August 2011, When our staff got to Wiawaka, Lake George, NY. ( for our 3rd Annual Retreat for Women Veterans) we set up the evening meeting space with chairs in a huge circle and put a GORGEOUS quilt on the back of every chair. Really they were so beautiful, every one of them and you should have heard us exclaiming over them. That evening when everyone came into the room, we told them to sit wherever they wanted without explaining anything. My hope was that each would gravitate to the quilt which spoke to them. Once we were all there, I told them about about Quilts of Valor and told them the quilt they were sitting on was theirs. Well. You should have seen their faces and heard them! They jumped up, opened up the quilts, exclaimed some more and some wrapped the quilts around them. One woman (who earlier had designed her name tag with a picture of fireworks because of something meaningful going on in her life right now) found when she opened her quilt that it had fireworks on it! Amazing.
~Meryl Dawes
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