Quilts From VHPA

  Vietnam Helicopter Pilot's reunion, San Antonio TX, July 3-7, 2023

Each summer my DH's Military group, Vietnam Helicopter Pilots, meets to visit and celebrate their continuing lives. About 15 years ago another wife Kathleen Sherfy and myself began to make quilts in red, white and blue celebrating our beautiful USA Flag, the Stars and Stripes. These are presented to a few soldiers each year, I think the first year we had only two or three, and now each year we have 8-10. The names are drawn randomly, but a couple of years ago I looked around at the presentation and saw the quilter's husbands sitting there watching other guys get quilts and thought it was sad they didn't have quilts too. So I told Kathleen I was making one for DH, and last summer in San Antonio I was able to surprise him at the presentation with his very own patriotic quilt. To say he was shocked would be putting it mildly!

It's been a very rough 3 years for him in his fight to recover from cancer, radiation and around a dozen major surgeries including last March a month in the hospital and six surgical procedures. I said when I presented the quilt that I wanted him to know he was still my hero. The ranks of these men are shrinking every year and we are blessed to have DH still with us, he is a tough guy to survive what he has. This year we have been married 52 years.

This past summer I also made T Shirt quilts for our great niece and nephew who were graduating High School. Unfortunately I don't have good photos of them but next time we are in Boston I will be sure to take some! This one is Emily's,  at this stage it isn't even trimmed or bound!

Here is Daniel's, before it was even quilted! I have no idea where my head was that I didn't take my usual pics of the finished quilts. I do remember taking photos of the quilts in Boston after the graduations, laid out on the billiard table, so where are those photos?? Duh!

Last spring Matthew was Confirmed at our church, an important day for him in his life as a maturing Christian. We were all very happy to see him take this big step forward.

Matthew has been attending worship with us from about one year old and has progressed through all the Sunday School grades where I was the assistant in class, and through first Communion and three years of Confirmation studies every Sunday, so at 14 he was well prepared for this next step, growing into an adult in his Faith.