Despite significant advances in treatment, testing, and prevention, the world’s H.I.V. and AIDS crisis is not over. The World Health Organization reported in 2022 that “more than 600,000 people still die every year from the virus because they don’t know they have H.I.V. and are not on treatment, or they start treatment too late.”
Those numbers hit hard for Tom House of Springs, the founding president of Hamptons Pride and a driving force behind the organization’s upcoming World AIDS Day remembrance at the East Hampton Presbyterian Church. Quilts from the National AIDS Memorial — including some that represent East Enders who died of AIDS — will be on display from Friday, Nov. 29, to Dec. 1 from 1 to 4 p.m. in the church sanctuary and the Session House.
“One of the things that I struggle with is people saying the AIDS crisis is a thing of the past, as if the time to remember is something for the past,” Mr. House said this week. “What I’ve found is for the people who lost brothers, lovers, husbands, friends, it’s a chance to honor these people who are still very missed. This is one of the ways we are making it more relevant.”
The quilts each measure 12 feet square; the Hamptons Pride display will include six of them. Mr. House added that any group can rent quilts from the National AIDS Memorial to display. That, he said, is how “they keep the memory alive. They want people to display them.”
The project began in 1985, while the AIDS crisis was at its worst. According to Mr. House, next week’s East Hampton display is this community’s first since the 1990s.
To go with it, there will be a screening of “Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt,” an Oscar-winning documentary from 1989, on Saturday “just after 5 p.m.,” according to Hamptons Pride. At 3 p.m. on Sunday, which is World AIDS Day, Hamptons Pride will conduct a “saying of the names ceremony.”
Throughout the three-day event, visitors can make paper quilts, which Mr. House said will be a “springboard to an actual quilt-making workshop,” which the Wainscott Sewing Society has already volunteered to help with. Laptops will be set up in the church sanctuary showing more about each quilt and the project as a whole. There will be complimentary refreshments from Golden Pear.
Mr. House said he is grateful to all the volunteers who jumped on board, and to the Presbyterian Church for the warm welcome.
“It’s a real community event. Not on the scope of the Pride Parade, but a lot of different parts of the community have wanted to become part of this,” he said. “When the event starts to have a life of its own and people start coming in to help, I know it’s going to be successful. It’s bigger than we are.”
