11/11/2025
Happy Veterans Day to all our service men and women! Thank you for your service, sacrifice, honor, bravery and courage.
During the fair we have the honor of presenting service men or women with a "Quilt of Valor"
We have numerous Madison County 4-H members and volunteers that help piece the quilts together throughout the year and then have them quilted by Sandra Goode with Quilts and Cows from Norfolk. The Madison County 4-H Council presents the quilts at the fair on Thursday evening, right before the rodeo.
The mission of the Quilts of Valor Foundation is to cover service members and veterans touched by war with comforting and healing Quilts of Valor.
A Quilt of Valor is not a charity quilt. A Quilt of Valor is not a blanket. If you are a quilter, you know that a quilt consists of three layers held together by its quilting stitches. We like to think of the layers in this way:
• The top of the quilt with its many colors, shapes, and fabrics represents the communities and the many individuals within the United States.
• The batting is the center and warmth of the quilt. It represents our hope that this quilt will bring warmth, comfort, peace, and healing to the individual who receives it.
• The backing is the strength that supports the other layers. It represents the strength of the recipient, the support of his or her family, our communities, and our nation.
• Each stitch that holds the layers together represents love, gratitude, and sometimes tears.
The Quilts of Valor Foundation is a national organization founded in 2003 by Catherine Roberts, whose son was deployed in Iraq. Catherine says she felt “ten seconds away from panic” as her son faced danger every day as a gunner on a Humvee. One night Catherine dreamed of a post-deployment warrior struggling with his war demons at two o’clock in the morning. She saw him sitting on the side of his bed, wrapped in a quilt. The quilt comforted him and fended off the “war demons” that troubled him. From this vision, the Quilts of Valor Foundation began.
