AIDS Quilt Shown at Queen Mary

LONG BEACH — A piece of the AIDS quilt, a traveling memorial to thousands of victims of the disease, will be on display at the Queen Mary tonight through Sunday in conjunction with AIDS Walk Long Beach.

Eight hundred panels of the quilt, sewn by the friends and families of AIDS victims from the United States and 19 other countries, will be available for viewing on three floors of the ship for the second consecutive year. The entire quilt now weighs 13 tons, is composed of 11,425 panels and has been viewed by 1.6 million people worldwide, organizers said.

The quilt will be on display from 6 to 8 p.m. today at a $50-per-person fund-raiser. Proceeds will benefit the Names Project Memorial Quilt and various AIDS services, officials said.

It will then be displayed for general viewing free of charge from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday. A ceremony and reading of the names will follow from 6 to 9 p.m. General viewing also will be from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Free parking is available at the Queen Mary to anyone who mentions the quilt at the kiosk, officials said.

Also on Sunday, thousands of participants are expected to walk a 10-kilometer route to benefit AIDS patients, whose numbers reached 117,781 in the United States as of Jan. 1. Health officials report that 70,313 of those patients have died.