A lifetime of memories in stitches
CAVE SPRING – Lorraine Wheeler keeps her life’s memories in stitches.
The Cave Spring resident has recorded her years of volunteering for the Bent Mountain First Aid Crew and the Cave Spring Rescue Squad Auxiliary in quilts she pieced and appliqued, then got several church quilting guilds to quilt.
Lorraine and Arnold Wheeler hold up the top layers of almost a dozen "Trip Around the World" quilts she pieced and appliqued. The top ones she made as a scrapbook of her memories from 32 years with the Cave Spring Rescue Squad Auxiliary, and as a life member and EMT with the Bent Mountain First Aid Crew. Photo by Meg Hibbert
All combined, she has about half a century of volunteering for the first-responder organizations she has loved.
Earlier in December, she presented a quilt of her memories to the Cave Spring Fire Auxiliary. She hopes it can be displayed somewhere in the crew hall. The following week, on Dec. 11, she and her husband Arnold, an honorary member of the Cave Spring squad, attended the Bent Mountain crew’s annual dinner, and took the quilt she made depicting their connection with that volunteer organization.
Wheeler is a proud life member of the Bent Mountain First Aid Crew, and perhaps even prouder of her 32 years with the Cave Spring Rescue Squad Auxiliary.
And even though it hurt her to do it, she cut up patches off her jacket and appliqued them onto that quilt, along with her Emergency Medical Technician patch and smaller appliques of fire and rescue equipment.
“I was the EMT for Station 8,” she said, modestly.
For years and years, she took an active part in the Cave Spring auxiliary until Arnold had a serious accident with a ladder a year ago, and she injured her back lifting a wagon wheel at the couple’s home.
They also square danced since 1988 as active members of the Star City Promenaders. They have closets filled with square dance outfits and ribbons that are reminders of those happy square dance convention trips all over the world.
Before Wheeler presented her quilt to the Cave Spring Rescue Squad and gave others for Christmas gifts, the bed in the couple’s bedroom was stacked with colorful pieced quilts, each in a variation of a “Trip Around the World” pattern. They are made up of hundreds of pieces of flowered, checked and plaid material interspersed with solids to set off the queen-size diamond pattern.
The name of the pattern is particularly appropriate, because of all the places she and Arnold traveled.
Wheeler explained how she started each quilt: “I started from the center and worked down. I sewed the squares together on my Singer sewing machine, while Arnold watched television downstairs.”
“Five of these were quilted by the Green Hill Church of the Brethren ladies in Salem,” she pointed out. “I’ve got 10 quilt tops. We started getting these finished two years ago,” Wheeler added.
Another quilt she made for their granddaughter, Kimberly Grubb, 26, who lives in Arlington, features wildflower panels Wheeler cross-stitched, then pieced together with a sky blue.
She pieced together dozens and dozens of the many ribbons from square dance conventions they attended just about every month, and created a skirt for herself, a vest for Arnold and a tie to go with it.
“The only thing about these is you can’t wash them,” she added, laughing.
