Memory of a classmate
Mike Smith brought the aids quilt home to the Business School this year. Three panels from the quilt were displayed in Jackson Library during AIDS Awareness Week in March, and Smith, MBA '86, opened the exhibit with a poignant remembrance of one of his GSB classmates.
Smith was a cofounder of the Names Project AIDS memorial quilt with Cleve Jones, a San Francisco activist and politician. "Cleve was the visionary," says Smith. "I was the one who knew how to make it happen."
Smith told how he was affected by his friendship with Jeff Phillips, an MBA student who dropped out of school after only a quarter, diagnosed with AIDS-related pneumonia. He remained close to his friend until Phillips died during finals week the following fall.
The experience made a lasting impression on Smith. At Stanford, he helped found the AIDS Education Project and organized Stanford Cares, a campus-wide fund-raising event that netted $45,000 for AIDS research and education. Later, like other friends and relatives of AIDS victims, Smith channeled his grief through the quilt. "Every single time I walk through the display," he said, "I hear Jeff Phillips saying, 'Remember my name.'"
Begun in a San Francisco storefront in June 1987 to remember the names of people who had died of AIDS, the quilt was displayed in Washington, D.C., four months later. It was big enough to cover a city block. Today, if it were possible to display the entire quilt, it would cover 10 football fields. The quilt now consists of more than 26,000 panels, each measuring three feet by six feet; it weighs 30 tons. Sections of the quilt have toured all 50 states and raised nearly $1.5 million for direct services for people with AIDS, as well as raising the awareness of countless people about the disease. Mike Smith -- helped by thousands of volunteers -- did indeed "make it happen."
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