Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Part of AIDS Quilt at SHS

By Michelle Alaimo

Saratoga High School students have organized a week-long informational series to help raise awareness of what the World Health Organization calls the world's fastest-spreading epidemic--AIDS. Working mostly on their own, students have arranged for a number of speakers to visit the high school and will also display the NAMES Project AIDS memorial quilt Oct. 13-17.

The school will offer several activities, including the dedication of a quilt panel to Guy Nakatani, who educated local students on AIDS before dying of the disease in February 1994.

SHS will display four 12-foot-by-12-foot sections of the quilt, each displaying eight 3-foot-by-6-foot panels, the exact size of a coffin. The NAMES Project Foundation said the entire AIDS quilt, which contains nearly 43,000 panels, represents 21 percent of all U.S. AIDS deaths. The quilt will be on public display every night during the week from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Students and parents will spend the week sewing a panel for Nakatani. The panel will then be presented to Nakatani's parents, who are flying in from their home in Hawaii for the week. The presentation will be made at the closing ceremony at 2:10 p.m., Friday, Oct. 17, in the Little Theater. The closing ceremonies will also be filmed by Time-Warner for a documentary currently in the works.

[ Back to Contents Page | Los Gatos Weekly-Times Home Page | Archives ]