Don't Miss: National AIDS Memorial Quilt On LI For First Time In Years

EAST HAMPTON, NY — Sunday, December 1 marks World AIDS Day, and there's an event in East Hampton to honor the memories of all who were lost — and to raise awareness. There are still more than 1.2 million people living with HIV in the United States.

According to Tom House, president and founding director of Hamptons Pride, the Inaugural Hamptons Pride Names Project Event, runs through Sunday, in commemoration of World AIDS Day at the First Presbyterian Church of East Hampton.

The church is located at 120 Main Street.

On Sunday, the event's schedule features speakers and a "saying of the names ceremony" at 3 p.m. in the church.

Six blocks of quilts, incorporating more than 100 names, including those of local loved ones, will be on display Sunday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

On Saturday, guests were able to view a screening of the Oscar-winning documentary "Common Threads."

The event also features an ongoing paper quilt-making project in the session house, with laptops available to interact with the more than 50,000 quilts in the National AIDS Memorial.

"This is the first local display of the AIDS Quilt, considered the largest community art project in history, since the 1990s," House said.

House told Patch that the quilts were leased from the The National AIDS Memorial.

Since the project began in 1985, the National Memorial has collected nearly 50,000 quilts, he said; donated quilts are sewn together into blocks, each 12 x 12-foot block consisting of eight quilts.

"We have six blocks on display in the First Presbyterian Church of East Hampton — 48 quilts representing over 100 names. On each block is a quilt made for an East End person who died of AIDS, the majority from East Hampton or nearby," he said.

While the AIDS crisis devastated families and communities in the 1980s, HIV is still a very real issue in the United States, experts say: According to HIV.gov, approximately 1.2 million people in the United States have HIV. About 13 percent of them don’t know it and need testing. HIV continues to have a disproportionate impact on certain populations, particularly racial and ethnic minorities and gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men, HIV.gov said.

In 2022, an estimated 31,800 people acquired HIV in the U.S. E stimated new HIV infections decreased 12 percent from 36,300 in 2018 to 31,800 in 2022. In 2022, 37,981 people ages 13 and older received an HIV diagnosis in the U.S. and six territories and freely associated states, HIV.gov said.

And, the organization added, "HIV diagnoses are not evenly distributed across states and regions. The highest rates of new diagnoses continue to occur in the South."

House said the idea for the Names Project was born when he watched a miniseries in 2023 called "Fellow Travelers" and knew in his heart that bringing the quilt to East Hampton would align perfectly with Hampton Pride's mission.

House said the Names Project was another way to serve the community, in addition to the annual Hamptons Pride Parade and the installation the not-for-profit is planning for Wainscott Green.

"It's a source of comfort and education. So many have lost family members, partners and friends, losses people live with for their entire lives," House said. "Our societies don't always give people all the resources and opportunities to deal with and to express their grief and loss. I know from my own personal losses in the past few years that the need for support is ongoing."

As word spread of the idea for a local quilt display, people came forward,"telling us of their losses. In some cases, we were able to reserve the blocks containing the quilts made for their loved ones," he said.

Specifically, Deacon Sussan Rossi lost her brother Vincent, 31, and Jeannie Behrens lost her brother Jay Langan, 31, in the 1980s, House said.

For House, the project is deeply personal.

"I, like everyone who came of age in the 80s and 90s, lived under the specter of HIV — for a long time, a diagnosis was an almost certain death sentence — and I knew many people who perished from HIV/AIDS. For me, it was friends, men and women, and many co-workers or people who frequented the Swamp when I tended bar there through the 90s. There were people who were hit much harder — especially those 10 or 20 years ahead of me who lost a staggering number of partners and friends and colleagues. In total, it became for many a lost generation."

The First Presbyterian Church of East Hampton embraced the idea from the beginning and immediately offered their venue, House said. "I can't imagine a more beautiful venue for the display. They have been eager, whole-heartened partners in this project. It also wasn't hard to find volunteers to help with monitoring the quilts."

It's critical, House said, for people to realize that as a society, AIDS and HIV are still very real.

"The United States has lost over 700,000 people to HIV/AIDS. And as epidemic isn't over — certainly not in a global sense," he said, adding that according to the World Health Organization, globally, 39.9 million people were living with HIV at the end of 2023.

Seeing the project unfold has been transformative, House said.

"The project is reminding me of the Hamptons Pride Parade in some respects — when an idea is immediately received and starts to grow by word of mouth, when the project starts to take on a life of its own, I know I've hit on something the community has a need for. That's what's happening here — people joining in and adding their own talents to help it succeed. "

Looking ahead, House hopes to begin a memorial quilt-making workshop, as a way to make the Hamptons Pride Names Project relatable to the larger community.

"While Hamptons Pride has an interest in memorializing our East End LGBTQ+ people, no matter how they were lost, we'd also like to open this workshop up to anyone who'd find comfort in making a quilt for someone they've lost. It may serve as a bereavement group, but also, I think, as a celebration of life. I like what Susan Rossi said — 'It's a way of doing something for the people we miss the most — remembering them, saying their names, telling their stories.'"

Hamptons Pride is a not-for-profit that celebrates and commemorates the LGBTQ+ people and their allies on the East End of Long Island.

"The organization's founding goal is the creation of an historical marker and outdoor social area on the footprint of The Swamp — the last and longest-running gay club in the Hamptons— in what is now Wainscott Green," House said.

House said Hamptons Pride was "deeply grateful to the mission committee of the First Presbyterian Church of East Hampton for offering their beautiful venue to us and for helping us organize this event from the early days. Thank you, Terry Kidder for his work on advertisements, to Ron Fisher and Fisher Signs for help with our banner, and to Golden Pear, sponsoring all three days of the program with baked goods and water."