Five local veterans are relaxing a little more cozily this week after they were honored for their service not with medals or plaques, but with warm, cotton quilts handmade especially for them.
Veterans Marie (Stacie) Stewart, Jack Meccariello, Frank Killmer, Ward Potter, and Ken Blackmar all received special quilts as part of the annual American Legion officer installation dinner hosted at the Lions Club on June 20. (In addition, the following officers were sworn in for the American Legion Post #426: Marie Stewart as commander, George Keeler as chaplain, and Art Dakin as Sergeant at Arms.)
The blankets are better known as Quilts of Valor, part of a nationwide volunteer initiative to comfort military veterans and active members of service who have been affected by the experience of war.
Created in 2003 by the mother of a soldier then stationed in Iraq, Quilts of Valor are machine- or hand-stitched high-quality quilts that must be officially awarded to their recipients. Since then, according to the QOV website, nearly 350,000 quilts have been presented to past or current members of the military.
“The stitching in each quilt symbolize the tears that have been wept during wartime,” says Lynne Clinch, a lifelong Pine Plains resident and enthusiastic quilter who has awarded 23 quilts since she first learned of the idea during the Covid pandemic.
“I was watching a lot of quilting shows on PBS at the time and I saw a Quilt of Valor, and I thought gee, I guess I could do something like that,” said Clinch, who first learned sewing as a student and 4H member, and who has amassed piles of colorful quilting fabric during annual pilgrimages to Amish stores in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
Clinch’s machine-stitched lap quilts, approximately 60×70 inches, are made with a variety of red, white, and blue materials, sometimes printed with stars or anchors, and often feature a large central panel printed with a flag, Mount Rushmore, or other patriotic designs.
“I improvise as I go,” she says, before switching into full-bore quilting lingo. “I sometimes use a four-patch or disappearing nine-patch pattern, and then I make different borders – piano keys, Seminole, Jacob’s ladder.”
Clinch says she makes approximately 10 Quilts of Valor a year, but has never calculated the precise time it takes to design, piece, and stitch a single blanket. “It’s a labor of love,” says Clinch, whose earliest recipients included World War II veterans Alan Blackmar and Morton Jackson, Korea vet Waldy Macpherson, as well as her own husband, Bob Clinch, who served in Vietnam. “It’s my way of saying thanks to them for their service and dedication.”
Bob Clinch, a retired bus driver and volunteer firefighter who underwent special forces at Fort Bragg in California before his deployment as a field engineer, remembers being warned to change back into civilian clothes to avoid being heckled by protesters upon his return from Vietnam in 1971. “Soldiers didn’t get much recognition or respect at the time, but that’s really changed,” he said, pointing proudly to a list of a dozen family members who have served in the military from World War II to the present.
Lynne Clinch, who counts many veterans among her own family tree, says it’s not unusual for her to receive a thank-you note or a special greeting from the former soldiers whom she chooses to award with quilts. “Sometimes there’s a friendly hello, sometimes a hug,” she says. “They have a tendency to be overwhelmed – very appreciative that someone went to the trouble.”