400 Mourn AIDS Victims : Event Is Part of Worldwide Rites Aimed at Combatting Crisis

Wearing purple ribbons and clutching handmade quilts dedicated to the memory of their loved ones who have died of AIDS, more than 400 people packed the UC Irvine Auditorium on Sunday for a local observance of World AIDS Day.

The Orange County event, entitled “Diversity of Culture; Unity in Spirit,” was sponsored by a coalition of AIDS activists and a cross-section of local clergy members. As at other World AIDS Day services around the globe Sunday, the organizers urged their audience to work together to combat the AIDS crisis.

At the ceremony, Buddhist monks, rabbis, Catholic priests and a choir from a black Baptist church prayed together and sang gospel music in Orange County’s largest commemoration of the worldwide event.

During an emotional unveiling of 33 quilt panels dedicated to more than 50 Orange County residents who have died of AIDS, relatives and friends of the victims, as well as strangers to them, sobbed loudly while the names were slowly read off. Organizers of the event said the local panels will eventually be displayed in Washington during the international AIDS quilt exhibit scheduled for next October.

Michael DeLicce, 70, of Fountain Valley, fought tears as he stood over a panel that he and his wife Tillie made for his son John. John DeLicce, a waiter, died in October just eight days before his 26th birthday.

“We just put his picture on it and stenciled in his name and his birthday,” DeLicce said, explaining the handmade quilt panel that he and his wife had made at their son’s request shortly before his death. “We put musical notes all over it too because he loved music.

“Like I’ve been telling my wife, we’re not alone. It’s terrible.”

Nearby, Tony Shull, 33, stared at the display of quilts in disbelief.

“Seventeen people in my church have died of AIDS since 1985 and many others are ill,” said Shull, a member of Christ Metropolitan Community Church in Santa Ana, a predominantly gay congregation. “I’ve made about 34 of these quilts over the years. I guess it’s a kind of therapy, a way to say goodby.”

Meanwhile, an array of clergy members urged those in attendance to work together to provide comfort to AIDS sufferers and their families.

“It is not someone else’s problem, “ said the Rev. Warren Pittman of St. Anselm of Canterbury Church in Garden Grove. “It’s all of us, and there is something all of us can do.”

The Rev. Oliver B. Garver Jr., a retired suffragan bishop from the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, told those gathered that their efforts to help AIDS sufferers should not be colored by an ill-conceived notion that “God is punishing his children who have been naughty.”

“This virus is paying no attention to male or female, white or yellow, gay or straight . . . ,” Garver said. “Those among us who have been busy casting stones at white HIV gay males must fast be rethinking that following (basketball star) Magic Johnson’s admission” that he carries the AIDS virus.

Among the religious organizations participating in the event were: Friendship Baptist Church of Yorba Linda, the Catholic Diocese of Orange, the Harbor Reform Temple of Newport Beach, the Saddleback Church of Religious Science in Laguna Niguel, Shir Ha-Ma’Alot Temple in Newport Beach and St. Anselm of Canterbury in Garden Grove. The event was sponsored by the AIDS Ministry Ecumenical Network and the AIDS Coalition to Identify Orange County Needs.

Elsewhere around the nation, art galleries and museums were focal points for World AIDS Day. Internationally, AIDS Day observances ranged from “A Day Without Art” to a “Night Without Light.”

At the Art Institute of Chicago, museum-goers saw a blank spot on the wall where Monet’s “On the Seine at Bennecourt” usually hangs. Organizers said the purpose of the empty wall was to jar people into practicing safe sex.

At dusk Sunday, the skylines in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Miami and Austin, Tex., were to dim for 15 minutes in the “Night Without Light” project.

In Washington, 150 people braved rain to light candles and more than 2,000 Christmas lights dedicated to AIDS victims at the Whitman Walker Clinic. Meanwhile, Christian and Jewish clergy members shared a message of joy and hope with a crowd consisting mostly of AIDS patients and friends and family of AIDS victims.

And in Russia, where homosexuality is illegal, members of the Russian Union of Gays and Lesbians passed out free condoms and safe-sex literature outside Moscow City Hall.

In Egypt, the American University in Cairo’s AIDS Awareness day featured a videotape of Magic Johnson who retired from basketball recently after learning he carries the AIDS virus.