Quilts honor residents at Alaska Veterans and Pioneers Home

PALMER — It takes some coordination to put 43 quilts together.

“I’ve been working for the last few months with quilters around the Valley and Anchorage, Wasilla, Palmer, Willow,” said Linda Kau, Alaska Coordinator for the Quilts of Valor Foundation. “I put a call out, we’ve had sew-ins, group meetings where we’ve gotten together and sewn.”

The goal was to get enough quilts to honor the veterans at the Alaska Veterans and Pioneers Home in Palmer.

“The local VFW, the Wasilla VFW, has been helping us, too. They’ve been donating batting to us so they’ve been a big help,” Kau said.

By Thursday, that goal had been reached, prompting a formal ceremony at the Pioneers Home, complete with a color guard courtesy of Colony High School’s ROTC program and remarks from the VFW’s Alaska commander.

Kau said she’s been quilting with Quilts of Valor Foundation for eight years and loves it.

“It’s very heartwarming. I find it hard to explain the emotion that I see in the veteran’s face or the service member’s face. They’re all so appreciative of being remembered and it’s very heart-warming,” she said.

The national organization was founded in 2003 in Delaware by Catherine Roberts, a mother with a son deployed to Iraq. It has since grown nationwide with a goal of giving a quilt to every returning service member.

“These wartime quilts, called Quilts of Valor, would be a tangible reminder of an American’s appreciation and gratitude,” according to the organization’s website. “QOVF has become a national grassroots community service effort, connecting the home front with our wounded combat warriors and veterans.”

Kau, who winters in Oregon but spends the rest of the year in Wasilla, says in her bio on the organization’s website that she signed up with Quilts of Valor in 2004, so a year after the group started. She said she learned about the organization online.

“It just happened to be a conversation with some of my email friends,” she said. “Quilters around the country are involved with it, so it always comes to the forefront in our conversations.”

Since she signed up, she’s done mostly “individual presentations” of quilts to service members, usually on one of the military bases.

“We take them into the bases, J-BER, Ft. Wainwright, individual presentations if people request them for their loved ones,” she said.

She estimates she’s probably personally sewn 75 quits for Quilts of Valor, but not all of those were presented locally. Many went overseas to service members in the hospital.

“Most of them are red, white and blue, patriotic colors and designs,” she said. “Some of them are scrappy quilts, (as) we call them, with all different colors,” she said.

Kau retired in 1998 and soon after got seriously into quilting. Why quilting?

“It’s the cheapest therapy I can think of. I just enjoy the whole process, the colors, the feel of the cloth, it’s just something that has taken over my life,” she said. “In a very good way.”

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.