by Caroline Gabsewics
Staff Writer
Saturday will mark the 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day, and the Northeast Florida Chapter of the AIDS Memorial Quilt held an opening ceremony to kick off daily events leading up to the anniversary.
The National AIDS Quilt Opening Ceremony was held at City Hall Wednesday. To mark the occasion, there are eight quilts on display in City Hall’s atrium hanging from various floors. The quilts will be at City Hall through Friday and four of them will be moved to the Main Library.
This year also marks the 20th anniversary of the AIDS Quilt. In 1987, a group gathered in San Francisco and created a small memorial for those who had died from AIDS. Today, there are more than 44,000 individual 3-by-6-foot memorial panels sewn together with most of them remembering the life of someone who has died of AIDS. In 1996, the quilt was displayed in its entirety in Washington, D.C.
This is the seventh year the quilts have been on display at City Hall, said Jeffrey Miller, coordinator of the Northeast Florida Chapter of the AIDS Memorial Quilt.
“The opening ceremony serves as a visual representation of what’s happening,” he said. “It is a time for remembrance.
“The quilts allow people to find closure.”
Miller added that a few of the panels on the quilts are of those who lived in Northeast Florida.
There are over 86,296 people infected with HIV/AIDS in Florida and over 4,503 are living with HIV/AIDS in Duval County. Jacksonville is one of the few cities in the U.S. which holds AIDS awareness events for an entire week.
The rest of this week’s AIDS Awareness events are:
• Thursday — “Spoken Word, Rap, & Poetry Contest” — Edward Waters College, 6-9 p.m.
• Thursday — ”World AIDS Day Festival” — University of North Florida, 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
• Friday — “6th Annual Community Awards Luncheon” — Wyndham Hotel, 11 a.m.
• Saturday — ”World AIDS Day: HIV/AIDS Health Fair” — Main Library, 2-4 p.m.
• Saturday — ”Memorial Walk & Service” — Westside Church of Christ, 6:30-9 p.m.
For more information on these events, please call Shannon Nelson at 233-4967.