Angela Viney

In memory of her brother, George Claudius Cameon

In 1992, I experienced the first major loss of my life when my brother died of AIDS. He was 34. George was a special young man who, at the age of 12, announced his plans to become an attorney. He began representing others in high school and organized a protest for clean water in our coal- mining town of 300.

George had goals beyond the aspirations of others in that town and beyond the financial resources of our family. Through hard work and determination, he achieved his goal, and upon his death was working as general counsel for a state college. Near the end of his life, George continued to represent others, telling the medical team caring for him that they could administer new drugs in hopes that it would be helpful to other AIDS patients in the future.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt is more important now than ever. It symbolizes the current state of our nation where the “others” are maligned and mistreated because of gender, sexuality, economic status, race, nationality, and religion. The AIDS Memorial Quilt represents nearly 10,000 individual victims of AIDS, but the quilt cannot hold the names of the many affected by this epidemic.