October 11, 1987

By Gert McMullin–

My name is Gert McMullin. My official title at the Quilt would be Quilt Production Coordinator and Conservation but I think of myself as a panel maker. That’s how it all began for me some 36 plus years ago.

My friends were the first to get sick and die from what we called in the early 1980s GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency). Trying to explain the horror of those days is really difficult for me, if not impossible. One reason is that bringing myself back to that moment is, frankly, terrifying. All the pain comes rushing in. All the faces of my beautiful friends who died such horrible, horrible painful deaths.

How do you tell someone what that feels like?

How do you describe what it is like to, day after day, month after month, year after year sit at your friends’ bedsides watching them die, knowing you (nor anyone else) can help them? And how do you tell them that nobody cares?

It was 1987, and for the last several years that was my life. I truly was losing my mind. I frankly do not know how I managed to survive those years. By the time I found The NAMES Project, I had lost close to 50 of my friends with no end in sight.

When asked how I found The NAMES Project I always answer … it found me. All I really remember is someone telling me that I should call Cleve Jones. That he was starting a project of a quilt in memory of those who had died from AIDS. This person knew I could sew and gave me Cleve’s number. Cleve had not yet begun the project and was surprised I had heard anything about it.

He told me there was going to be the first meeting in around six weeks and that I should come to that. I did go to that meeting and I brought with me my first two panels. They were for my friends, David Calgaro and AIDS activist and friend Roger Lyon. Within a few weeks, Cleve had somehow talked someone into giving us a large storefront space in the heart of the Castro on Market Street.

So, on an evening in late May of 1987, I went down to 2362 Market Street to meet up with 6 other volunteers to discuss how we would go about and let the community know of our idea. That evening I met Cleve Jones, Mike Smith, Jack Caster, Ron Cordova, Larkin Mayo, and Gary Yuschalk.

We now had a workshop, but more than that, I had a place I could go to get out what was essentially eating me alive. The pain, the fear, the horror, the emptiness, the loss, and the anger—the overwhelming anger of watching all of my friends die … over and over again … our government doing nothing. Turning their backs and just letting them all die.

Cleve Jones gave me that space. He gave me a place to focus my anger and, in turn, saved me. I couldn’t love him more for that. He gave me a place where I didn’t feel alone in my anger. There were others who hurt as I did and needed to fight. As odd as this might sound, these people would soon become more like family than my family. I was home.

We opened up shop and began to sew. I had a full-time job during the day at Macy’s but would show up every evening and stay late. It didn’t take long for me to realize that the time I was spending there was only going to increase. Within a few weeks to a month, I had quit my job of ten years so that I could volunteer 16 hours a day sewing a quilt.

It was not easy those first few months before our display in Washington, D.C., October 1987. Getting the community to see Cleve’s vision and start to create panels for the Quilt took some convincing. We sewed day and night for months and by October had 1920 individual panels that would go to Washington, D.C., and lay on the National Mall.

It was October 11, 1987 (Cleve’s birthday), and we all met at some god-awful time in the morning to be ready by sunrise for our opening of the Quilt. Right before sun up we stood in a circle and held hands. Cleve’s only words to us were, “We did it.” As we stood there, we sang “Happy Birthday” to Cleve and then got ready for the unfolding ceremony.

Four teams of eight would unfold the Quilt blocks as a reader (who was on a small stage facing The White House) would slowly read the names of those on the sections that were being opened at that moment. There were no speeches; only the names were spoken (and sometimes shouted) towards The White House. Cleve would read first. Then volunteers, politicians, celebrities, lovers, mothers, fathers, and friends would read the list given to them. It took over two hours to unfold that Quilt. I was one of the unfolders that day and it will remain one of the most emotional moments in my life. And also one of, if not the, most beautiful and proudest moments I will ever be a part of.

As Cleve said, “We did it.” We brought our dead friends to Washington, D.C., to show the world and to force our government to take action and stop this epidemic now. We believed we would go to D.C. and save the world. We were wrong.

But it did fuel us and others to keep on fighting. Soon we had people from all over the country and the world who had to be a part of what we were doing and wanted us to bring the Quilt to their communities. Through the next 35 plus years we would bring the Quilt to cities and all over the world and back. We still have hundreds of displays of the Quilt every year all over the country. Panels still come in on a daily basis and the Quilt continues to grow.

I am still sewing the Quilt. It has been my honor to do so and I truly can’t imagine my life without it. I owe my life to it. That first day with the Quilt has only made me want to be near it more. Every day that I go through those doors of the warehouse, I do so to thank it. Every day.

And Cleve Jones, your anger is what got me through the most unimaginable horror of my time. Your anger gave strength to my anger and I will love you forever for that.

The Quilt was born out of anger towards a government that chose to turn its back on us during one of the worst epidemics of our time. The message of the Quilt has always been of love and compassion. At first it was made mostly by the gay community, but Cleve’s intent was, and has always been, to reach outside of our community and bring the power of the Quilt wherever it was needed.

Mothers, fathers, friends, and lovers by the tens of thousands have experienced and benefited from the love, compassion, and gift of healing and remembrance that the Quilt brings each time it is displayed, each time a panel is made for a loved one.

Gert McMullin is the Quilt Production Coordinator and Panel Maker for The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt.

Honoring Cleve Jones at 70
Published on October 3, 2024