Oregon Public Broadcasting

4651 American soldiers have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 106 of them have ties to Oregon.

The most recent Oregon casualty was Jessica Ellis, of Baker City, who died May 11th in Baghdad. To honor her, and the 109 other female soldiers killed, a group of women in eastern Oregon unveiled a quilt they made together. Ethan Lindsey reports from Moro.

In the 337-person city of Moro, U.S. Highway 97 doubles as Main Street. And this week, the street was lined with American flags fluttering in the wind as semi-trucks rumbled by.

Even though it's the start of harvest season here, the most active place in town is 'Lisa's in Stiches' fabric store. Here, more than 30 women unveiled what has become the city's magnum opus - a large quilt  sewn as a tribute to the American women who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Most credit the efforts of Donna Birtwistle. She's a Moro resident and veteran of the first Gulf War, where she served in Kuwait.

Donna Birtwistle: “It used to be, long time ago, that a woman only got her name in the newspaper three times: when she was born, when she got married, and when she died. And so, in a way, I decided that we were going to change that.”

Birtwistle says she was at a women's veterans conference in Pendleton in April when she was, in her words, “appalled” to find out that more than a hundred women had died in the wars.

She says the media hasn't  paid enough attention to that sacrifice -- or to the new role women play on the battlefield.

Birtwistle returned to Moro on a mission. She enlisted almost 30 members of the local quilting club to help her design and sew a monument of fabric.

As Birtwistle says, they quickly became a tight-knit unit, “marching down the street with cutters, scissors, and 10 yards of fabric trailing behind.”

Quilting here in Moro is an institution -- some of these women come from across the border in Washington to get together and sew every other Tuesday.

They've been doing it for 9 straight years - and say they've only missed three meetings - due to bad weather.

Quilter Carol McKenzie says as they sew, they talk.

Carol McKenzie: “I think we talked about just the sacrifices these women made, and their families. And a lot of it was irritation because we weren't getting it together quite right. It's a pattern, it's a peace star, and I thought I had it laying correctly and I sewed my three blocks together and Oh No! I had to unsew them, I hate that. It was a labor of love, but it was very frustrating.”

Over the past two months, the women met every week, bringing their sewing machines every week and crowding around the tables in back.

As the quilt was unveiled, the 107 names embroidered on white fabric strips seemed hauntingly familiar - like the names on the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington.

Jeanean Warner has two grandsons who served in Iraq. She 'thanks god' they returned alive, and says she thought about them and the women soldiers with every stitch.

Jeanean Warner: “The names. I think about the names. Because, it is such a sacrifice that they gave and this is such a small way of honoring them. It touches my heart.”

The quilt's red, white, and blue stripes frame twelve squares filled with  stars, poems and symbols.

But as the quilt took shape - one question hung in the air, says Donna Birtwistle.

Donna Birtwistle: “And we discussed it. And we said, you know, this is not our quilt. This quilt will not be put on a bed. And it will not keep anybody warm. But we need to do something with it. We need to have a ceremony and we need to turn it over to the military.”

Eventually, after a lot of phone calls and convincing, Birtwistle says she found it a home.

In September, 20 of the women will travel to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia to present the quilt.