View Larger | View on Instagram My mom flew into Atlanta this week to visit, and this morning, we all drove about 20 minutes to a non-descript, low rise building of white brick to visit The Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. The quilt consists of more than 48,000 3' x 6' panels commemorating more than 94,000 people lost to the epidemic. The panels are sewn together into blocks of eight measuring 12' x 12' and make up over 54 tons of fabric. When last displayed all together in 1996, the entire quilt was big enough to cover the entire National Mall in Washington D.C. and they receive on average one new panel a day. The curator took us back to the shelves piled high with quilt blocks and brought out three with panels that had been submitted in memory of my mom's brother (my uncle) and his partner who died in 1996 and 1997, including panels from family members, friends from their church and neighborhood and members of the medical staff who cared for them. It's hard to know quite how much to explain to the kids, but we did tell Wynne that, in addition to being named after her grandfather Winthrop, she was also named after his son Win Jr. who we were there to remember today and that this quilt was a way to think about someone who was gone and remember that we need to work to help anyone who's sick. #namesproject #aidsmemorialquilt #roadschool
