Bonnie J. Lippincott Gallagher

11/23/09

OR97008-OSSDAR52

Bonnie J. Lippincott Gallagher

Carolyn Kolzow

Moda Fabrics

Sandy, Oregon

Kim Greene

**This transcript was created by QSOS volunteers and was reviewed and, in some cases, edited by the interviewee. It may not exactly match the audio recording. For citations and interview quotations, please refer to the audio-recorded interview.** Carolyn Kolzow (CK): This is Carolyn Kolzow and today's date is November 23, 2009. It's five minutes of 11:00 and I'm conducting a Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Bonnie Gallagher. Bonnie is in Sandy, Oregon and I'm in Beaverton, Oregon. We're conducting this interview by telephone. We are doing this through the American Heritage Committee of the Oregon State Society Daughters of the American Revolution. Bonnie is a member of the Oregon Trail Chapter NSDAR. Bonnie has sent me pictures of her quilt that she calls "Milwaukee Memories." Bonnie, please tell me about your quilt.

Bonnie Gallagher (BG): "Milwaukee Memories" I designed and made for an international quilt challenge that was sponsored by Michigan State University Museum. This was, oh golly, I want to say it was in 2002 or 2003. Bless their hearts I came in the top ten finalists. The fabrics they wanted people entering this quilt challenge to use were Civil War and pre-Civil War reproductions and I did. It was called Great Lakes Great Quilts [Challenge.], and I'll tell you these fabrics were a joy to work with and because I always bring my family history and history of regions into the work that I do. This one, my dad was a career Naval officer and one of our duty stations was Milwaukee, Wisconsin, so I don't believe I was probably maybe four or five years old when we lived there. What I remembered about Milwaukee was the magic of my first snowfall and stars on a clear night that looked like you could touch them and in all my big challenge quilts I always bring my grandmother into it. She used to make the Star of Bethlehem quilt which I grew up with and absolutely loved and as a dedication to her there is always a Star of Bethlehem somewhere in my big quilts. This one was the center medallion. Anyway it had to do with the camping and the outdoors and just what memories I had as a child of the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area. I don't know what else to tell you about that quilt. It traveled the country for a year with the Michigan State University Museum exhibit, and it was also featured in Quilter's Newsletter Magazine the year that it came in as a finalist. That's what I can tell you about that quilt. It was just a joy to make.

CK: Did you quilt it by hand?

BG: No, I have a dear friend whose name is Kimberly Olerich in Fairview who has a long arm quilting machine and she did the quilting on that for me. I know there are two schools of thought on quilts. There is a school of thought that says if it is not hand pieced or hand appliquéd and hand quilted then it's not a real quilt, and I beg to differ with that. I got my love of quilting from my grandmothers both of them and also my mother. My grandmother passed away in the year 2000 at the wonderful age of 105 years old. She used to send her quilts up to Mrs. Jones up the river in Winchester Bay to have her quilt them. So this has been going on for a long time. It's just we have different equipment to do the same thing, so I follow in my grandmother's footsteps. [both laugh.] I like the designing part. If I had to stop and hand quilt everything I made, I wouldn't live long enough to get it done.

CK: There you go. How do you use this quilt?

BG: This quilt will probably never hit a bed because it was one of the real special ones and in fact eventually I may donate it to the Michigan State University Quilting Museum. This one comes out at show time and that is about it. On the real special ones I don't want them loved to death, I want them to look pristine a hundred years from now as they did the day I put the last stitch in.

CK: How many hours a week do you quilt do you suppose?

BG: I probably quilt at least 30 hours a week because that's what I do.

CK: Tell me about the process that you go through. You mentioned design.

BG: I do design. My quilts--I call it my "design-as-I-go" method of quilting and most of them are medallion quilts, which is what "Milwaukee Memories" was. I start out with an idea in my mind and then I make a center medallion which is the feature part and then I piece different borders to feature, to go back in and echo that central medallion all the way out and the quilts always let me know when they're done. Because I design as I go, I don't write anything down on paper, and I don't use a computer program. I use my sewing machine to make a few blocks of what I think I want to do next, and I put them up on this wonderful design wall that my husband made for me in my sewing room. If I like the way it looks with the quilt, then it ends up in the quilt and I will finish the blocks that I need to get around the perimeter of how ever big that quilt is at that moment in time. If I don't like it, they go into what I call my "orphan stack" and they end up in a quilt down the line. There aren't too many of us that do quilts that way anymore. A lot of people use computer programs. They use graph paper. I just don't happen to be one of those.

CK: Would you say you're self-taught then?

BG: Yeah, I would say I'm self-taught. I got my love of quilts from my grandmother, from both of them actually because they made quilts to keep their families warm and they also made one quilt a year, which was called their "best quilt" that always went to the state fair. I tell people what I did for my working career. I was a legal secretary and then a legal assistant for 30 years. I did think [about.] quilts then because I didn't think I had the time to actually make a quilt, and then I was in a rather nasty car accident back in 1994 [which.] brought an end to my legal career because my body was messed up pretty bad. I do need to add that accident was not my fault. [laughs.]

CK: Oh dear.

BG: Anyway, I took up quilting as pain management. I'd been doing all these quilts in my head for so many years that I took to it like a duck to water, and I've been quilting ever since.

CK: Good for you.

BG: It worked. I quilted with my mother, bless her heart, while she was still with us. She and I quilted together. My grandmother who traveled on ahead at the age of 105 lived to see me start quilting and bless her heart, she said, 'Do you know what we could've done if we had the fabrics and the sewing machines that you have now?' And I'll tell you I just gave her the biggest hug and I said, ;Grandma I know what you did without them and mine don't even come close.'

CK: Have the pictures of your quilts been published?

BG: Yes, they have. I've had, let's see "Milwaukee Memories" was in the Quilter's Newsletter Magazine. I did another one a few years back that was called "Salute to the Fair," and I did it all in what I called the "feed sack prints" that my grandmother used to use. That one was published in the American Patchwork and Quilting magazine and that one is now in the Sandy Historical Society Museum here in Sandy. Then I did one to commemorate my dad's service in the Navy. We had some postcards, or he had and then my mother gave them to me of what was known then as "The Great White Fleet" when the naval ships were white. This would have been about I want to say World War I era when they made this incredible cruise with all these US Naval ships around the world, and it was part of a show of military force, it was the "to speak softly and carry a big stick" era. These postcards we received--a friend of my grandmother's, she and her husband owned this little place in Juneau, Alaska, in the early 1900's called The Red Dog Saloon. As sailors would come in when they had liberty or when they came into port in Juneau, they would bring Dutch and his wife these postcards of the ships they were on. They were all "The Great White Fleet" and so I had every single one of them and I played around with image transfer which was quite early at the time I did this quilt, and I also pieced the Umpqua lighthouse. My dad grew up down at Winchester Bay here in Oregon and that was the lighthouse down there and that particular quilt went to the big show in Houston, Texas, and then a quite famous quilter, Sandy Bonsib from the Washington area, I believe the Seattle area saw that quilt and called me and she said, 'Bonnie I'm doing a book on image transfer quilts and I really want to include that quilt.' So that quilt is in Sandy Bonsib's book, "Quilting More Memories." That would be it on the ones that were published or showed up in publications.

CK: You mentioned your design wall; tell me about the room that you sew in.

BG: The room that I sew in [laughs.]. I know that a lot of quilters have these incredible studios. My sewing room is, the sewing machine is in the utility room off the kitchen, and I have one blank wall that does not have cupboards on it for folding clothes and doing the laundry and that particular wall Jim put up, I believe they call it Firtex and we covered it with white flannel. It's like what I remember as the storyboards in Sunday school when I was a kid and the blocks and the fabrics will just stay by themselves on that flannel, so it gives me the ability to move things around or take them off if they don't work or put more on if they do. The quilts grow and I'm so thankful that covers that entire wall because sometimes they get a little out of hand. [both laugh.] That would be my sewing area, although my husband will tell you when my mind is really going I tend to take up the entire house. My cutting mat is on the kitchen counter and sometimes I have stacks of fabric on the dining room table, and he just rather disappears into the office and works on genealogy when I'm in that mode. That would be my sewing area.

CK: How do you decide on projects to be done? Do you have a special area that you, do you like to do them for gifts or?

BG: I do. Right at the moment I'm in the middle of what I call "a family Christmas project" and it is something that my mom and I started when we quilted together so everyone in the family gets a quilted project for the holidays as their Christmas gift. Then every year I do for family, I do what I call my "joined at the heart" quilts, and I do a full bed size quilt that is original design that goes to someone in the family each year. The person in the family, how I select that because I come from this huge extended family, usually has had something happen in their life that I want them to have a quilt. Two years ago my "joined at the heart" quilt was autumn leaves, autumn themed quilt that went to my father's cousin June and her husband, Cliff. June, bless her heart, was one of the Little Rascals in the last Great Depression. They were up for the family reunion and shortly after they got home to California Cliff was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. I wanted to make them a fall leaf quilt because the reunion was in the fall so that he would remember something [of that trip.] while he could still remember. That was their very last trip. He is still with us but his memory isn't so much anymore. Then last year I did one for my cousin, Becky Jane, who had lost her husband to a form of Leukemia just a year before. Henry and Becky Jane loved snowflakes so during that amazing snow we had here in Oregon last year I pieced snowflakes and made Becky Jane's quilt.

This year the "joined at the heart" quilt will be going to my brother who I just absolutely adore and this will be his second actually. This one is made when mom was still alive. She had a vision of a quilt in her mind that was Feathered Star blocks in different blues, different sizes, all with a different center on a white background. She and I collected fabric for that quilt for probably a year. Then my mother was diagnosed with Macular Degeneration. Feathered Star is a really difficult block to make so I have all of her fabrics and I'm working on that quilt now and my brother will get it next year. This particular "joined at the heart" quilt will be a gift to my brother from my mother and I. That's going to be pretty wonderful. That will surprise him because he took mom out on many fabric gathering adventures. [both laugh.] This one will be pretty special. The other thing I do besides family and friends always is my way of giving back to the community is I design and make quilts to be raffled as a fundraiser for organizations that are real close to my heart. I've done them for--I seem to have become the official quilter for the United States Coast Guard which is quite an honor, and I've made three for different—well, three big ones. My first was for the Bering Sea Patrol and that particular quilt was juried into the American Quilters [Society.] show in Paducah, Kentucky, which was an incredible honor. All the funds that were raised from that quilt went to Coast Guard people who found themselves in financial difficulty through no fault of their own. Those were thousand dollar grants and that particular quilt raised $10,000.

CK: Wow.

BG: I'm so honored and pleased. I could no more write a check to somebody for that amount than fly, but I can make quilts, and then they sell raffle tickets on them and that's how they raise the money for those. I've done one for, I was asked to do one to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Northwest Passage and so I did "Cutters Around the Continent." That was just a couple of years ago. That one also raised $10,000 and those funds are going into making the Coast Guard Cutter Storis which was just decommissioned two years ago after being 70 years in active duty with the Coast Guard and that particular Coast Guard Cutter is going to become a Maritime and Coast Guard Museum up in Juneau, Alaska. Every two years there is a reunion of all of my husband's shipmates from the Coast Guard Cutter Winona and those guys are really dear to my heart, so every two years I make one as a fundraiser for them, for them to keep the reunion going. One that I did here, well it ended up being the year of September 11, so that was 2001 I believe. That one I did--it was a design that had to do to honor the fire department. It was just a fluke that I was working on that quilt when September 11 arrived. My husband ultimately retired from the Sandy Fire Department as their Fire Marshal and thermo-imaging cameras were brand new at that time and incredibly expensive especially for smaller fire departments. That one was totally had to do with the fire department. I designed a couple of firefighters that were in their turnouts, and I did them as silhouettes and I did fire flames background and that one was quite amazing for me to work on. That one--the lady that won that here in Sandy. After they did indeed raise enough to buy one thermo-imaging camera for our local fire department, she called me and she said, 'I can't keep this quilt because it doesn't belong in a bedroom in Sandy, Oregon.' And I asked her, 'What did she want me to do with it because I sure didn't want it back. I made it for the fire department to raise money.' She said, 'In view of September 11, I'd like it to live in New York.' I made a couple of phone calls and that particular quilt is now in the American Museum of Firefighters in Hudson, New York. I suspect that over the years since I've been quilting, because I do a big major fundraiser every year, I've done a couple for the DAR Chapter, for the Oregon Trail Chapter that I belong to, for their scholarship fund, and so we raise money for the scholarship fund that we have through the chapter and I did one for my high school that I graduated from which was in Canby, that particular one raised enough in the little town of Canby to give out five scholarships to graduating seniors. I suspect over the years I've probably--my quilts have raised about $60,000 to put back out in the community.

CK: That's marvelous.

BG: I am pleased with that. I'm really pleased with that.

CK: That must be a good feeling.

BG: Like I said, I could no more write checks for the amount the quilts raised and then fly, so it's my way of giving back.

CK: When you started doing this, how did you choose to whom you were going to offer these?

BG: It's always a smaller organization. It usually is in a smaller town like Sandy or Canby. The Coast Guard ones just seem to have taken off and I periodically get a call from. One year on the "Cutters Around the Continent" it was from [a colleague of.] the Commandant of the United States Coast Guard saying, 'Bonnie, is this our favorite Coast Guard quilter?' [laughs.]

CK: Your name is on the list.

BG: Yep, well I dropped everything. That was a pretty incredible honor. The rest of them I just pick. I just pick and then I ask them if they are interested in having a quilt to sell tickets on. They usually sell tickets on them for a period of about six months and all the funds go for; but I determine where those funds go. Like when I did it for the fire department I said, 'I want you guys to get a thermo-imaging camera.' When I did it for the DAR chapter, I said, 'Everything goes into the scholarship fund.' That's how I determine. Like I said, it's usually a smaller organization that they get lost in the shuffle from the big outfits.

CK: That's terrific. You haven't had time to enter any of the DAR American Heritage contests I take it.

BG: Nope. It seems like. Oh actually I did one year and hopefully I will this year. I hope to get the "joined at the heart" quilt for my brother done in time for this year's. The major quilts always go out. They end up going to somebody and they have a deadline. Like the "Cutters Around the Continent" celebration was in April and so they're gone before the deadline [both laugh.] for the American Heritage. This year I will see if I can remedy that.

CK: There you go, this will be a perfect year.

BG: Yeah, I think so.

CK: Tell me about the teaching of quilting. You mentioned that you'd done some.

BG: I do some teaching. I've put a lot of quilters out in the world. Mostly they are friends, my 11 year old neighbor and anybody who says that they can't do a quilt I just say, 'Well, do you have a sewing machine?' 'Yes.' 'Well, I want you to come over and pay me a visit because you're going to be pleasantly surprised.' So it's a pretty wonderful thing to be able to do that. I seem to have the patience of my grandmother and my mother, and I'm not an intimidating person. I tell them you can do anything. It's one seam at a time. Some quilts have more seams in them than others, and I want people to make a design that they've seen or a pattern. I usually have them use patterns because they need to learn how to read a pattern, but I tell them that I want them to pick a design they absolutely love because they'll finish it. I just don't say ever, 'Well, you're just beginning and I think maybe we need to do this simple yucky looking thing for your skills, because it is one seam at a time.' Some of them just take a little longer to do.

CK: What other advice do you give to a new quiltmaker?

BG: I tell them don't be scared and I tell them they can't goof up a quilt because if they do something, if they do something that let's say they've made some kind of a goof and they say, 'Oh my God I've screwed up this quilt.' I tell them, 'No you haven't. We're just going to redesign it. This one is just going to be one of your originals and we will just get you going on that from the get go. There is no way you can mess up a quilt.'

CK: You mentioned individuals dropping by, do you also teach classes away?

BG: I used to before my mom got sick. I used to teach all over the Pacific Northwest at different quilt shops down in Springfield and up in Washington, over at the Coast and in the local area. Yeah, I would teach classes and then my mom's health kind of went down the tubes a little bit and because I adored her and still do because I carry her in my heart always, I quit all of my teaching out and about so that I can spend time with my mom and also keep her quilting even with her Macular. I learned all these incredible ways to keep her quilting. Her designs of necessity because of her sight had to be simpler, but I found needles that she didn't have to thread because they had a little slot in the side and I would take fluorescent fingernail polish and I would get her two presser feet for her sewing machine and if she was working with darker fabrics then I would have glow in the dark lime green, I would paint the top of that presser foot so she could see it and if it was light fabrics I would do like glow in the dark fire engine red or some such thing and she could see that. It was just marvelous. We were able to quilt together until three months before she lost her battle to congestive heart failure.

CK: Forever more.

BG: Yeah, it was quite a remarkable thing that we were able to quilt for that long.

CK: Tell me about the quilt that you sleep under.

BG: The quilt that we sleep under oddly enough is a very simple quilt, at least the one that's on the bed currently. I wanted to make a quilt earlier this year as a matter of fact that looked like all of the scraps had come out of the bottom of grandma's quilt bag, her quilt scrap bag. It is--now let me think, I'm not even sure there is a name for the design. There are a lot of half square triangles and they're in country-ish colors, meaning fall homespun colors like my grandmother used to work with and well, I guess if there is a design name it's going to be--it's probably called Hourglass would be my guess. That one has a big all over central scrappy, very scrappy design that fits the top of the bed and then I have different borders that drop off the side of the bed. That would be the one that we're sleeping under currently. I've done--let's see I did a fall quilt actually that was, that one was an original design. I have a group of quilters that we get together every single year and we do what's called a Friendship Block Exchange and that means that the ones that this particular quilt are made of were fall leaf blocks that were popular in the 1800's and this group of 12 friends are from all across the country, and we all meet here in October and each lady makes 12 different blocks and they sign them and they put their city and state and the date and then we each have a block from each of the other ones and then we all design a different quilt out of those same blocks. I do those to keep that going because Friendship blocks were real popular during the days of the Oregon Trail when people were coming to Oregon from back east and because those covered wagons could not--they did not have the capacity to hold a whole bunch of quilts. That wasn't exactly right at the top of the list of priorities. At least as far as the husbands were concerned, so family and friends would make whoever the lady was that was leaving, they would make them. They would each make them a block and they would sign them and then they would finish the quilts when they arrived in the Oregon Territory and then they were surrounded and got to sleep under a blanket of the love of all of their friends and family. I mean it is such a historical thing, and we've been doing that for, gosh I don't know maybe eight or nine years now. That would be one of the quilts on the bed. Actually I think I've done two of them that are like that. The other one is snowflakes, so they are seasonal. I change the quilts out around here seasonally. Bets the heck out of moving furniture. I just change quilts.

CK: Do you have some that you are ready to get out for the holidays?

BG: Yes, I do I'm doing the family Christmas project this year is they are holiday fabrics actually and they are table runners and table toppers for everyone's dining room tables for the holidays with the exception of one for my nephew, Misha, and his wife-to-be, Katie I asked them to be really specific with me about what they would like in the way of quilting because I said, 'After all your Aunt Bonnie quilts and that's what everybody gets for Christmas.' [both laugh.] Bless his heart, two years ago Misha asked me, he said, 'Well Aunt Bonnie, now that I've graduated from college and I have my own apartment and I'm fully grown. Does that mean I get to graduate to the family quilt project list?' I just couldn't believe it. I could have just hugged him because first of all he was a guy and second of all he was a guy in his 20's and so it was kind of like graduating to the adult table at Thanksgiving when you're a little kid. [both laugh.] I said, 'You bet.' I said, 'Well, did you have anything specific in mind?' He said, 'Yeah, I love having friends over for dinner and I really would like to have one of your table toppers and those wonderful napkins that you make.' I said, 'Well, I have one more question.' He said, 'Blue and green.' [both laugh.] He knew what that next question was. This year, bless his heart, I asked he and Katie here not soon enough practically. I said, 'Did they have any specific thing in mind this year?' And they both said, "Yep, you have one over here on your quilt rack that we both just love.' And I said, 'Ah oh, so do you remember which one it was?' By golly, they went right to it and it was a Bargello quilt that I'd made to commemorate my mother's Chinese dinners over the years and they just loved it. Well, I'll tell you, Bargello, some of these pieces are like 7/8 inches wide and they are just itty-bitty things, but it's a technique that I love to do. It is just that I kind of recalled that one quilt I did for Mom took me about two months and here I'm asking them the first of November what it is they want for Christmas this year. I'm down to the borders now, hallelujah. They may not have it quilted in time for Christmas, but they will be able to see the design. That's kind of fun.

CK: What a treasure.

BG: Yeah, well I hope they like it. [laughs.] I said, 'Oh cripes, you guys are going for the art quilts.' I said, 'You do know those take a little longer than the traditional ones.' Anyway, that is okay. It gives me a warm heart that they're thrilled with it.

CK: I suppose that is what you find most pleasing about quilts too.

BG: I do. It's like you think of whomever you're making them for with great love every stitch of the way. I mean you have that person in mind and it's just wonderful and they know it when they get it that quilt was especially made for them. It does give me great joy. I did for this year's family reunion that Jim and I host here at the house in Sandy for all my Lippincott, my father's family, come and I'm fortunate enough to have still five aunts and uncles that are living on that side, which thankfully makes me feel not quite so much like an orphan with both of my parents gone now. Every year for the family reunion I do a big quilt, a napping size I guess I call it. The napping blanket and I only let my aunts and uncles put their name into the hat and I pull a name or have the youngest person at the reunion pull a name and that quilt goes home with that aunt or uncle. My Uncle Boyd won the last one and my Aunt Sharon won before then and my Aunt Rhodie bless her heart is 96 years old, so she called me about March and she said, 'Bonnie this is your Aunt Rhodie. Have you started that family reunion quilt yet?' And I said, 'Well no, I have clear till August.' Anyway she said, 'Well, I'm kind of figuring this out. I think my odds are improving.' Because if they won before they are not eligible at the next one. She said, 'So your Aunt Becky usually only comes to every other reunion.' She said, 'Your Uncle Boyd already won and your Aunt Sharon already won.' So she figures, 'I'm down to one in three now and I really want to win that quilt before I die.' And I thought, 'Oh my God. How am I going to do this?' I just shifted into high gear and I figured the only way I was going to do it was to make a quilt for each and every one of them for this year's reunion. I did. I made a total of six of them each specifically for that person. I needed to do six because their first cousin was coming out from Illinois, and it was the first time Tom had been able to join us for the family gathering. I call them my treasured generation and you know how things have to come out even both with little kids and with older kids. I mean older kids being in the 80s and 90s you see, so Aunt Rhodie did win that quilt before she died [note: Aunt Rhodie is still with us.]. Next year I tell you I still have five aunts and uncles left on my mother's side of the family and all of these people know one another so I guess, you know, I need to make five quilts for my other set of aunts and uncles in time for their reunion.

CK: Oh you do?

BG: Well, things need to come out even. [both laugh.] I mean either that or I don't dare send them a Christmas card telling them what I did for the Lippencott aunts and uncles they will lynch me.

CK: They certainly will.

BG: Maybe [laughs.] keeps me out of mischief.

CK: You've started on those already?

BG: No, I won't start on those until after Christmas and then I do the other thing that I do with quilts is, see I told you what I do is quilt. My mom and I started a program here in Sandy with husband Jim being in the fire department all those years and our neighbor being the police chief, I got those guys together and I said, 'Listen, Mom and I want you permission to do a trial of this and we want to make quilts for kids in this area whose world has been flipped upside down for whatever reason.' And I want them to be given out by the police department and the fire department and our chaplain, who was the chaplain for both and by definition fire department and police law enforcement officers are usually these big macho men and I thought you know quilts, they are not going to be too excited about that and they said, 'Lets do it on a trial.' Well, Mom and I both decided when we started this project that we called "Village Kids" because Sandy is kind of a village, that there would be no yucky quilts for kids, that these quilts were going to be really special like my grandmothers made for me. They were not going to be just thrown together. They needed to be special gifts for kids of all ages in this community. We started that and do you know that was probably--well Mom has been gone for six years now and we started that I believe about two years before she passed away. The first year I told the guys I was going to wait until we had a goodly inventory to deliver to the police and fire department. Mom and I between us made 100 quilts and then the week before they were delivered to the police and fire department I checked with all the merchants here in town and they all displayed them in their windows because you know how Sandy is set up. The highway heads toward the mountain one way, and then it comes back toward town the other way and so these were displayed in the library, at the veterinarian offices. There were kids' quilts, bright wonderful fun things displayed for an entire week and then we delivered them to the police and fire departments, and Mom and I made them together the first couple of years. I had her for a couple of years before she traveled on ahead and since then I've made like 400 quilts for the community.

CK: My goodness.

BG: Those I just have a ball doing because it is like wrapping kids in hugs and police carry them in their patrol cars and the fire department carries them on their rigs. One of the firefighters was concerned that, like at the scene of a car accident somebody might think that they were just pulling out some old blanket from the back of the fire truck for the kids so our local cleaners stepped up, and they shrink wrap each and every one of them so they can present these as gifts. They can open them up there and they are there for the kids. I still get phone calls from little kids and older kids, the teenagers. I do them all the way from infant to about 21 years old.

And, they are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing. They calm the kids down, that calms the parents down, and that allows fire employees to do what they need to do.

CK: It is time that we stop now. I sure want to thank you for letting me interview you today. You're an amazing person.

BG: Well bless your heart.

CK: This was so exciting.

BG: Thank you, thank you, it has been an honor.

CK: You've touched many people with your quilting I can tell.

BG: One can only hope.

CK: You take care now.

BG: You do the same and I will be in touch with you.

[the interview concluded at 11:40 a.m.]