I Am a Patchwork Quilt

By Ana Maria Ward

I am a Patchwork Quilt is a compilation of writings of the nouns (names of people, places and things) that touched the life of the author, Ana Maria Ward, formerly an English teacher. While writing her first novel, a biography about her father, Gordon F. Ward, Uncommon Survivor: from Sand to Bronze, the author became inspired with the idea to write about those people who touched her life in the places where she lived from her birth to the present. Although her father was ill, he read some of the first chapters, or patches, and encouraged her to continue with her theme during the final days of his life. He approved the concept of the author as the quilt made up of patches representing everyone involved in her life. Some of them were linked to him.
Determined to please her father, the author wanted I am a Patchwork Quilt to be an uplifting experience for her readers. Related to the degrees of separation, each person or patch has a unique relationship to the author and as in life, some with seriousness and some with humor.
In reality, every person is unique and relationships are unique. The patches in I Am a Patchwork Quilt are connected to the reader in various amusing ways. The reader may laugh, the reader may cry, but the reader will be moved to find that around the world people will feel warm when magically involved in the blanket of love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781465349002

Book preview

Contents

Patch One: The Ward Quilt

Patch Two: The Rodriguez Quilt

Patch Three: Syracuse, New York

Patch Four: Carmen Rodriguez Ward

Patch Five: Gordon F. Ward

Patch Six: Frederick Ward

Patch Seven: Cheryl Bell Collver

Patch Eight: Miami, Florida

Patch Nine: Guantánamo Bay, Cuba

Patch Ten: Pola Smillie Baker

Patch Eleven: Milagros Giacosa

Patch Twelve: Panama, Canal Zone

Patch Thirteen: Gordon R. Ward

Patch Fourteen: Oklahoma

Patch Fifteen: Maryland

Patch Sixteen: Middle School and High School

Patch Seventeen: Okinawa

Patch Eighteen: Sara Diana Ross-Trimmer

Patch Nineteen: Colleges/Education

Patch Twenty: Baltimore, Maryland

Patch Twenty-One: Kellie Ana Ross Carpen

Patch Twenty-Two: Jessica Leigh Pyfrin

Patch Twenty-Three: West Palm Beach, Florida

Patch Twenty-Four: Lois Jones-Duke

Patch Twenty-Five: Birth of Karaoke

Patch Twenty-Six: Paloma Blanco de Thomas

Patch Twenty-Seven: Mary Lawrence Laurie Neilson Baker

Patch Twenty-Eight: Susan J. Warren

Patch Twenty-Nine: Sergio’s Place

Patch Thirty: Luisa Rose Blinkie Castillo Sleeman

Patch Thirty-One: Ken Sleeman

Patch Thirty-Two: George Raymond Hardman

Patch Thirty-Three: Arlene Jaye

Patch Thirty-Four: Joanne Sampier

Patch Thirty-Five: Margaret Peggy Isaacs

Patch Thirty-Six: Bridget Turow

Patch Thirty-Seven: Paul Richard Gunther, Retired Navy Corpsman

Patch Thirty-Eight: Mahmood Hamid Bhatti, Friend in Pakistan

Patch Thirty-Nine: Jim Onder

Patch Forty China: Gourmet

Patch Forty-One :A Work in Progress

To read Ana Maria Ward’s I am a Patchwork Quilt is to hear the happy echoes of childhood and feel your parents’ hugs all the way from heaven. I loved it!

—D. P. Costello,

author of The Rag Tree: A Novel of Ireland

Once again, Ana Maria Ward has hit the bull’s eye in her second book, I am a Patchwork Quilt. Her great dedication to family and history brings home the importance of remembering and sharing what is important—stories, pictures, music, and family, and their effect on our lives. So many times I wish that I could go back in time and ask questions of my grandmother. If only she had a been a writer, too, like Ana. And don’t forget to get a copy of her first book, Uncommon Survivor.

—Anne Brentar,

author of Coffee with Anne and

Find the Key to your Success

Ana Maria Ward has put together a beautiful quilt of a book, a book that is a loving reflection on what is obviously a wonderful family and a wonderful life. She writes with her heart as well as her pen, and the result will warm the hearts of her readers. It is always a pleasure to read passages which are as well crafted as Ana’s, and then turn to a family album of pictures which beautifully augment those passages. For me, a highlight of the book is a succession of thoughtfully selected poems and lyrics which complement Ana’s patches. I hadn’t thought about ‘when the deep purple falls’ in years. Thanks for the memory! This is a quilt which is guaranteed to keep you warm.

—Robert W. (Bob) Gregg,

author of the Crooked Lake Mysteries

To my loving Dad, Gordon F. Ward,

who inspired me and continues to inspire me.

His love was his eternal gift to me and with

this gift I write with him forever in my heart. It was a

quilt (Quilt of Valor) that was given to him on his

last Father’s Day that gave me the idea for this book.

He read the beginning. He approved.

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Acknowledgments

I am extremely grateful to my busy brother, Frederick Ward, who helped me endlessly even with his time constraints. I appreciate all the patches in my book and realize there are some great people who may not be mentioned even though I am connected to and love them nonetheless. I thank Emily Shepard, a friend and an avid reader who read parts of I Am a Patchwork Quilt objectively to let me know it was a good read. I also have to thank my roommate, Sean McGovern, for putting up with me and my bad housekeeping. I would be lost without my dog Corazon, and maybe only dog lovers understand. Special thanks go to my cousins Cheryl Bell Collver, Milagros Giacosa Chapital and Paloma Blanco de Thomas, as well as friends Justine Cowan and Jim Onder for their encouraging help and support in so many different ways. My heart goes to Kathleen Cobbler for loving my mother and taking care of her as much as she does.

Always in my heart are our troops, past and present, and their families and those who support them.

I thank God for everything that allows me to be me and you to be you.

I Am a Patchwork Quilt

I am a patchwork quilt. I am a work of art comprised of many scraps of fabric of different designs and geometric figures — real, creative, and elegant. In the beginning, the fabrics available to me were not of my choosing, yet I accepted what I was given with compliant innocence. They remain permanently attached to me with the secured threads of a lifetime. More recently, I’ve used fabrics that I have selectively applied to my own sturdy blanket made up of patches. This composition displays me.

The useful and colorful concept has been around since the beginning of time. Quilts were discovered in ancient Egyptian tombs and in China thousands of years ago. In the Dark Ages, quilts were used in armor for both warmth and extra protection. Pilgrims had the same intention — warmth. The Great Depression that led to World War II popularized the custom until the war and the Depression ended. During the bicentennial, the early American tradition resurged more for nostalgia than necessity. Today, there are quilting bees, where people gather collectively to make the colorful cloth coverings with which to honor someone from the past or present.

In some circles, leftover scraps of fabrics were saved, shared, and often treasured with sentimental value since the fabrics may have been used for baptisms, birthdays, or weddings. Smaller pieces of fabric were combined to make geometric designs. While an individual piece in a patchwork quilt holds its own worth, patches sewn together have been durable masterpieces.

My patches are equally special. They are incomparable and designed to fit exactly where they are sewn. They are loud, and they are silent. They are bright, and they are faded. They are hard, and they are soft. They are the patches that have held me together since I began to exist. They are permanently sewn to me until I cease to exist. Some of the individual patches are the right fit, the right shape, the right size, and the right mold to be attached to another quilt. My compilation of patches is what makes me unique. On their own, they have their own beauty to behold and their own voice to be heard. I reflect them.

My coat of many colors

That my momma made for me

Made only from rags

But I wore it so proudly

Although we had no money

I was rich as I could be

Made just for me

A Coat of Many Colors

Dolly Parton, autobiographical song

1971

Patch One

The Ward Quilt

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Where have all the graveyards gone, long time passing?

Where have all the graveyards gone, long time ago?

Where have all the graveyards gone?

Gone to flowers, everyone.Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

First three verses by Pete Seeger, 1950

Remainder by Joe Hickerson, 1960

The Kingston Trio, 1961

Peter, Paul, and Mary, 1962

Patch Two

The Rodriguez Quilt

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Eres Tú

Music and lyrics by Juan Carlos Calderon

Performed by Mocedades

Spain, 1973

Patch Three

Syracuse, New York

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W hat became my hometown for a very short period of time, Syracuse, New York, where my parents lived, is where my quilt and I were born. A severe snowstorm on January 25, 1949, welcomed me at birth. Although they could have named me Frosty, my mother and father thought Ana Maria had more appeal. Since most Americans spell Anna with two N s, I have been known to tell people that my parents couldn’t afford the second N .

My brother Freddy, who I called Fway when I learned to speak, beat me in birth by two years and a few months. After that, he just beat me. No, he didn’t actually beat me since our conscientious parents would not have allowed any kind of childhood violence.

I guess I didn’t want to build snowmen, live in igloos, ice-skate, or ski, so I mentally dominated my parents with some form of influential ESP to move down to the Deep South, the Sunshine State, Florida, within months of my birth. I don’t know why my memory doesn’t serve me well in these two states, but it doesn’t. It could be my embryonic mind was hindering me during these years.

Being the baby for almost eleven years after my birth had advantages and disadvantages. Freddy had special big brother privileges, and I had none. On the other hand, I got more protection. Our nuclear family may have been considered ideal because we had love, we had comfort, and we had security. We managed to move a few times before my younger brother joined us.

I had no idea what a magnificent quilt was being fabricated, and little did I know what a tender impact my family and early patches were going to have on my life. I had so much to learn as my patches began to accumulate.

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When the moon is in the seventh house

And Jupiter aligns with Mars

Then peace will guide the planets

And love will steer the stars

This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius

Aquarius

From Hair

Written by:

Gerome Ragni, James Rado, and Galt MacDermot

1979

A little bird told me that you love me

And I believe that you do

A little bird told me we’d be happy

And now I know that it’s true

A Little Bird Told Me

Written by Harvey O. Brooks, 1947

Number one hit in 1949, sung by Evelyn Knight

Patch Four

Carmen Rodriguez Ward

T he first contact with the threads of my life happened to be my mother. This was followed by meeting my daddy followed by my older brother, Freddy. They are each one of my earliest patches that were here before me and, as I can acknowledge, all very different.

My mother, a beautiful Spanish woman that my father met in Cuba, had the family beauty shared with her three sisters and a brother. My grandfather decided to leave Spain when Franco took over because he wanted to protect his family from the politics evolving. He didn’t live long enough to know what took place in Cuba with the Castro regime. My mother’s family has an interesting history, which adapts into my quilt snugly. I met my grandfather, who loved me and I loved him back, but only for about three years. I did not lose my angelic and influential grandmother until I turned thirteen, so I knew and loved her more than anyone else besides my immediate family.

Although our family moved more times than most people who are not in the military, Mom stood as a stronghold and a pillar of strength. She wanted all of us to be happy and over-nurtured us to the point that we could eat anything we wanted, provided it was healthy — junk food not being allowed. We were not allowed to drink sodas unless it was a special occasion. This may be hard to believe, but Mom raised us on filet mignon. They were thinly sliced but nonetheless filets. I used to be thin too.