Mon 1 Apr 2013 In: New Zealand Daily News View at Wayback View at NDHA
The quilt panel Bev Jelicich created in remembrance of her son Michael. Auckland woman Beverley Jelicich, who became an ardent and effective campaigner for proper and dignified handling of the bodies of those lost to HIV infection, has died, aged 76. When her son Michael died due to HIV/AIDS in 1989, one of the many hundreds of deaths which were beginning to rock the gay communities, Jelicich was shocked to discover that funeral directors were refusing to handle the bodies of HIV victims. Michael Bancroft of the NZ Quilt Project, which memorialises some of those victims and for which Jelicich made one of the earliest quilt panels to remember her son, recalls that in those days "funeral directors still didn't know how to handle HIV-related deaths... our communities' dead were just bagged and coffined... that was it," he says. "There was no embalming, no dressing, no dignity, nothing." "Bev challenged them to do something about it and gradually they educated themselves about the virus," Bancroft says. "As a result of her work those with HIV are today treated by most professionals such as funeral directors exactly the same as everyone else." In the wake of Jelicich's campaigning two gay funeral directors even created a new funeral service company for a time, Meadows Funeral Services, specifically to attend to the needs of those who had died as a result of HIV infection. A service for Beverley Jelicich will be held at 12.30pm this Wednesday at Morrison Funeral Home Chapel in Universal Drive, Henderson.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Monday, 1st April 2013 - 3:38pm