When my mother told me that Stuart's name was going to be on the magnificent quilt that would name each victim of AIDS by name, I think she felt the same kind of comfort those parents of fallen soldiers feel when they are presented with the flag that was draped across their coffin. She was a speaker at the Washington DC spreading of the quilt and I am forever grateful to whomever arranged that she participate in that. The quilt and its memorial to my brother and other people who had died from AIDS was a great comfort to my mother.

I wish I could say that the quilt did the same for me. Although I deeply appreciated the embroidered dove , the symbol of peace that so many people associated with my brother Stuart, the quilted space seemed to minimize his life - it made him just one of hundreds of people. To me, Stuarts memory was too big to fit onto a square of a quilt.

Stuart's square in the AIDS quilt, and all of the adjacent squares, remind me just how much human capacity we lost in that horrible epidemic. There is no doubt in my mind that if the medical establishment had responded sooner, Stuart would have gone on to do many more extraordinary things, and that he would have enriched the lives of the people he loved in countless ways.

To live more bravely.... The first time I crossed the Israeli border into Lebanon, I was terrified. Stuart and I had taken a trip to the beach at Rosh HaNikra, with a Belgian friend from Kibbutz Ga'aton. On a whim, Stuart decided that he wanted to talk to some of the Israeli military guys manning the border post. Before I knew it, Stuart had convinced an Israeli Colonel to let us cross into Lebanon without a visa, which was not at all part of the plan for the day. We had a total of about $27 between the three of us, no passports, and nothing but bathing suits, towels and sandals. The Belgian and I thought Stuart was crazy. But as soon as the offer was made, Stuart insisted that it would be insane not to go. So the three of us took the bus to the ancient city of Tyre, and had an amazing series of adventures, which in some ways continue to this day. All of this happened just months after Stuart had finally come out of the closet with family and childhood friends. Growing up gay in Texas in the 1970's -- and coming out to everyone in the early 80's -- required incredible courage. Stuart had that in spades. His friendship inspires me to live more bravely than I ever would have without him.

Stuart taught me acceptance - of myself and others. He was solely responsible for bringing me out of the shell I had constructed from anger, frustration and melancholy. My suitemate next door, he would quietly coax me out of my room with his wit and sensitivity and fantastic taste in music. Finally, on Halloween night 1981, he asked me to help him and some of my other suitemates apply makeup for their costumes. He refused to let me retreat back into my emotional lair, and I fell madly, deeply in platonic love with this incredible human being. I miss him still.

I learned so many things from Stuart that it's hard to pick just one. He was the most optimistic person i've ever known in terms of believing in the goodness of humankind, and definitely gave me the gift of empathy. But the biggest gift I got from Stuart was a love of travel and adventure. The summer after we graduated from college, I had saved up enough money to travel in Europe and Israel for three months. Though I had the money to go, I was almost parallelized with fear about going so far from home, into the unknown. But Stuart helped me, as he had already done a lot of traveling and had a great love for it. To get me with the program, Stuart sat me down and gave me a primer on every city I would visit on this trip--particularly Barcelona, where he had friends who were as close as family that he wanted me to visit. He explained all the details about how to travel: what to do when arriving in a city, what to see, what not to see, and what to do in case of emergency. This was all useful information for a girl who had never been across the Atlantic and was scared stiff of doing any traveling alone. Stuart also gave me a diary, with a prayer written into it reminding me to treasure every day of my travels and the people I would meet. He explained how once chance encounter could forever change the world. Along with the diary, Stuart also gave me a note to slip into the Western Wall when I got Jerusalem with a prayer written on it. His message to the Almighty, typically, wasn't asking anything for himself; rather, it was for God to heal the world. All of Stuart's advice not only helped me get through that post-college trip, but also set me on the course that would eventually lead me to become a foreign correspondent and live a large chunk of my adult life abroad. He helped me understand that the power of travel wasn't in seeing museums or eating in good restaurants, but from the deep understanding that diverse people can develop when they spend the time to get to each other. Indeed, a chance encounter can change the world, as knowing Stuart changed my world forever.

I know that one moment that was deeply memorable for Stuart was his baptism into the Catholic faith. I can't remember if this was in 1983 or 1984, but it took place in St. Paul's Chapel at Columbia, I think around Easter. If I'm not mistaken, Stuart became close to Father Paul Dinter, the Catholic chaplain at Columbia at the time, and decided to adopt Catholicism as his faith deepened. I remember it being a beautiful ceremony that brought Stuart great joy. And it brought his friends there joy to see him so happy.

I think Stuart would want to be remembered as someone who made the world a better, more tolerant, more loving, more optimistic place. I'm not sure he would most want to be remembered as a member of one of Columbia's secret societies, but he was one...and I unearthed an article I wrote about the Nachems and Sachems that quotes Stuart and had a photo of him. Here's the link--the online version doesn't have a photo, but I unearthed the print version, which did. I remember taking that photo--about 10 of us including me, Stuart, and a photographer from the New York Times in an elevator in Furnald.
http://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/29/nyre/.../-tap-seniors.html

The first time I crossed the Israeli border into Lebanon, I was terrified. Stuart and I had taken a trip to the beach at Rosh HaNikra, with a Belgian friend from Kibbutz Ga'aton. On a whim, Stuart decided that he wanted to talk to some of the Israeli military guys manning the border post. Before I knew it, Stuart had convinced an Israeli Colonel to let us cross into Lebanon without a visa, which was not at all part of the plan for the day. We had a total of about $27 between the three of us, no passports, and nothing but bathing suits, towels and sandals. The Belgian and I thought Stuart was crazy. But as soon as the offer was made, Stuart insisted that it would be insane not to go. So the three of us took the bus to the ancient city of Tyre, and had an amazing series of adventures, which in some ways continue to this day. All of this happened just months after Stuart had finally come out of the closet with family and childhood friends. Growing up gay in Texas in the 1970's -- and coming out to everyone in the early 80's -- required incredible courage. Stuart had that in spades. His friendship inspires me to live more bravely than I ever would have without him.

I wrote this article for Beliefnet called Stuart's Table some time between 2001-2007:

The thing I remember most about Stuart is his table, and until recently, this was a source of great shame for me.

When my friend Stuart Garcia died in 1986 of AIDS, at age 23, I promised myself that I would try to remember him--for what could be sadder than someone who is forgotten because he hadn't had time to do something memorable?

It seemed especially cruel because Stuart was one of those people who seemed destined to do something important. I met him in college when he was the president of the student body and I was the editor of the school newspaper. He had that rare combination of talent, earnestness, and ambition that makes for great men and women.

He was diagnosed with HIV in 1985, many years before the invention of life-preserving drug cocktails. Stuart and I both lived in Washington, D.C. As he grew sicker, I sat with him during physical therapy, watching his unbearable optimism. I promised myself I would hold on to his compassion, his brilliance, his potential--unaware at the time that it's impossible to remember potential.

There was nothing miraculous about his last year. It most certainly did not illustrate the healing power of prayer or positive thinking. He tried to visualize the AIDS virus as dark light that could be pushed out through his pores by white healing energy. It didn't work.

He did not live "far longer than anyone expected." Indeed, he died faster than anyone predicted.

And after he died, his other friends and I pledged to do whatever we could to keep his memory alive. We created a scholarship fund at college in his name; we promised to keep in touch, in tribute to him. But as time passed, I've stopped responding to the notes from the school about the Stuart Garcia Fund. There are no reunions of Stuart's friends, and I really couldn't tell you where most of them are.

The one thing about Stuart that persists in my life is his table. It's a modern drop-leaf table of blond pine, with legs that fold so that it can be either a half-table, a full table, or, with both leaves down, a thin one-foot-wide expanse. It's undistinguished, saying less "family heirloom" than "Ikea special." But Stuart's mom, when she was cleaning out his apartment, needed to get rid of some of his things and asked if I wanted it, and I said yes, not out of sentimentality but because I needed a table.

After I got married, we put it in the sunroom, where we ate breakfast. Sometimes, we'd dress it up with a tablecloth and a vase full of flowers. It seemed elegant enough. "When the guests come," I'd say, "we can have brunch at Stuart's table."
When my son was born, the mohel--an old man with an accent, dark fedora, and mysterious black bag--came to our house for the bris. We needed a spot with plenty of light, so we opened up both leaves of the table in the sunroom. The mohel set his bag, surgical utensils, and prayer book on Stuart's table. He lay down our new life on this table, performed the ancient circumcision ritual, and quickly dabbed my son's lips with wine to stop him from crying.

As they grew, my sons Joe and Gordon would set up their dollhouse on Stuart's table, this time with the two main leaves folded down. Miniature wooden tables, tiny aluminum foil bowls and candelabras, hungry plastic dinosaurs--they all sat together atop Stuart's table.

My wife, Amy, never met Stuart, so all she knows of him is the table. Only recently did we become conscious of the fact that 14 years after his death, we still call it "Stuart's table."

At first I thought, how pathetic that this is what has endured. What became of my plans for memory books and meaningful scholarships and reunions?
Now I feel very blessed to have that table. No, Stuart didn't really get a chance to make his mark, and his potential will never be carved into a monument.

But when I see the table, and when I speak of it, a fleeting vision of that sweet young man--that gentle do-gooder--reappears in my mind. In some faiths and cultures, people believe that human spirits inhabit trees or objects. It's hard for me to look at it quite that way, but clearly a table can work as a co-conspirator--with the mind and the spirit--to call forth memories of a wonderful soul. So, thank you, Mrs. Garcia, for allowing me to take Stuart's table.

We used to go out to a local luncheonette and talk about food. Food had become very important to him. It was crucial that he keep his weight up. I had been struggling o keep my weight up for extremely different reasons. Although my motive was vanity and his was survival, he still relished helping me with my task. As we slurped milkshake after milkshake he spoke hopefully about how he was going to beat the disease. And when he would get sick and then recover he felt joy not just because he passed through one illness on the way to another but because it was evidence that he was going to prevail.

The last time I saw Stuart was at the hospital in Austin, Texas. He looked very thin. His gauntness made his eyes seem bigger and sadder. His condition was fairly advanced and things must have been seeming hopeless. But I remember walking around with him at the physicial therapy center of the hospital when ever step in the corridor was like climbing a mountain. The expression on his face when he was struggling on the stationery bicycle was an incredible mixture of pain and determination. And he did win that battle, even though the doctors thought he wouldn’t. He recovered enough so he could check out of the hospital.