Elon will host the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt display from April 26-30, 2001. The Quilt, which also came to Elon in 1997, memorializes those who have died of AIDS.
Over 500 panels from the Quilt, many representing local people who have been affected by AIDS, will be on display in the Koury Center. A local organizing committee, headed by Michael Ulrich, chairman of biology and allied health, will plan details for the Quilt display.
“The AIDS quilt reminds us that courage and compassion can be found, even in the middle of great sadness,” Ulrich says. “It reminds us that no one is immune to the disease, that we must all work together. The quilt demands that we remember who we have lost and what we still have to do.”
The entire Quilt is equivalent to the size of 25 football fields and weighs over 50 tons. It has 42,960 panels and 83,279 names, representing approximately 20 percent of all AIDS deaths in the United States.
Over 40,000 Americans contracted HIV in 1998, and it is estimated that at least half of all new HIV infections in the United States are among people under 25.
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