San Francisco Chronicle - The Voice of the West, 901 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94119 - Thursday, June 26, 1997 - Page E1
Laura Evenson, Chronicle Staff Writer

"Our school district is very, very conservative, and a group of us had been fighting the district all year to arrange for a speaker to come and talk about AIDS," said Larsen, who recently graduated from Kamiakin High School in Kennewick, Wash. She spotted the Names Project on the Web at www.aidsquilt.org and asked for help. The next day, a volunteer answered her questions about the fight against AIDS and arranged to display a section of the quilt at Larsen's school.

"The Web helped us find the quilt, and it was the quilt that helped me and the other students see how little we knew about AIDS and the wide spectrum of people affected by it," Larsen said.

GROUP'S 10TH ANNIVERSARY

The Web site is the latest weapon in the fight against AIDS for the Names Project, a group that marks its 10th anniversary this Pride Weekend. Since Cleve Jones and Mike Smith launched the project from the back porch of Smith's Hartford Street house in 1987, the quilt has grown from two to more than 43,000 panels. It has helped publicize the enormity of the epidemic, which has claimed more than 7 million people worldwide since 1981. It also has helped educate viewers nationwide, said Anthony Turney, executive director of the Names Project.

"The fact that about a quarter of the infections of this country are in people less than 25 years old is just scary," he said. "Kids respond very dramatically to the quilt because it humanizes the statistics and facts."

SMALLER DISPLAYS

With the exception of last year's huge display in Washington, D.C., which drew 1.2 million visitors, most people get to see only small pieces of the quilt, at schools, clubs, synagogues, churches and during special events. The full quilt displayed in October stretched from the Washington Monument to the U.S. Capitol. Because of its size, it is unlikely the quilt can ever again be displayed in its entirety.

But with the high-tech archiving project, anyone who wants to learn more and see pieces of the quilt can click onto the Web site. And they do in droves. Each month, the site receives about 200,000 hits and about 15,000 new visitors. That puts it in the top 5 percent of Web sites in the country.

"What the Web display says to me is that we are discovering a whole new definition of what a quilt display means," Turney said. "It's reaching those who live in communities that never have a quilt display, or who live in fear of the stigma attached to AIDS. And many are using the Web site to tell us about their stories. So the Web is expanding the healing power of this project."

Turney also hopes the Web site and its links to other information will dispel myths about new drug therapies, which have been effective in improving the health and extending the lives of some people with AIDS but are not a cure.

"We've seen a leveling-off of about 40,000 new infections a year, but I'm very nervous about the kind of complacency that is setting in about these new treatments -- in particular, the very recent discussions of what is being called the `morning-after treatment,' " he said, referring to a new approach that calls for those exposed to HIV to be treated early with an aggressive combination of drugs in hopes that they might dodge the disease.

Turney's partner of 11 years, Jim Brumbaugh, succumbed to AIDS complications in 1991. Turney himself isn't infected and, with his deep English accent, muscular build and executive demeanor, hardly looks like your average quilter. But like many people who've lost a loved one to AIDS, he has coped with his grief by stitching a tribute to his lover.

"I made the quilt panel about two months after he died, and it was difficult at times," Turney said as he sat in his office overlooking the SoMa Caltrans depot. A photo of the panel honoring his late partner shows a red sun setting over the Glastonbury Tor in England that Brumbaugh had loved. "It made me laugh and it made me cry as I remembered things. . . . The fabrics are all taken from his clothes."

Turney, who on weekends serves as a deacon at Grace Cathedral, plans to leave the Names Project at year's end to expand his role in the Episcopal church. A search is on for his successor. "Naturally, our eventual goal is to put ourselves out of business," he said.

But he, volunteers and the project's staff of 40 have ensured that the quilt will endure. Down the hall from his office is a studio with an enormous black movable board on which pieces of the quilt are mounted, photographed and archived on CD-ROMs. The idea is to digitally preserve the panels even as their fabric frays.

Recent high school graduate Larsen says she hopes people will use the Web site to gain access to the quilt.

"There was one panel adorned with little teddy bears and a rattle that was made for a mother and child," she said. "That brought home the reality of AIDS -- that it can hit any one of us, and that we need to have compassion for those affected just as we need to educate ourselves about the risk." ------------------------------------------------------------

PRIDE WEEKEND

Pride weekend features a wide range of activities in San Francisco. Here are some of them:

-- Trikone Pride Dance, 9 p.m. Saturday, International Center, 50 Oak St., (415) 967-7048. -- San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Celebration, "One Community, Many Faces." Featuring food, entertainment, arts, crafts, merchandise, 10:30 a.m.-6:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Justin Herman Plaza. -- Freedom Day Parade, 11 a.m. Sunday along Market Street starting at Civic Center and ending at the Embarcadero.
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