AIDS Quilt Comes to Governor's Island as Kiehl's LifeRide Ends

With a thunder of engines, the motorcycles rolled up the gangplank of the Governor's Island Ferry, completing the Fifth Annual Kiehl's LifeRide for amfAR, a charity ride raising money to help end the global AIDS epidemic. A short boat ride later, they disembarked for a dedication of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, open August 11-12 to the general public.

"I am honored to share the stage with such a distinguished group of individuals," said NAMES Project Foundation CEO Julie Rhoad. "And I'm humbled once again to be in the presence of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, Quilt volunteers, panel makers, family and friends."

She thanked guests for being present to witness the unfurling of the Quilt panels, especially Kiehl's for their commitment to the LifeRide for amfAR and the support that made the display possible.

Rhoad said that 27 years ago, a group of strangers gathered to remember the names and lives of their loved ones, whom they feared history would forget. And with this seemingly simple act of defiance, the first 40 memorial panels were created, and the NAMES project was founded.

In October 1987, 1,900 panels arrived in Washington, DC, and made it impossible for the AIDS epidemic to be ignored any longer. The display on Governor's island mirrored the size of that original AIDS Quilt.

It has since grown to more than 48,000 panels, and the names contained have risen from 2,000 to 94,000, "and wherever it is displayed, the Quilt provides balm for the painful wounds of grief, pours oil into the waters made turbulent by controversy, opens eyes that refuse to see and enlists every person who experiences it in the fight to end AIDS."

After 27 years moving from classrooms to boardrooms, from college campuses to the halls of Congress, the panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt have become the most powerful ambassadors the cause of human rights has ever known, said Rhoad.

Calling it "a quiet prayer and a stark reminder of what we have been working to achieve," Rhoad laid out a panel she received 26 years ago that simply reads, "The Last One." She hopes one day they will be able to sew it into the Quilt.

Dr. Howard Zucker, New York State's Acting Commissioner for Health, noted that New York had been hit by HIV especially hard, and presented riders with a Certificate of thanks, saying that they would continue to fight until that last panel had been sewn into the Quilt.

AmfAR CEO Kevin Robert Frost noted his early work as an activist with ACT UP, and admitted that back then, they held little stock in the AIDS Quilt. Until they saw it.

"I remember walking among the panels and immediately, I got it. I understood that what we were looking at wasn't fabric... we were looking at the lives of people who had lost their lives unnecessarily to a devastating epidemic, and I felt for the first time in my life the true power of the Quilt," said Frost.

He spoke about amfAR's strides toward finding a cure for the 35 million people living with HIV in our lifetime. Their Countdown to a Cure initiative seeks to put amfAR out of business by 2020, by ending HIV.

Frost also spoke of amfAR's long-time partnership with Kiehl's, introducing President Chris Salgardo, who fought back tears as he addressed the audience. He told a story about being young and na�ve, and thinking that a friend with HIV would be the one who won the fight. He wasn't. So Salgardo began donating to AIDS charities.

"About five years ago, I just thought there wasn't enough noise being made about HIV/AIDS," said Salgardo. "I thought if I got people to ride with me, we could really draw more attention to this in small towns across the U.S."

Bikers began their trek on August 2 in Milwaukee, and made stops in Chicago, Detroit, Niagara Falls and Lake George before ending in New York City on August 11.

LifeRide is now five years old, and is helping raise the money to fund research into a cure. Now is the time, he said, to "put the pedal to the metal, or go full throttle," with these efforts. He thanked the other riders, who helped him read the names of those featured on the 2,000 panels of laid out on Governor's Island, while attendees viewed the AIDS Quilt.