The West Virginia chapter of the Quilts of Valor foundation awarded 30 military veterans with handmade quilts. Tuesday on the Memorial Student Cen-ter plaza.Quilts of Valor was founded in 2003, according to the orga-nization website. The mission of the foundation is to cover service members and veterans with comforting and healing quilts. The son of founder Cath-erine Reynolds suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) upon returning from Iraq, so she made him a quilt to calm his mind. Reynolds said the quilt helped “ward off his war demons,” so well, in fact, that she decided to provide his entire unit with quilts. Each quilt given out Tuesday was handmade by volunteers. The ceremony included war veterans and soldiers from the Korean War, Vietnam, Afghani-stan and Iraq. Each person recognized came forward as the quilters placed them over the veteran’s shoulders.Combat veteran Tommy Reynolds, director of military and veterans affairs, received the final quilt of the ceremony and said he did not even know if he felt worthy to receive the honor alongside the other veterans.“Each and every one of these veterans who got a quilt today really deserved it for their ser-vice,” Reynolds said. “Hopefully, wwe can make Marshall’s campus the most mili-tary-friendly campus in the nation.” David Moske, a Marshall University student who served in the Army six years, said the ceremony re-ally showed how this area honors its veterans. “This was a good step for Marshall,” Mo-ske said. “It’s an even bet-ter step for veterans. The ac-ceptance of the com-munity of vet-erans here is great. A lot of other places, you do not get that.”Volunteer with Quilts of Valor and president of Home of the Brave quilting project Mari-beth Shreve helped “We starting cutting out the fabric in February 2014,” Shreve said. “We have been working all year, through nu-merous setbacks, to complete all the quilts on time. Every-thing just seemed to work out through God’s help that we could finish every single quilt and pray over them before giv-ing them out today.”Shreve also said a child drew each quilt square, and they sewed them together to form complete quilts.“Some of the things that the children wrote were just un-real,” Shreve said. “They wrote encouraging words to the vet-erans and really blew us away. They made the entire project a success.”

Kelly Pate can be contacted at [email protected].