorial.org/quilt.