AIDS Quilt: Names and Messages Offer Quiet Testimony on Empty Mall
Patrick Klotz was there, with his cat and classical sheet music. Michael Rubino from Hoboken was there, sprinting for a touchdown. Thom Hickham from Roanoke, riding through a winter forest with his huskies. And Tom McBride, crouching forward with his camera and backpack, ready for adventure.
“I have so many projects I want to do,” a note in his spiky handwriting said. “I make lists of things I want to do, need to do, would like to do . . ..” The note, tacked next to McBride’s photo, had been written before his death in 1995, at age 44.
The names and messages were among those on 16 cloth squares, unpacked from sections of the vast AIDS Memorial Quilt that were delivered to the National Mall early Saturday in preparation for the upcoming Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Each square offered a small, intimate shrine to lives as diverse as America.
Some patches contained posthumous love letters and poems, written with unabashed grief or with slyly coded references to shared memories. Some contained equally frank replies, written by stricken souls who knew the end was near.
‘I am so lost without you by my side,’ a man named Rodney wrote to his friend Bobby Angelo, who died in 1995 at age 38. The square contained photos of them at happy moments — dressed up as cowboys, visiting Disneyworld. In one corner was a second message, shakily signed by Angelo. ‘I love you Rodney. [Remember] that if you ever read this.’