KEENE — The AIDS Memorial Quilt section that includes a patch for Keene son Cliff Bailey, who died of AIDS in 1987, is coming home this November in an observance that marks the 30-year anniversary of the AIDS pandemic.

Bailey's former school friend and brother-in-law Don Primrose of Keene didn't know Bailey's patch existed when he called AIDS Services for the Monadnock Region executive director Susan MacNeil Tuesday to schedule a display of the quilt.

Each year the Keene-based AIDS Services for the Monadnock Region requests 10 sections of the quilt from The Names Project Foundation's AIDS Memorial Quilt to display around the region on and around World AIDS Day, which is observed on Dec. 1.

As part of the event, the group encourages people in the area to request sections of the quilt. After a quick check on the Names Project Foundation website, MacNeil soon learned a patch had been submitted in Bailey's named in 1987, the year he died and the year the quilt was started.

“I didn't know it existed until yesterday,” Primrose said. “It brings back a lot of emotions of a very difficult time.”

Bailey was living in Phoenix, Ariz., when he died. The quilt, which Primrose believes was made by a friend of Bailey's, includes his name and a cactus along with other symbols.

“He went to Keene schools and he moved out west and I married his sister in 1980. At the same time he came out to his family that he was gay and his family pretty much pushed him aside,” Primrose said.

He was diagnosed with AIDS in 1987 and died three months later.

Learning about the quilt meant a lot to Primrose's former wife Kathleen. She lives in Pennsylvania and hopes to visit Keene to see her brother's panel, Primrose said.

Primrose is the founder of the Hundred Nights homeless shelter and resource center in Keene.

Primrose said he wanted to display the quilt at Hundred Nights because he knows how important it is to show the human side of an issue. It is something he has worked to do since opening his homeless shelter in 2010, he said.

“Each name is a person's life without that story being know it's just a number, just an epidemic,” he said.

MacNeil said Wednesday that for the first time a group of individuals has requested to display the quilt.

Residents of Richmond, a small town south of Keene, plan to display the quilt in the town's Veterans Hall Nov. 3 and 4 in recognition of the 30-year landmark of the AIDS quilt.

“This is the first time we have been approached by a group of individuals about bringing the quilt to their community,” MacNeil said. “It's usually businesses, churches, colleges, schools and everything in-between.”

This group said, “'We think this is really important. We care about our community. We'd like to bring it to our community.' It was really extraordinary,” she said.

To fund the display the Richmond residents have recruited two town musicians, Mili Bermejo and Dan Greenspan, to play a benefit concert on Sunday, Oct. 14, at 3 p.m.

MacNeil said public education at about HIV and AIDS is more important than ever and the AIDS quilt is a powerful teaching tool.

“By bringing the quilt, what we're saying is here are the people who have died from AIDS and we never want to see your name in this living memorial. Contracting HIV is something you can prevent,” MacNeil said.

Unfortunately because of the advances in the medical treatments for HIV and ADIS, the crisis of infection is less visible, she said, however the pandemic continues. The CDC reports that 50,000 Americans are infected each year.

“We're all delighted that the medication has improved and that people are not dying from AIDS-related illnesses. But the fact of the matter is the HIV infection rate remains static,” she said.

Much more needs to be done to raise awareness and increase education, testing and treatment especially in poverty stricken areas, she said. “Of the 1.4 million people in U.S. living with HIV and AIDS, two-thirds don't even know they have it. …. That's the danger of the 'Those people thinking. It's those bad people, it's those gay people, those injection drug users.'”

Each 12- by 12-foot section of the quilt includes 8 three by six foot panels, meant to represent the size of a coffin, MacNeil said.

According to the National Names Project there are currently over 48,000 individual memorial panels. The patches are accepted as anonymous and can honor an AIDS victim or mark something else. A few years back a group of Keene High School students helped create a panel that honors the Clive Jones Wellness House in Gilsum. The home for people afflicted with AIDS and HIV is run by Monadnock AIDS Services and was named after Clive Jones who started the quilt, MacNeil said.

For the first time in 10 years all sections of the quilt were brought together in Washington, D.C., to be displayed during the National AIDS Conference.

This year, however, the quilt did not fit in its entirety on the National Mall so other sections had to be displayed throughout the District of Columbia.

“It's so gigantic, the quilt now. The size is hard to imagine. To see it all in one place would be so astonishing and tragic. I'm not sure anyone could take it in,” MacNeil said.

The 10 sections of the AIDS Memorial Quilt are to be displayed in the Monadnock Region from Nov. 1 and Dec. 15. You can schedule a display or request a panel by contacting MacNeil at susan.macneil@asmronline.org or (603) 357-6855 no later than Sept. 14.

To find out if a particular person has already been included in the quilt, MacNeil encourages people to research the archive at http://www.aidsquilt.org/view-the-quilt/search-the-quilt.htm. She can also assist people who wish to add a panel to the quilt.

Tickets for the benefit concert in Richmond on Oct. 14 can be purchased for $10 with VISA or MasterCard by calling AIDS Services for the Monadnock Region at (603) 357-6855 or visiting In the Company of Flowers on Main Street in downtown Keene.

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Meghan Pierce may be reached at mpierce@newstote.com.