High school freshman Madeleine Fugate poses with several of her quilts, part of the COVID Memorial Quilt living memorial to honor and remember all those lost to COVID-19, at her home in Los Angeles on Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
High school freshman Madeleine Fugate holds a picture of late Tuskegee Airman Theodore "Ted" Lumpkin to be included in one of her quilts, part of the COVID Memorial Quilt to honor and remember those who died of COVID-19, at her home in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
High school students pause in front of a few panels of Madeleine Fugate's COVID Memorial Quilt to honor those who died of COVID-19, displayed at the California Science Center in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
High school freshman Madeleine Fugate works surrounded by several quilts that are part of the COVID Memorial Quilt to honor and remember those who died of COVID-19, at her home in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
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LOS ANGELES
Madeleine Fugate’s memorial quilt started out in May 2020 as a seventh grade class project.
Inspired by the AIDS Memorial Quilt, which her mother worked on in the 1980s, the then-13-year-old encouraged families in her native Los Angeles to send her fabric squares representing their lost loved ones that she’d stitch together.
The COVID Memorial Quilt has grown so big it covers nearly two dozen panels and includes some 600 memorial squares honoring individuals or groups, such as New Zealand’s more than two dozen virus victims.
The bulk of the quilt is currently at the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, with a smaller portion on permanent display at the California Science Center in Los Angeles and another featured at the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Fugate, her mother and a small, dedicated band of volunteers meet Sundays to sew and embroider panels. Fabric and other materials are donated by victims’ families.
Now a high school freshman, she plans to keep the project going indefinitely.
“I really want to get everyone remembered so that families can heal and represent these people as real people who lived,” she said.
Fugate would like to see a more formal national memorial for COVID-19 victims one day, and perhaps even a national day of remembrance.
“It would be amazing to see that happen, but we’re still technically fighting the war against this virus,” she said. “We’re not there yet, so we just have to keep doing what we’re doing. We are the triage. We’re helping stop the bleeding.”
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