Thanks to rough weather, the section of the AIDS Memorial Quilt now on display at Mill Plain United Methodist Church will stay longer than expected, so more visitors can view it.
The quilt section was supposed to be on display at the church for one week, before returning Jan. 18 to the Names Project Foundation in Georgia. But after ice and snow made travel difficult, the church got permission to keep the quilt through the end of this month. It will stay up through Monday, Jan. 30.
The quilt is considered the largest ongoing community arts project in the world. It was started in San Francisco in 1987 as a way to honor the victims of AIDS, which was still stigmatized and misunderstood as a “gay disease.” The quilt has since grown to more than 49,000 individual panels that memorialize nearly 100,000 people.
One quilt panel in this visiting block of panels memorializes the late Bruce Bone, son of parishioners Marilyn and Larry Bone. Bruce Bone died of AIDS in 1995 at age 37.
