United in a Project of Tribute : Memorials: Young, old, gay and straight, 50 people who have lost loved ones work on AIDSquilt panels. A segment will be shown in Antelope Valley.

They’re an unlikely collection of people who gather every week: young and old, brown and white, gay and straight.

But there is one common thread that holds these 50 north Los Angeles County residents together: Each has lost someone they love to AIDS.

Now they are commemorating the thread that binds them by making panels for the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, a piece of which they are bringing for the first time to the Antelope Valley later this year.

“It’s a project of love from those who have been affected and stood by quietly hoping this would go away,” said Bruce Weyermann, co-chairman of the Antelope Valley Faces Up to AIDS committee, which is bringing the quilt here. “It’s time this valley became aware this is a problem.”

The Antelope Valley has a long history as a bastion of conservative political views. An anti-gay video that was distributed nationwide, including to members of Congress, was produced by a Lancaster church.

Organizers are quick to note that the quilt is not for, or about, gays. In fact, most of those who have come together in the Faces Up group are heterosexual. The quilt is simply a way for those who have been affected by AIDS to attach names to the statistics.

Gay rights activist Cleve Jones came up with the idea for the quilt in 1985. Work on the memorial for people who have died of AIDS began in 1987 in San Francisco. There were 1,920 of the 3-by-6-foot panels.

Today, the quilt includes more than 23,400 panels from every U.S. state as well as from 29 countries. It has been displayed in its entirety just four times--in October of 1987, 1988, 1989 and 1992 in Washington.

It was Harold Servetnick who suggested to Weyermann that a portion of the AIDS Memorial Quilt be brought to the Antelope Valley. In 1987, Servetnick and his wife, Lydia, lost their son, Neil, to acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

“AIDS education has been important to us since that time,” he said. “We hope to spread information to the people who are most susceptible to it. . . . It just takes a little bit of carelessness to get exposed.”

Education is a primary reason the Antelope Valley Faces Up to AIDS committee is bringing the quilt portion to the region, members said.

AIDS and the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS, are affecting the Antelope Valley regardless of whether people want to admit it, Weyermann said. At least half the dozen or so panels that are being sewn commemorate local residents who have died of complications related to AIDS, Weyermann said.

Littlerock resident Jerry Smith is making a panel for his lover, Steven Wallach, who died last December. The panel includes representations of Wallach’s favorite things--Disney characters and Christmas.

“It’s a healing process,” said Smith, who tested positive for HIV three years ago. “While you do it, you think of him. He’s in this quilt.”

Brian Maxey, a committee co-chair with Weyermann, is making a panel with his lover that will name all the people they know who have died of AIDS.

“I’ve lost a lot of friends,” said Maxey, who is also HIV positive. “It would take me a lifetime to make one panel for each of them.”

Statistics are not available on the number of Antelope Valley residents with AIDS or those who are infected with HIV. The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services estimates that as many as 1 in every 200 of the county’s residents, or 40,000 to 50,000 people, are HIV positive.

There have been 20,755 confirmed AIDS cases in the county, including 13,597 AIDS-caused deaths since 1981, according to the county Health Services.

Siblings Kim Brown and Geoff Bohannan, ages 12 and 10, are directing their panel at youngsters. It’s a simple design , a rainbow with the sun and white puffy clouds. Across the top it says “Grandpa.” It is for their grandfather, who died of AIDS in 1986, and Brown and Bohannan each scrawled a message across the cloth.

“We just thought it would be nice for our families,” said Geoff. “Some people in our family don’t know he died of AIDS.”

Kim quickly added: “They know, they just don’t talk about it.”

Display of the quilt is planned for Nov. 14-16 at the Palmdale Cultural Center. As many as 60 12-by-12 quilt panels will be brought from the NAMES Project Foundation headquarters in San Francisco. The 3-by-6 panels being sewn here now will be dedicated at the November display.