On World AIDS Day, Phoenix remembers

Standing in front of an old ivory quilt panel, Kit Kloeckl gently placed one hand on the end of the zipper. Slowly, he pulled open the pocket sewn on a pink heart to see the letters and mementos from people who loved Randy Shrock.

People who drank with him at Winks bar in Phoenix. Laughed at his jokes. And worked with him to launch Aunt Rita’s Foundation. Randy was one of three original co-founders who started Aunt Rita's to help people with HIV or AIDS in the 1980s.

It was a time when there wasn’t a lot of help for Arizonans with HIV, Kit said. Carefully, he zipped closed the pocket.

“The quilt is getting old,” Kit said. “We treat it very tenderly when we bring it in.”

Randy died of the disease on March 22, 1991. He was 37. His quilt panel is stitched into one of the 15 sections of the AIDS Memorial Quilt that are visiting Phoenix this month.

The quilt, developed by the NAMES Project Foundation, started in 1987 when a group gathered in San Francisco to memorialize the lives of those who had died of AIDS. They wanted people to see and remember their loved ones. San Francisco gay-rights activist Cleve Jones made the first panel in memory of his friend Marvin Feldman. People started sending in panels from all over the country.

On Oct. 11, 1987, the quilt was displayed for the first time on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., during the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. It had 1,920 panels. Since then, the quilt has grown so big, it exists in sections that travel the nation.

Kit never knew Randy Shrock. But today, he heads Aunt Rita’s, which brings the panels to Phoenix each year on the first day of December when World AIDS Day is observed.

There are now more than 40,000 panels. In Phoenix, the panels hang in a room at the Parsons Center for Health and Wellness near Central Avenue and Roosevelt Street. It's near where free HIV testing is being offered on World AIDS Day.

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Each quilt panel was sewn by friends and relatives. They are filled with favorite songs and poems, beloved pets and old photos.

“It’s sort of a living memorial if you will," Kit said. "It’s not going to a grave site ... it’s going to someplace where you see, in a way, happiness.”

Skip O’Neill founded Aunt Rita’s with Randy. He remembers sitting at the bar with friends after Randy died. They worked on the quilt and told stories about their friend. They made the quilt in four days.

When Skip visited the quilt display Tuesday, he thought about the thousands of people Aunt Rita’s has helped. He touched the quilt. He said it felt like he could hear Randy's voice.

“We have a heart in the center with some of his ashes in there. We all wrote a letter to him,” he said, as his voice cracked and he cried.

Some quilt panels stand for one life. One for Randy Gorbette, an AIDS activist who co-founded the Phoenix Shanti Group. The organization was launched in 1987 to help people understand AIDS and offer nursing and hospice care. Randy died in the late 1990s.

One for Robbie Inman. The maroon panel has a patch with a photo of Robbie when he was young, wearing his U.S. military uniform. Above Robbie’s photo is a rose-colored patch with a poem.

“God saw you getting tired when a cure was not to be. So he closed his arms around you. And whispered, ‘Come to me.’ ”

Robbie died in 1996. He was 37. The ink on the last few lines of the poem is fading.

Some quilt panels have names of dozens of people. Like a white panel with four words, “We Remember. Phoenix, Arizona.” In black ink is name after name. Few people bothered with the formalities of punctuation in the notes they left for their loved ones.

“We miss you Jim. Love your family.” “Richard, we love you siempre amigo! Helen.” “I still love you Alan…Wait for me. —Gary—”

On the south side of the room hangs a red panel with butterflies and rainbow-colored suspenders. It’s for Dion France. He died on Dec. 4, 1991.

Kit said Mayor Greg Stanton’s wife, Nicole, comes to see the panel. Dion was her brother.

“We bring this panel in periodically so that Nicole and her mother can kind of reconnect with her brother,” he said.

Peter Rodriguez, 52, was holding a book of old photos as he stood next to a red quilt. The photos were taken a few years after he was diagnosed with AIDS in the 1980s. He was 17.

“I was scared to tell my mom,” he said.

He waited until he was too sick to hide it anymore. He remembers his mom's eyes closing as if to block out what she was hearing.

“She was like every Latina mom,” he said. “She screamed, cried and told me she loved me.”

Peter lived for years in New York, fighting for AIDS awareness. When he moved to Phoenix a few years ago, he found out there was no candlelight vigil in Phoenix on World AIDS Day. So he worked with friends to start one.

“If there’s one thing I will say, it’s get tested, get tested, please, get tested,” he said. “It’s not a life sentence. Look at me. Look at all I’ve done.”

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Kit was sitting in a chair next to the quilts. He folded his hands and rested them on the table. He remembers when he was diagnosed with HIV in 2005.

He'd been really sick. His insurance had lapsed. He had meant to sign up again. But at 55 he felt healthy. He had retired in Phoenix, moving from Minnesota to the desert where he liked to sit outside and feel the sun on his skin.

He remembers lying in the hospital room alone. It was cold. He sat there for eight hours after doctors told him he was HIV positive.

He thought about death and about the stigma of being HIV positive.

“I shouldn’t have been alone,” he said.

By nightfall, he realized he wanted to fight.

"I guess I'm just one of those people who can't give up," he said.

Kit has worked with Aunt Rita's for years now. His message has been the same: “There’s no shame in knowing your status. Get tested early. Fighting this disease when you’re in a very healthy position will allow you to be healthier a lot longer and you won’t have to fight the fight that I fought.”

Kit will retire soon. He’ll rest and volunteer with the projects he loves. He thinks about what the quilts mean.

“I think what touches me is how many lives are represented by all these panels … lives that we didn’t need to lose as a nation,” he said.

Not as many panels are being sewn in anymore. Early detection, better medications and awareness are helping fight HIV/AIDS, he said.

Kit likes to think about the day when there are no more panels to be sewn, no more patches with mementos, no more poems for a loved one lost.

“There is a panel that’s titled 'the last one,' ” he said.

It’s being saved — saved for the day there's a cure. One day it will be sewn in, he says.

He hopes to be there.

AIDS Memorial Quilt

Where: Free display at the Parsons Center for Health and Wellness, 1101 N. Central Ave., Phoenix.

When: 7 a.m.-9 p.m. Dec. 1; 9 a.m.-6 a.m. Dec. 2 and 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Dec. 3.  

Candlelight vigil: 6 p.m.–8 p.m. Dec. 1, Phoenix Pride LGBT Center, 801 N. Second Ave., Phoenix. The walk ends at the Parsons Center for Health and Wellness.

Want to remember your loved one? To request a quilt panel that was made for your loved one to come to Phoenix next year for World AIDS Day, contact Aunt Rita's Foundation at 602-882-8675. For those who would like to make a panel to add to the national quilt, Aunt Rita’s will take panels through Jan. 12, 2016. For instructions on how to construct them, visit: www.auntritas.org.

Dianna M. Náñez writes about stories in Arizona and the rest of the world that make us believe in humanity, faith, hope and love. Drop her a line about your community's superheroes. You know the ones – kind, resilient, empathetic people making small miracles happen.

Follow her on Twitter: @diannananez.