Project Puts NAMES and Faces on the Tragedy of AIDS

They are strangers of about the same middle age. One wears Bermuda shorts, and a camera hangs from his neck. He looks for all the world like a tourist who is lost.

The other is neat, his slacks pressed, his mustache trimmed. Crows feet suggest a life of hard laughs.

Looking at the two of them, I would have guessed, stupidly, wrongly, that their paths might converge only in a traffic lane, and even then, that they would not turn their heads for a glance as they pass.

But now they reach for each other, hugging, and we, the other strangers who are milling by, watch as self-consciousness drains. They rest their heads heavily on each other’s shoulders. Not a word is said.

Then one of them utters this: “My best friend died three weeks ago, on the 17th, after 23 years.”

His new friend with the camera, still nameless, stands with tears pooled in his eyes.

We are, today, a very mixed crowd of strangers who have suddenly become linked. I am talking about what is happening here, in this huge, airy room at Cal State Fullerton where we have come to meditate on the lives vanquished by AIDS.

And I am talking about connection in a much larger sense.

“AIDS doesn’t discriminate” has already become a cliche. That’s because this plague has gone on and on, ad nauseam, staking claim to new victims every day, numbing in the familiarity of its course.

You pick up a virus and you will die as a result. Still. Even Magic Johnson. Even in America, where we’re supposed to be so smart.

It was 608 panels of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt that were on display in Fullerton, in conjunction with World AIDS Day this week. That includes 24 new ones, memorializing people whose lives were rooted close by, that were just added on.

There will be many more.

At last count, the quilt had more than 24,000 panels, representing just 2% of AIDS deaths worldwide. The panels tour in shifts now, a mobile touchstone of grief, love and dignity too often snatched from those dying of this pariah of a disease.

Here are the names and faces of this plague, impossible to quietly bury once you peek into their lives. Really, there are no strangers here.

“This is Grandpa Don,” a father is telling his son, who is maybe 3 years old, as the two of them pause before a quilt panel of yellow cotton, decorated with a clown, and a cat, in honor of Donald E. James.

Donald James was born on Oct. 25, 1932, and he died four months shy of his 58th birthday, in 1990. The quilt panel says he was a loving father, a loving grandfather, a loving friend. A fresh white carnation lies across the bottom on this panel, its long stem bone-dry.

“Hi, Grandpa!” the little boy says with a vigorous wave. His father picks him up and they move on to the rest of the panels, contemplating the lives of others cut short.

Donald R. Burkhart, dead at 46, lived in Rochester, N.Y., most of his life. He was a Navy veteran and a son, brother, lover, friend, neighbor, co-worker and a systems analyst, only the loved one who made this quilt panel spelled analyst with an extra “y” and an extra “s.”

All of the panels are homemade, from the heart.

Roaming among us are volunteers who carry boxes of tissue. Emotion wells frequently. Two elderly ladies, both wearing cardigan sweaters to ward off any threat of a chill, speak quietly to each other as they shuffle slowly by. A uniformed policeman stops with his head bowed before the panels of colleagues now gone.

“We’ll miss you, Rita,” a young woman writes as she kneels on a panel where people are invited to write down their thoughts. “Always in my heart, Mai.”

“Bryon,” someone else has written. “Your panel may not be here but your presence is in my heart. Always remember you. Your buddy, Dan.”

The death of those eulogized with scraps of fabric, photographs, paintings, mementos of lives prosaic and grand, touches vulnerable chords in us all.

Jeffrey Allen Steinbach was born in the same year as I, only he’s been dead since 1989. He was a big fan of the San Francisco 49ers. He lived in Salinas and played a lot of basketball. He had daughters, parents, brothers, friends. Many of those he loved are pictured on his patch of quilt.

“Dear Daddy,” writes daughter Vanessa. “I miss you a lot. And love you a lot. You’re the best dad in the world.”

His father wrote this five months ago: “My son Jeff, So many things I wanted to say, but like many things, they escape with time . . .”

John Heath, dead at 37, had a Siamese cat that looks exactly like my own. Tony was a big Ninja turtle fan when he died last year. His picture shows a happy blond child in a red and white striped shirt. He was 11 years old.

“I’m not afraid and I’m not lonely,” is the quotation on Paul B. Miller’s slice of immortality here. Perhaps those words were close to his last.

A black panel pictures a piano, with names written on the keys. “For those who died alone with lost hope, playing their pianos in the dark,” it says.

The NAMES Project has 37 chapters around the United States. It is always looking for volunteers.