IRONTON, Ohio — Eleven Lawrence County veterans went home Thursday wrapped in handmade gratitude, each presented with a personalized Quilt of Valor during Ohio University Southern’s annual Threads of Gratitude celebration in the Riffe Rotunda, The Ironton Tribune reported.
The quilts came from Material Hugs, a local guild of current and retired Ohio University Southern faculty working under the national Quilts of Valor Foundation. Each quilt is made for one named veteran: it carries the recipient’s name, the date of the donation, and red, white and blue patterns chosen to symbolize service and sacrifice, according to The Ironton Tribune’s report of the ceremony.
Ohio University Southern Dean Deborah Marinski thanked the veterans during the program. “You stood watch so others could sleep,” she told the veterans in remarks reported by The Ironton Tribune. “You put the safety of strangers ahead of your own comfort. There is no greater expression of love for one’s country and for people than that.”
Material Hugs is a young guild with an outsized output. The group formed in 2022, and in four years its members have made more than 130 quilts for local veterans, The Ironton Tribune reported. Founder Dr. Kim Keffer was inspired by Quilts of Valor through her aunt, Garnett Keffer Kimberlin, a World War II Army nurse who herself received a quilt in her 90s, according to Ohio University’s reporting on the guild.
The Ironton ceremony is one small room in a very large national effort. Quilts of Valor began in 2003 with founder Catherine Roberts, and The Ironton Tribune reported that quilting groups nationwide had awarded 463,129 quilts as of last month — each one stitched, presented and recorded one veteran at a time.
The timing, days before Veterans Day on Wednesday, November 11, gave the presentations an added weight for the families in the rotunda. For the eleven veterans honored Thursday, the honor is also a keepsake: a quilt with their name on it, made by neighbors, meant to be used and kept for the rest of their lives.
What happens next is more stitching. Material Hugs takes nominations for future presentations through the Quilts of Valor Foundation, and the guild’s members are already at work on the next class of quilts — with more than 130 delivered in four years, the line of Lawrence County veterans waiting for their turn is the guild’s reason to keep sewing.