The largest display of the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt in 15 years will be at the Dallas Convention Center on Sept. 30-Oct. 1.
The Collin County-based AIDS organization C.U.R.E. that promotes education and prevention is behind the effort to bring more than 1,000 panels of the quilt to Dallas.
Event Director Tyler Sweatman said, “Fundraising is always a big challenge.”
The last time the entire quilt was displayed was in 1996 when the 47,000 panels were laid out on the Mall in Washington, D.C.
C.U.R.E. brought 225 panels of the Quilt to Dallas that were displayed in Lee Park as part of the Lone Star Ride in 2005. Each year on World AIDS Day the group hangs panels in a downtown Plano location and in several corporate headquarters in Collin County.
Sweatman said the speaker for the first night of the quilt presentation is Brryan Jackson, who is 19. His father, a hospital worker who didn’t want to pay child support, injected him with the HIV virus when he was 11 months old. He became deaf at the age of seven.
The goal of the quilt display, Sweatman said, was to “raise awareness and educate because here we are … 30 years later.”
— David Taffet
Can you tell us the names on the panels that will be displayed, or tell me where I can find this information? I can look for my friends’ panels if I know they will be there. The panel we made 25 years ago and the panels of my friends… I haven’t touched those in many years.
This week’s focus on the 30th anniversary didn’t hit me hard until now as I remember my friends that died.
At past displays the emotion of seeing these panels was overwhelming. I miss my friends. I will always remember them.