Storm Lake Pilot Tribune: Community News: Stitches of Comfort (08/30/10)

For many people, September 11 will come and go with barely a notice; or perhaps a passing moment's reflection on a tragedy that has long since slipped into the fabric of the nation's historical memory.

Not so for Betty Nielsen and her Freedom Quilters volunteers. For them, 9-11 lives - and dies - as vividly as if it were yesterday. The red squares of fabric they sew until their fingers are numb is a reminder of the blood still being spilled over the threat of terrorism in countries far away - and from within.

Nielsen and crew recently completed the 6,800th quilt they have made, and marked the occasion with a journey to Oklahoma City, where the modern consciousness of terrorism was born in a terrible blast that killed 168 people 15 years ago.

Nielsen had always wanted to visit the memorial for the tragedy, but has been much too busy keeping up with demand making quilts for families of terrorism and other tragedies, and the loved ones of lost American soldiers. This season she had just finished up a quilt for the mother of a soldier who lost his life in Iraq, when the helicopter which he served as a gunner crashed during manuevers. The family lives very close to the Murrah Federal Building that was destroyed in the militant bombing, and Betty and her husband decided the 6,800th quilt should be delivered to her first-hand. Nielsen took five of her sewing volunteers along.

"It was really touching. This woman had lost her son in 2004, but the way she told the story was as if it happened just yesterday."

Read more of this story in the August 28 Pilot Tribune.