THE QUILT A BATTLE FLAG IN THE WAR ON AIDS

THE NAMES PROJECT BRINGS ITS BANNER TO D.C., HONORING THE LIVES OF LOVED ONES

SAN FRANCISCO -- SAN FRANCISCO -- A 20-foot banner hangs over the entrance to the NAMES Project workshop on Market Street near Castro. In lavender block letters it says "RETURN TO WASHINGTON -- Volunteers Needed."

Inside the warehouselike space, the air hums with hushed energy. Straight pins and glitter, thread and what looks like miles of multicolored fabric are piled on floors and stuffed into shelves. Signs around the room say: "Practice sewing etiquette" and "I'm the person your mother warned you about."

From 9 in the morning until late at night, the energy builds as volunteers arrive and settle silently behind sewing machines. Many of them have seen friends who worked beside them become names in the National AIDS Memorial Quilt, which is returning to Washington next Saturday and Sunday, where it was first unfolded on the Mall.

In piecing lives together, the NAMES Project has taken on a life of its own, exploding in less than a year from a handful of panels made in a backyard by a handful of friends in San Francisco's predominantly gay Castro district to a 16-ton behemoth blanket known internationally as the Quilt, representing 11 countries and occupying the equivalent of seven football fields.

Wherever it's displayed -- in New York's Central Park, in San Francisco's Moscone Center, at Kansas City's Municipal Auditorium, at Baltimore's Museum of Art, under gray skies or cement ceilings -- the Quilt becomes an emotional magnet, an enormous security blanket, a heartening ritual, a dramatic expression of personal grief and of the kindness of strangers. It's a powerful statement of the impact of AIDS, the scope of the losses. And it promises that each of those lost will be remembered.

Nick was my neighbor. He liked art. He was a computer programmer. We rode the El to work together Almost everyday. He was a great cook. He was a loner. He never said he was sick. He died alone. I'll miss you.

When the Quilt is unfolded again in Washington, there will be 8,288 3-by-6-foot panels -- including hundreds from the Washington-Baltimore area -- all lovingly designed and handmade in homes and churches by friends, lovers and families, each bearing the name of a man, woman, lover, friend, father, mother, boy, girl or infant lost to AIDS.

It will be laid out on the Ellipse in a grid of 31 "ninepatch" squares, each consisting of nine 24-by-24-foot panels, arranged geographically and with a "signature square" at the center, allowing viewers to sign their names and make instant memorials.

Fifteen booths will be set up to sell Quilt merchandise -- T-shirts, buttons, books -- which accounts for approximately half of the NAMES Project's income.

A 12-by-12-foot section of the Quilt has been requested by the Smithsonian Institution for its permanent collection.

The Quilt will be mentioned in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest in the world.

It has toured 20 U.S. cities, raising nearly half a million dollars for local AIDS agencies.

And now it's coming back to Washington, five times larger than it was a year ago.

The memory of each of you lives in our hearts. With love, from the nurses who served you.

You might well imagine that the NAMES Project headquarters would be Grief Central. And it is, in a way -- some staffers jokingly refer to it as "Tears R Us."

But what's immediately striking is the amount of laughter and the feeling of something momentous happening in the vicinity of the Quilt. There's a serious elation here, and most of those involved say, somewhat ironically, that this is the time of their lives.

"We're all going through the same thing," says NAMES Project founder and Director Cleve Jones, "so you can come here and you can cry, and people are going to understand. And within an hour you'll be laughing. It's especially amazing when the care providers come in, the nurses and hospice workers, who will come in after work to make panels for their clients who have died. The first half hour that they're in the workshop it's just grim, no noise, just silence and sad faces. And then after about a half hour people start to warm up a bit and they start sharing anecdotes and memories of people who have died. And after about 45 minutes maybe you'll hear the first giggle."

"It cannot be a maudlin place," says Production Manager Scott Lago. "It is a celebration of a person's life. Not a comment on a death. Hell, we know he's dead. But she was a scream when she was alive!"

"The project is a collage of people that have no other reason to be together," says Lance Henderson, who left a lucrative career as an investment banker with Dean-Witter to orchestrate merchandising and sales for the NAMES Project. "And it's not all a bucket of roses. It's a very tense place to work. No one has ever done what we're doing before."

Remember to say "Please" every morning and "Thank you" every night. -- Dusty

On a recent Friday night in the Castro, the lights are on past 2 a.m.

"On more than one occasion," says Henderson, "I've come in at 7:30 a.m. and found people still there. Who were sewing the night before."

Christine, 37, a recovering drug and alcohol addict, veteran of more than a few 12-step programs, might be one of those people. She puts in eight to 12 hours on the Quilt nearly every day. "This seemed like something I could do about AIDS," she says one afternoon as she edges a 12-by-12-foot section with white canvas. "It's more than a full-time job."

Christine's a "fixer" -- she takes the panels sent in by others and attaches applique's more firmly, enlarges panels that are too small, hems the ones that come in too large. She says she's worked with pieces of leather, of vinyl. She's seen panels with favorite shirts attached -- and toys, records, photographs, merit badges, drag gowns, packets of cremation ashes . . .

"I decided to make a panel for everyone I knew, whether I liked him or not," says Christine, who made her first panel for a friend who acted in a play called "Tokens," about the Black Plague. The play used fabric dummies to symbolize the plague's victims, and Christine affixed one to her friend's panel.

"I had a friend who was a gospel singer and a kind of a rascal, so I used vestment fabric and a halo but added a devil's tail below the robe. That was kind of both sides of him."

She also made a panel for "a couple of street queens from the Tenderloin who helped a lot of people out . . . I thought, nobody's going to make a panel for these guys. I put the names of their street friends on it, too."

"I think I was most moved by a mother who did a panel for both of her sons that died," Christine says. "It grabs my heart to see parents do loving things for their kids, because so many gay kids have lost the love of their parents."

I have decorated this banner to honor my brother. Our parents did not want his name used publicly. The omission of his name represents the fear of oppression that AIDS victims and their families feel.

"You should have seen us last year, the day we tore off the calendar and it was September," says Lago, who as NAMES Project production manager oversees the huge corps of volunteers -- up to 200 people a week, who show up to do work from hands-on sewing to media tasks. He started volunteering himself last August when he made a panel for a coworker at Neiman-Marcus.

"We had 10 panels come in today, eight from Chicago and two from Virginia," says Lago, a southerner who speaks softly and rapidly as he arranges a 12-by-12 on the floor in anticipation of a visit by a Japanese dignitary from a Tokyo AIDS organization. "Is this not gorgeous? This is just stunning," he exults, unfolding a black and white and maroon knitted panel.

"I think we're doing very well," he says. "On the third of September last year we had 300 panels. That was it. Ten days later we had over 2,000. We had to make them 3 feet by 6 feet, we had to repair them and make them fit."

He details the workshop process: When a panel comes in to the NAMES Project, it's given an ID number and a production code, and assigned to one of eight regions of the country. Once there are eight panels from a geographic region, they are bundled together to form a 12-foot square. The panels are also grouped according to color or pattern: checkerboard, hearts, teddy bears -- there are a lot of teddy bears.

"You have to think of them as eight different people who don't know each other and don't have any need to, but will have to get along together," Lago says, smoothing out a panel that says "David Hudson Maguire Gave so Much And Asked for So Little, 46-88."

These 12-by-12's are reinforced and edged and grommeted, and later will be taken out to San Francisco's Dolores Park, where there is enough space to bind four of them together into a 24-foot square before folding, packing and shipping to Washington.

"We have a lot of people who call us because we have their children," says Lago. "A woman called from Conroe, Texas. She wanted someone to take a color picture of her son's panel and of a panel she had made of a friend of her's whose lover had died. And she said, 'You can't know how lonely I am, you don't know how much I miss my son. He was so handsome.'

"And I usually try and laugh it off, but I said to her, 'If you're going to keep this up, I'm going to have to stop. Because I do know. Please don't do this to me.' I did okay with her. Till I got off the phone."

You are the light inside of me. You are my joy. You are my lover. You're my best friend. You're in my soul. I love you.

Cleve Jones, 35, a Quaker long active in San Francisco's gay community, conceived of the Quilt, but he's quick to point out that it's not his. The idea came to him shortly after the death of his best friend, actor Marvin Feldman, from AIDS in October 1986. A photograph of the panel Jones made for him sits on the windowsill in a light-filled office lined with AIDS demonstration posters and awards.

At the November 1985 candlelight procession that commemorated the late mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk, Jones noticed a series of cardboard placards fastened to the stone wall of the Federal Building, each bearing the name of someone who had died of AIDS.

"I thought it looked like a quilt, and when I said that, it evoked powerful, comforting memories," he says. Making the first quilted panel for Feldman, Jones bucked the crippling inertia and dread that affects so many bereaved by the disease.

"On the one hand," says spokesman Dan Sauro, "the NAMES Project is really successful. On the other hand there's the horror of why it is." Sauro arrived to contribute a box of office supplies and ended up contributing himself.

"The NAMES Project started out in the Castro as gay men making panels for gay men," he says. "That changed immediately. It occurred to us that for every gay man that had died, the impact on his friends and family that are not gay was just as great."

To get the project moving, Jones teamed up with Michael Smith, a graduate of the Stanford Business School. NAMES Project staffers say the two are perfect partners, the visionary, impulsive Jones anchored by the methodical, pragmatic Smith.

"In July of 1987, literally a handful of people were doing everything," Sauro says. "Nobody knew outside of the Castro what it was. I am still amazed when I think of what occurred between July and October."

First priority for the fledgling organization was finding a workshop -- coincidentally Milk's last camera shop -- and once that was settled, a wish list was posted on the storefront window. "Within three weeks, we had everything we needed," Smith marvels. "We had 11 sewing machines, including four industrials. We raised the rent from local merchants. We survived off this neighborhood." The wish list ended with "backrubs, hugs, and money."

As the project gathered momentum, panel-making volunteers began to create job positions. "When we were able to get funding we were able to hire a few people full time," Jones says. "Our big struggle right now is trying to get health insurance. It's pretty hard," he says with an ironic chuckle.

Smith estimates that it takes about $500,000 a year to keep the NAMES Project running, what with staff salaries and transportation, maintenance and display costs. About 40 percent of that comes from individual donations, often sent in with the panels, and another 40 percent from "The Quilt" book and other merchandise. "We got some corporate support this year, but probably not more than 40 or 50 thousand dollars," Smith says. Last week, the National Endowment for the Arts awarded the NAMES Project a $10,000 grant for the Washington display of the Quilt.

Now the project has a full-time staff of 16, and there have been more than 700 volunteers involved at the workshop. "I have no idea of the amount of man-hours involved would add up to," Smith says.

Is this Art? No! It's Fred Abrams!

"I'm not an artist," Jones says. "I'm . . . an organizer. But I'm sort of a disorganized person."

Nevertheless Jones acknowledges that the Quilt has antecedents in community art, citing Judy Chicago's "Dinner Party," Maya Ying Lin's Vietnam memorial and Cristo's Northern California "Running Fence" project as influences. And the arpilleras created by anonymous Chilean women -- patchwork pictures, fashioned from scavenged remnants, commemorating "disappeared" political prisoners or protesting government policies.

"But Judy Chicago had screenings -- you couldn't participate in her project unless you were an artist," Jones says. "This is more democratic. You look at these panels and esthetically they're not much, but you realize the amount of struggle and effort that went into it. People who had never cut fabric with a pair of scissors. And it's just heart-wrenching. And I like to keep in mind what Cristo once said about his big projects, something like, 'Dealing with the bureaucracy is part of the artistic process.' "

"This is not a gimmick, it's not Hands Across America," Jones says. "The difference is that as much of a media event as we've become, the heart and soul of the whole operation is in people's living rooms and church and synagogue basements all over the country when they come together to sew those panels. And then when they come to see it."

"We think that the American people, if they understand what is happening, will respond correctly," he says, "so we want to show people in a compelling, dramatic way, how big the problem is. And the Quilt does that. People who visit the Quilt understand for the first time just how big this is, just how many lives we're talking about.

"And the Quilt quietly does advocate a certain stance in the fight against AIDS. We are not a political organization -- we don't take stands on any of the political issues that surround the AIDS epidemic. But the Quilt very eloquently says, 'You're to love each other, you're to care for each other, these were real people whose lives were valued and whose memories are cherished.' The political message is that human life is sacred."

A large part of the Quilt's power involves what might be called "performance art," for lack of a better word. Beginning at dawn, as white-clad volunteers slowly and ceremonially unfold, raise, then settle each 24-foot quilted square into its place on the gridded Ellipse, each of the names stitched or sketched into each panel will be read aloud.

Smith estimates it will take about 14 hours to place the 6.2 miles of canvas walkways on the Ellipse Friday night. It will take 20 minutes for 496 volunteers to unfold the Quilt on Saturday and Sunday mornings. And it will take 11 hours for 320 speakers to read each name.

The names must be spoken.

Al. Albee. Alex. Allen. Alphonse. Amos. Andreas. Anonymous . . .

"As a straight woman involved in the project I see things differently," says Nancy Katz, outreach coordinator for the NAMES Project. "The gay community has been zapped, financially and emotionally. There is this feeling that they're afraid that the bigger world just doesn't care. And my thing here is to say, 'Get over it, you guys; we do.' "

Right now, Katz is helping a new volunteer who walked in off the street and asked to help. "It keeps breaking!" complains the volunteer, who's trying to edge a panel on an industrial sewing machine.

"I live in the neighborhood, and I was with a really close friend when he tested positive. And it really changed my life. It made me realize how precious life is. I can't make him not get sick. I can't even make him eat better things," she laughs. "But here's something I can do. I was led here."

Katz says she had to struggle with the fact that she's "working in a foreign culture. 'It's not a gay organization' is what I keep hearing. But I have to say yes it is. There's a whole culture, a sense of humor, a whole way of dealing with emotions that are foreign to me. I'm foreign to them."

She returns to the volunteer, who's looking more and more frustrated.

"I don't think today's an edging day for you," Katz says, kindly.

My Big Brother -- He was a grown man when I was born. He made time for me allways. He bought me every winter coat I can remember. He taught me the value of light opra & other music. He always made a little girl feel real special. He even forgave her defection and gave LOVE.

There are 11 countries represented in the Quilt, including Senegal, Canada, Australia, Spain, Mexico, Israel, Sweden, Germany and New Zealand. The World Health Organization is negotiating with the NAMES Project to organize ceremonies in 25 American cities and six foreign countries for World AIDS Day Dec. 1.

"People all over the world have been encouraging and enthusiastic about this," says Jeannette Koijane, director of international programs, who with Jones recently took 10 12-by-12 sections of the Quilt to the second International AIDS Congress in Stockholm.

"It had an amazing impact," she says. "It was forcing a lot of scientists to look at real people. It is important to remember, especially for people who are making policy, that this disease is killing people. It was also exciting, because you could see people say, 'Oh, this could work in my country.' This wonderful Red Cross worker from Uganda said the way she would envision it is having wonderful unique batik panels. They have quite a tradition of batik there.

"We hear from the people that have come back from Brazil that they don't have blankets for the beds, no toilet paper in the AIDS wards. Obviously you can't talk about making a quilt before you talk about feeding people. But if you look at what the Quilt is capable of doing . . . you'll get the blankets, you'll get the toilet paper."

To the unacknowledged AIDS victim.

"In many cases for people this has replaced some kind of tombstone," says Henderson. "People expect to see them displayed. So there is an obligation on the part of the project to care for the panels and to display them ...

"You have to recognize that the panel belongs to everyone. It doesn't belong to us. So if someone in Des Moines wants to do a display locally, we have to find a mechanism to display the Quilt. It's so large, there's no reason there can't be two or three displays simultaneously."

"One other responsibility that we did not anticipate was for the permanent caring for the Quilt," says Jones. "All those people who put all that work in have really entrusted them to us. We need a permanent home for the Quilt that's safe and climate controlled, where people can come and leave panels and view panels that were already made.

"Our goal is to be able to sew the last panel into the Quilt. I don't know how many of us will be around. But there will be a day when a panel is sewn into the Quilt and it's called the last panel. And there'll be a party.

"It'll happen," Jones says. "Hope I'm here."

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.