Why Visiting the AIDS Memorial Quilt Will Change Your Life. [View all]

The Names Project will show the entire AIDS Memorial Quilt in Washington from July 21 to 25


The AIDS Memorial Quilt hasn't been seen in its entirety since 1996, when it was last unfurled on the National Mall. The impact of display was overwhelming, and impossible to put a dollar value on. But the cost of the operation -- even with the help of thousands of volunteers -- put the quilt's sponsor, the Names Project, in a financial hole.

"We were paying it off for another 10 years, maybe 15," say Julie Rhoad, the director of the Names Project Foundation, which has been based in Atlanta since 2001.

Now Rhoad is preparing to show the entire quilt in Washington again, from July 21 to 25. But the memorial -- and this is sobering -- has gotten too big for the Mall. So the 48,000 panels will be rotated in and out of storage; the plan is for each panel will spend a day on the Mall or at one of several dozen "satellite" locations. Cleve Jones, who founded the Names Project (and left amid a dispute in 2003), says he supports the effort "because the quilt was created to be seen, and it’s been sitting in that warehouse in Atlanta."

Jones, a union organizer in San Francisco for the last 10 years, will be in Washington for the event, which coincides with the the World Aids Conference (it will be held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center from July 22 to 27). The overlap was intentional. The presence of the quilt, Rhoad says, will send an important message to convention-goers about the human toll of AIDS. "Anything happening in the convention will be amplified by the fact that the quilt is out there," she says.

http://www.out.com/news-commentary/2012/07/17/AIDS-quilt-returns-washington-names-project-Julie-Rhoad

The pain this brings is unbearable, but the fallen will never forgotten.