Combat vets receive Quilts of Valor

By Michael Armstrong • February 6, 2018 9:20 pm
Jay Greene, second from left, and Andrew Hodnik, second from right, on Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2018, hold up Quilts of Valor given to them and made by Dana Moore, far left, and Connie Isenhour, far right. The quilts are a project of Faith Friday Friends, a group at Faith Lutheran Church. Under the national program volutneers make quilts to honor service members and veterans touched by war. Green flew 196 combat missions in Vietnam as a U.S. Navy pilot from 1967-68 and Hodnik served in the U.S. Army as a combat engineer from 1989-93, including tours in Operation Desert Storm and Somalia. In the middle is Hodnik’s mother, Dr. Vicky Hodnik. The quilts were presented at Hodnik’s dental office in Homer, Alaska. (Photo by Michael Armstrong, Homer News)
Jay Greene, second from left, and Andrew Hodnik, second from right, on Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2018, hold up Quilts of Valor given to them and made by Dana Moore, far left, and Connie Isenhour, far right. The quilts are a project of Faith Friday Friends, a group at Faith Lutheran Church. Under the national program volutneers make quilts to honor service members and veterans touched by war. Green flew 196 combat missions in Vietnam as a U.S. Navy pilot from 1967-68 and Hodnik served in the U.S. Army as a combat engineer from 1989-93, including tours in Operation Desert Storm and Somalia. In the middle is Hodnik’s mother, Dr. Vicky Hodnik. The quilts were presented at Hodnik’s dental office in Homer, Alaska. (Photo by Michael Armstrong, Homer News)

Two combat veterans received Quilts of Valor in a presentation on Tuesday, Feb. 6, at Dr. Vicky Hodnik’s dental office. Quilters Dana Moore and Connie Isenhour gave Jay Greene of Halibut Cove and Andrew Hodnik the quilts.

“We appreciate everything you have done,” Isenhour said. “… A Quilt of Valor is the highest award a civilian can give a veteran.”

Isenhour pieced the fabric and Moore quilted it as part of Faith Friday Friends, a group at Faith Lutheran Church. Under the national program volutneers make quilts to honor service members and veterans touched by war. The Quilts of Valor program was started in 2003 by a Blue Star mother, Catherine Roberts, and is now a national foundation that makes and gives quilts to service members and veterans touched by war. Isenhour said more than 200,000 quilts have been given.

During the Vietnam War, Greene, 77, flew 196 combat missions with the U.S. Navy in an A-4 Skyhawk, serving two tours in 1967 and 1968 on the USS Enterprise. Hodnik, 48, served from 1989-93 in the U.S. Army as a combat engineer, with combat deployments in Operation Desert Storm and Somalia. Isenhour also is a veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard, and served in Ketchikan from 1980-84. Hodnik’s mother, Dr. Vicky Hodnik, attended the presentation, held at her dental clinic.