CONVERSATION
The Names Project started 33 years ago to memorialize people dying from AIDS. Gert McMullin joined Cleve Jones and other activists in San Francisco and began sewing their names into panels of cloth, each meant to represent a grave, a place of rest for the people whose bodies funeral homes often refused to accept.
It was grieving, and it was also a protest against a government that wouldn’t acknowledge the illness caused by the human immunodeficiency virus, much less devote funding or make policy to help.
McMullin is the quilt production manager, which barely begins to describe her job. Over 33 years she has served as chief seamstress, librarian, and even a counselor to those developing parts of the quilt, which has grown to more than 48,000 panels. Put together, they weigh 54 tons and would cover the Washington Mall and then some.
The quilt, which McMullin says saved her life, moved to Atlanta in 1999. She moved with it. “Believe me, I was not excited,” she says. “I had lived in California all my life, but I had to go with it.”
They’ve now come full circle. The quilt returned earlier this year, a result of the Names Project Foundation becoming part of the National AIDS Memorial and is now stored in a San Leandro warehouse, where McMullin works.
As the world faces another pandemic, she is back at her sewing machine in service of those who are ill and those who are caregiving. She is making masks, mostly from leftover quilt fabric.
As the quilt evolves, its stewardship does too, with proposals for a “center for social conscience” in Golden Gate Park. More immediately, McMullin and others are putting the quilt and its history online, a massive undertaking. The website should go live the week of July 6 in time for the 23rd International AIDS Conference, which was slated for the Bay Area but is being held virtually this year.
Presently, 1.1 million people in the U.S. are living with AIDS. One in seven people have the disease but do not know it. Like COVID-19, AIDS disproportionately affects people of color. So there is still much work to do.
For McMullin, that means working with new staff and volunteers to photograph the quilt for online display. In early June, they came to the National AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park to learn how to handle the panels and prepare them for an outdoor photoshoot. A camera-equipped drone buzzed overhead.
Earlier this week, McMullin stepped away from the hustle and bustle of the San Leandro warehouse, pulled her pink tie-dyed mask to the side, and spoke to The Frisc about her life with the quilt and life, once again, under a pandemic.
The conversation has been edited and condensed.
The Frisc: What is your pandemic life like now?
Gert McMullin: It’s a mess. There was a staff member here who had contracted coronavirus. With AIDS, I knew I could go to the hospitals to be with people and friends and strangers, just because it comforted me, and I wanted to comfort them. We can’t do that now.
So I kept thinking, what could I do? Who thought that in pandemics sewing would come in handy? I made masks with a pocket so that nurses can get their N95s inside. So they’d be reusable. If it helps one person put a smile on their face, that’s enough for me.
What prompted you to move around with the quilt?
The quilt really saved my life. I’d like to think that it needed me, but I know that I needed it. So when it moved to Atlanta, there really wasn’t a question.
How did the quilt save you?
I don’t believe in suicide, but I was going downhill quick. I didn’t have a place where I could talk about those people — nobody would talk about it. It gave me a place where I could be with people who felt the pain I was feeling. And that was very comforting to me.
What were you doing with the quilt in Atlanta?
The same thing that we do here, We still had displays on World AIDS Day. I sewed the quilt, and I’d repair it. But I’d also ship it out. We moved in 1999, and we had a warehouse just like here.
What does it take to ship out a part of the quilt?
We have about five or seven chapters out there that have the quilt. We ship it back and forth to them. It takes checking it in, putting it in the database, checking it for repairs, folding it, and reshelving it. So it’s a lot of work depending on how big the display is. During World AIDS Day, it’s a monster job because that’s our biggest time.
With AIDS, I used to bitch all the time that if this was straight people, the government would be right here to help us. I was wrong. — Gert McMullin
How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected the quilt’s homecoming?
It stopped the unveiling dead in its tracks. We were going to have our homecoming in Golden Gate Park right by the [National AIDS Memorial] grove. It’s changing a lot of things. We can’t get many volunteers in here. I try not to get more than three people in this building at a time, you know? What we’re doing, getting things up and down from the shelves, it’s very physical, and you have to have close contact. It takes a lot of staff.
The International AIDS Conference next month will be held virtually. How will the quilt be involved?
We’re doing three displays Oakland City Hall, San Francisco City Hall, and the Joyce Gordon Gallery in Oakland too. It’ll be up for five days. Every day we’ll put it up and then at night take it down and secure it, then go back the next day and put it back up.
That sounds like a lot of work. How many people will be involved?
Two at each site in Oakland, and three over in San Francisco. Normally we would have 10 or 15 people who would switch out shifts. Now, we just don’t want to take the chance of our volunteers and staff [contracting COVID-19].
How do you think COVID-19 will change the attention to AIDS?
I don’t know that it will. But something else just came to mind. With AIDS, I used to bitch all the time that if this was straight people, the government would be right here. They would help us. I was wrong.
When [coronavirus] hit, I just thought, “Not again!” It’s really very sad and shocking. I fear that we’re going to go through what we went through in the ’80s and ’90s. No one should have to go through that, ever.
How has the pandemic made you feel about the Bay Area and San Francisco’s future?
I’m so happy to be back again, even with this. I’m glad I’m not in Georgia because Georgia is messed up around all of this. I’m thrilled I can help my people, because that’s what I feel like: these are my people around here.
Could I qualify that as optimistic?
Very optimistic. I think if we sit together and help each other and be kind to each other, we will get through this. I think people are going to have a lot of work that they have no idea about, but we’ll be able to teach them things that we learned the hard way.
My sister called me up and said, “‘You know, all the years you did all the AIDS stuff? I wonder what it feels like, because I think I’m starting to understand a little bit.’”
Kristi Coale (@unazurda) is a San Francisco-based freelance writer and radio producer for various outlets, including KALW’s Crosscurrents and the National Radio Project’s Making Contact.