Russ and Beth Milham, of AIDS Quilt Rhode Island, address the rally. Said Beth, “Our goal is to keep a face on AIDS.”

PROVIDENCE — Glen L.’s favorite color was green. The former Marine loved Elvis, Popsicles and “The Golden Girls” TV show.

Gerald F. Barrow was a special-education teacher in Johnston. The son of a Baptist minister, he liked music and art, and sang in the Providence Gay Men’s Chorus.

Joe D. went to school in Boston and fixed computers.

All of them died of AIDS.

On Tuesday, their names and pictures — Joe Hooks and David Bedard, too — appeared on flag-like swatches of cloth, hung above a stage. Eventually, the panels will join others to form a larger, national quilt memorializing AIDS victims.

“Our goal is to keep a face on AIDS,” said Beth Milham, coordinator for the nonprofit organization, AIDS Quilt Rhode Island. “We want to make sure everyone who is lost is remembered as a whole person and not a statistic.”

Milham was one of several speakers during a World AIDS Day rally at the MET School’s Black Box Theatre on Public Street.

“The media has moved on to other diseases of the week,” but AIDS continues to claim the lives of men and women in Rhode Island, Milham said.

As of Dec. 31, 2008, 458 cases of AIDS had been diagnosed in Rhode Island, according to the state Department of Health. Three-quarters of those diagnosed were men. Most were between the ages of 30 and 39.

“This is serious stuff. HIV and AIDS have not gone away,” said Paul Loberti Jr., chief of the Health Department’s office of HIV/AIDS and viral hepatitis. “Vaccine production is not where we thought it would be. The only real hope is prevention.”

Although it’s too early to call it a trend, the number of HIV cases has declined each year for the past five years, to 118 in 2008, Loberti said.

At the start of the rally, several men and women spoke about their past — dark years centered on drugs, unsafe sex, sexual abuse and self-hatred.

“This disease sucks,” said Rich, a 33-year-old man who was diagnosed as HIV positive two years ago.

“I date, but it’s very difficult. I believe in … disclosing my disease.”

As a boy, Rich looked at the stars and dreamed about a bright future. He was interested in the arts, in filmmaking. But he was also attracted to men. His father, angry, belittled and beat him.

“My family was on the street,” he said. Away from home, Rich took drugs, dropped out of school “and had sex with men and women. I had always known about HIV, but I never thought it would happen to me,” he said.

He drifted from city to city, thinking he was living a carefree life, “but it was not freedom,” he said. “I was a slave to drugs. I was a sex worker on the streets and I used needles. Really, I wanted to die.”

After a night of unprotected sex he got a fever, chills and a sore throat.

He called a friend, who didn’t believe he had HIV. His friend yelled at him, and then they both cried.

His friend, Jimmy, who grew up in a broken home in Glocester, also spent a life on the streets, after being sexually abused by a step-mother.

Today, both men are involved in AIDS prevention programs.

“The way I live now is completely different,” said Jimmy. “I stay clean. I’m engaged. And I run my own business.”

More than 1 million people are living with HIV, say World AIDS Day organizers. The event was created to help reduce the stigma around HIV and to promote prevention and testing.

“It’s important to remember people,” said James Robinson, executive director of Youth Pride, a youth support agency.

“And it’s important to get out the prevention message. It’s a message that needs to be revitalized.”

pdavis@projo.com