As one of the volunteers given the honor of unfolding blocks of the AIDS Memorial Quilt for its 35th anniversary display at Golden Gate Park, I was part of a dance where rituals of grief, remembrance and fighting for survival all collided.

The quilt was conceived in 1985 by activist Cleve Jones as a way of honoring those lost to AIDS — and to bring attention to the disease the Reagan administration had mostly chosen to ignore. The panels, made by loved ones of the deceased, include their name, dates of birth and death, and images that tell their stories. It has become not just an important cultural document, but arguably one of the most significant contributions San Francisco has made to art in the past century.

“It was never intended to be just a passive memorial,” Jones told me in a 2019 interview upon the quilt’s return to the Bay Area. “It was there to illustrate the enormity of the crisis, condemn government inaction and to confront stigma.”

In 1987, Jones joined with his friends Mike Smith and Gert McMullin to establish the Names Project, the organization responsible for constructing, preserving and displaying the Quilt, which has had exhibitions around the world, including at the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Before the ceremony on Saturday, June 11, I arrived at Robin Williams Meadow to meet with McMullin, who has been called the mother of the quilt,” for training on how to properly unfold the blocks that hold the individual panels. In teams of eight volunteers, we were each assigned to stand on either side of a corner of the folded square, and each group of four would grab a side or corner that was ready to be pulled back. After four rounds of pulling back fabric, the full block would be revealed. Then, lifting either your corner or side of the unfolded block, we would circle to the left three times and place it within the borders of the tarp pathway.

It felt like a communal ritual, a marche funèbre perhaps, but also a dance in celebration of the very specific lives the panels represented. A meditation overtook me. The panels included drawings, photographs, rhinestones, messages, leather gear, stuffed animals. Details would flash as I unfolded: pink triangles and rainbows, a gay softball team commemorated as balls stitched with names, Fosse jazz hands with a quote from “Pippin,” pageant crowns, a high school letterman jacket. How could you not feel a sense of sacredness when unfolding the fabric meant to represent people’s very existences?

Today the 35th anniversary of the AIDS Memorial Quilt was commemorated with the largest display in San Francisco history in Golden Gate Park. It is a deeply moving social document and among the most significant contributions SF has made to visual/textile art. Go see it. pic.twitter.com/o6nALJPJCT

— Tony Bravo (@TonyBravoSF) June 11, 2022

The blocks I unfolded included the panel dedicated for Chronicle reporter Randy Shilts. The author of the Harvey Milk biography “The Mayor of Castro Street,” he was a pioneering openly gay reporter who helped bring the stories of the queer community into the mainstream media. Although his coverage of the AIDS crisis could be controversial within the gay community (his calls to close bathhouses were seen as anti-sex by some), his 1987 book  “And the Band Played On” is still considered one of the seminal histories of the epidemic. When I unfolded the corner of the block that revealed Shilts’ panel, I was shaken seeing the laminated copy of his 1994 Chronicle obituary sewn onto it with the headline: “After chronicling disease, Randy Shilts dies of AIDS.”

As I walked through the display, there were other people whose names I recognized: Disco queen Sylvester, movie star Rock Hudson, “The Real World” San Francisco castmate and activist Pedro Zamora.

Then I came across another Randy: Randy Galloway. His wasn’t a name I recognized, but sewn onto his panel was a cloth book titled “Summer Reading: A Short Story by Randy Galloway 11-3-50 10-15-93.” Opening it, I read his 10-page story, a beautifully descriptive, yet unflinching, tale of loss during the epidemic and how he eventually opened himself up to the possibility of love again. Like Shilts’ work, the writing moved me in how it captured the everyday realities of gay life in the time of plague.

I thank both Randys for their stories.

One of the panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt that I unfolded today included San Francisco Chronicle writer Randy Shilts, author of “And the Band Played On.” The entirety of this experience has been very moving but revealing his name shook me. I wish I could have known Randy. pic.twitter.com/8KSw986vZH

— Tony Bravo (@TonyBravoSF) June 11, 2022

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