“They aren’t just numbers — they are real people who had lives, jobs, families and friends, a pet,” Madeleine, now 14, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue.
Her outrage led to a realization: “We have to remember them.”
She began her COVID memorial quilt in April 2020 as her seventh-grade Community Action Project through Buckley School in Sherman Oaks, California. It has since exploded into an open-ended endeavor to record the worldwide losses to the ubiquitous virus.
Madeleine’s mother Katherine Fugate provided the inspiration for the COVID quilt after telling her daughter about working on the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt 35 years ago.
“You had someone’s actual shirt or jeans and that made them real to us,” Katherine says. “That struck her how much we needed them to be recognized.”
Madeleine and her mom began reaching out to people through social media, asking for submissions. Contributors could either send completed squares or materials for Madeleine to make the squares.
For more on Madeleine Fugate’s mission to memorialize COVID-19 victims, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, or subscribehere.
Each piece of fabric comes with a letter about the people behind the squares, recognizing one of the 384,804 lives, and counting, lost to COVID.
“Reading the letters made me realize who they were,” Madeleine says.
Jay Bushman sent a square with an iron-on transfer photo of his father David, 76. It was made of his dad’s T-shirt that featured stirring words from his favoriteStar Trekepisode: “Make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again.”
“My father was the kindest person I’ve ever known,” says Jay, 48.
The episode, from theStar Trek: The Next Generationseries, is “about family, community and loss — and about how if someone is remembered, they will never be truly gone,” says Jay.
Lori Oshiro, Eric’s wife, also caught COVID from her mother-in-law but survived. She hopes the quilt will help people remember times when the country came together during a crisis.
“I go back to 9/11, when everyone turned to each other,” says Lori. “It was not Democrat or Republican, it was the United States as one.”
Among the 250-plus squares submitted so far: a remembrance of Paul “Buddy” Gibbs Jr., a mechanic and father of three who died April 16.Courtesy Katherine Fugate
So far Madeleine has stitched more than 125 squares into five large quilt panels that she hopes to have displayed around the country — one is already promised to an upcoming exhibit at L.A.’s California Science Center.
Clickherefor information on submitting squares for other victims of COVID.
As information about thecoronavirus pandemicrapidly changes, PEOPLE is committed to providing the most recent data in our coverage. Some of the information in this story may have changed after publication. For the latest on COVID-19, readers are encouraged to use online resources from theCDC,WHOandlocal public health departments.PEOPLE has partnered with GoFundMeto raise money for the COVID-19 Relief Fund, a GoFundMe.org fundraiser to support everything from frontline responders to families in need, as well as organizations helping communities. For more information or to donate, clickhere.
source: people.com
