Valor found in quilting

By Lauren Radomski (Contact) | The Daily Journal

Published Thursday, November 13, 2008

In the past year, over 100 injured servicemen and women around the country have received quilts crafted by Fergus Falls hands.

Those hands belong to dozens of local women like Paulette Hoebelheinrich, Penny Miller and Gail Brennan, who began the Fergus Falls chapter of Quilts of Valor last fall. Once a month participants meet at Westridge Mall to select patterns, cut fabric and sew the quilts that warm soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The national Quilts of Valor Foundation began in 2003 with a Delaware woman who started making quilts after her son was deployed in Iraq. Since then, chapters of quiltmakers have sprung up across the country, including one in Perham, and most recently, in Fergus Falls.

“We took lessons, wrote down notes and talked to the people in Perham,” said Hoebelheinrich, who’s son, Jerry, is currently in Afghanistan.

“Somehow we’re all related to someone (who’s served),” Brennan said.

Local quilters have the option of working at Westridge Mall or taking quilt kits home. The group has sent quilts as far as Los Angeles — where the veterans service area is the size of Connecticut — as well as Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Organizers have also distributed quilts through the Fergus Falls armory.

Each quilt has a unique pattern and fabric combination, and may be handled by five or six women before it is complete. A label on one side of the quilt bears a Quilts of Valor message and space to fill in the date it was received. A pillow case and a card signed by quilt creators also accompany the gift.

Soldiers returning from earlier wars, particularly Vietnam, did not always come home to a public that appreciated them, Hoebelheinrich said.

“We don’t want these Iraqi and Afghan war heroes coming back like that,” she said.

The windows of the group’s Westridge Mall space — which was donated by the mall — display letters from thankful soldiers who’ve received quilts over the past year.

The women of Quilts of Valor invite members of the public to attend an open house Friday at their workspace, located just inside the mall’s “C” door. The open house, in part a celebration of the one-year anniversary, is scheduled from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.