AIDS Memorial Quilt Panel
This is the story of a 12 foot square
panel made for the Aids Memorial Quilt
on behalf of the employees of United Airlines
See Caryl's story below.
In 1996, the United Airlines Foundation sponsored the traveling
display of a 12' x 12' quilt panel hand-crafted by Caryl
Bryer Fallert, who was, at that time, a flight attendant
for United Airlines. The quilt was made in memory
of employees, customers and loved ones lost to this terrible
disease.
This panel toured the world, making 26 stops in 18 cities
in 3 countries, and was viewed by hundred of United Airlines
employees. See full image of complete quilt. |
We Remember
For a large image of this panel, go to:
http://www.aidsquilt.org/Newsite/searchquilt.htm
type in "United Airlines"
the panel is #04668 in the AIDS quilt registery
you can try going directly to the image by clicking
here
http://167.160.195.60/images/panels/04668.JPG
To go to the NAMES main site http://www.aidsquilt.org
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Caryl's Story
We Remember |
In May of 1996 I was asked to make a panel for the Aids
Memorial Quilt on behalf of United Airlines. It needed to
be 12 feet square, and it needed to be finished in three
weeks. I spent several days designing the 12 foot square
and getting approval for the final design.
The design has a six foot center panel with a globe and
a bird to represent the airline, and it's worldwide employees.
A red candle symbolizes remembering those we have lost.
In the upper left corner of the quilt are the words "we
remember", and in the lower right, "United Airlines."
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In two concentric circles, surrounding the globe are the
words "we remember" written in 15 different languages.
The last week of May I constructed and quilted the six foot
square, center panel. There were still six more three foot
by six foot panels with the circles of words, to make by
the June 5 deadline. Help arrived the first week of June.
On June 3rd and 4th, Bill Lotheridge, and Scott Nelson
came to my studio to lend a hand. |
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Working on the final six panels, then assembling the finished
quilt was an adventure for all of us. Bill and Scott quickly
learned all the parts of quilting that don't require sewing
skills, On June 3, they measured and cut all the panels,
then laid out and fused all the words to the background
fabric. |
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The next day, Bill and Scott measured and
cut the backing panels, and batting, and pin basted the
panels together.
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| Bill even did a little sewing
on the back panels. |
On June 3rd, I spent the whole day at the
sewing machine stitching the letters to the background. |
The next day, I quilted all six panels between
6 am and 10 p.m., after which Bill and Scott removed all
the pins. |
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Late that night we began stitching together
the large pieces of the quilt. As the quilt grew to 12 feet
square, it got heavy and awkward. Eventually it took all
three of us to haul it through the sewing machine. At 3:30
am on the morning of June 5, the quilt was complete. |
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Later that morning, Bill began a six week
journey to take the quilt to as many United cities as possible
so that employees could attach red ribbons to remember those
they knew and loved who had died of aids. |
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A memory book traveled with the quilt
to record our memories of those we lost.
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In October of 1996, all the panels of the
quilt were displayed in Washington D.C. on the mall between
the Capitol and the Washington Monument. On Saturday,
October 12, I arrived at the Capitol Building in Washington
D.C. just in time to watch the last of the panels being
unfolded on the mall. The unfolding ceremony requires
hundreds of volunteers, dressed in white, and lasts about
an hour and a half.
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Click here
to see another picture of one of the 12 foot squares.
A detail of can be found below.
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The quilt is made up of three by six foot
panels with the names and memories of individuals who
have died of aids. These are sewn together to form twelve
foot squares. Each of the twelve foot squares is surrounded
by a three inch white canvas border with grommets. The
twelve foot panels are lashed together to form twenty-four
foot squares. The twenty-four foot squares are laid out
on the ground with black canvas tarpaulins about six feet
wide,
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| At sunrise, a twenty-four foot panel, folded
with it's corners to the center, is placed diagonally in
the center of each twenty-four foot square of grass.The
twenty-four foot square panels were unfolded in rows. Each
panel was unfolded by eight volunteers. As each panel was
unfolded, the volunteers moved to their next assigned panel
and surrounded it, holding hands. |
| When all were in position from one end of the mall to
the other, a signal was given, and all the panels in a single
row were unfolded at the same time. |
First four people reached to the center and folded back
the inside set of corners.
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The next four people then went to the center again, and
folded back the outside set of corners.
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The unfolded twenty-four foot panel was then lifted about
the heads of the group of eight people, who rotated it by
walking clockwise, until the panel could be placed exactly
in the square between the black canvas walkways. |
| After the quilt left my hands in June, it traveled to
twenty six different cities in the United States and Europe.
At each city, United employees were offered to opportunity
to sew a red ribbon on the quilt to remember a fellow employee
that had lost to aids. |
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During the unfolding, thousands
of people stood quietly around the periphery. At the
end of the unfolding, the thousands of visitors were invited
to walk among the quilt panels.
The walkways were often as crowded as the aisles at the
AQS show in Paducah, KY, but there was a quiet kindness
and respect among the visitors. The crowd were as diverse
a group as you could ever expect to find in one place. White,
African American, Asian, Latino, rich and poor, gay and
straight, able bodied and disabled. Some individuals wept
silently by the panels of those they had loved. It was not
unusual to see a stranger approach and lay a comforting
arm on their shoulder. No one is untouched. |
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From the beginning of the unfolding,
until the panels were refolded at sunset, the
names of those who have dies were read over
the public address system by a series of readers,
including nationally known political and spiritual
leaders, corporate officers, health professionals,
artists, writers, and family members of those
who have died.
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The squares filled the entire Washington Mall (the space
between the Capitol building and the Washington Monument)
Our panel, was in the center of the very first row, by the
Capitol reflection pool, and the stage.
I chatted for a while with the volunteer who was assigned
the first three-hour shift in the area of our quilt panel.....a
United, customer service representative. As we talked he
said, " Someday, my daughter will probably have a panel
in this quilt. She was a nurse" he explained, "and
she was stuck by a contaminated needle" I asked him
about the promising new drugs we have heard about.. "Yes"
he said, "She is taking one of them now. It costs her
$995.00 each month, just for the drug. It is not covered
by health insurance, and the hospial for which she worked
bears no financial liability for the illness she contracted
working for them. She gets a disability insurance check
for $235.00 each month, and that is her only income."
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| Another United volunteer, one of my fellow flight attendants,
wrote the name of one of her friends on a red ribbon and
attached it to the quilt. It was a name I knew well. At
six in the morning on Memorial Day, 1978, I was setting
up the galley on a 737, when I heard a bright, eager voice,
and I looked up to see a blond, young man in a brand new
uniform. "Hi" he said, "I'm Doug, and this
is my first flight" |
| There were also hundreds of panels for nurses and doctors,
priests and ministers, mothers and grandmothers, fathers
and grandfathers, and little children. |
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The panels of the well known, like Arthur Ashe, were sewn
to panels of those known only to a loving family or a close
circle of friends.
Some of the panels contained traditional patchwork patterns.
A few were even hand quilted. |
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| The vast majority were not quilted
at all. Many were made from clothing, ties, and
other cloth objects that belonged to the victims.
More than half included photographs of the victims
and their families. |
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Some were exquisitely embroidered, painted, printed, or
drawn, while others had only the crudely written name of
the victim, executed in the coarsest of materials. None
lacked emotional impact.
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Volunteers served three hour shifts, watching over the
quilt panels in a particular area. This was not the kind
of archival, white gloved guarding that usually happens
at quilt shows. The quilts, after all, are laid directly
on the grass. Many relatives sat for a time or laid flowers
on the panels of their loved ones. |
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I walked nonstop for four hours, and realized
I wasn't even half way to the Washington Monument. Lunch
had been arranged a few blocks away, but I decided to
skip so that I could see more of the quilt. I walked faster,
and began going up only every-other row, trying to see
each twenty-four foot panel from one side. After another
hour of walking, I had reached what I thought at the time
was the half way point. I began to feel light headed from
no food or water, and hoping to find a soda, headed to
the edge of the central mall where some tents were set
up.
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Beyond the tents were grassy tree-lined parks on both
sides of the mall. I soon discovered that these too were
filled with sections of the quilt. Stretching for
two blocks in front of one tent were people waiting patiently
in line. I wondered why so many people were waiting in this
one line. |
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Then I saw a woman showing a three by six foot quilt panel
to the couple in front of her, holding it up like any quilter
at a quilt guild meeting. Suddenly, I realized that each
person in line was carrying a plastic or cloth bag, and
inside each one was a new quilt panel, waiting to be checked
in and cataloged for inclusion in the quilt. Further along
the line were a group of five young men, each carrying a
bag. They were taking turns showing their panels and having
their pictures taken. |
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| I walked beside the quilt panels under the trees for a
while, then returned to the mall. Knowing I would have to
leave in the late afternoon, I walked faster and faster,
and began skipping several rows at a time. After seven straight
hours of walking, I finally reached the Washington Monument,
having actually seen only a fraction of the entire quilt.
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As I walked along the sidewalk back to the Capitol, I
saw volunteers filling the remaining spaces under the trees
with the new panels that had been checked in that day, and
the names continued to be read aloud for all the hear.
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| They say the quilt now fills more that twenty-four
football fields, and is the largest piece of art in history.
This may have been the last time it would be physically
possible to display all of the quilt panels in a single
setting, but the leaders of the Names Project have vowed
to continue spreading the quilt on the mall in Washington
until a cure is found, and is available to all who need
it. |
Click here to see the
AIDS MEMORIAL QUILT WEBSITE
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