The 16 high school students working on patches for a memorial quilt kept a protective eye on one another, vigilant for welling eyes or quavering voices.
They say “I love you” to one another, more often than most high school kids do. They say that far more often than they did before Sept. 27, when a gunman walked into their Platte Canyon High School honors English class. In the aftermath of the siege, which left classmate Emily Keyes and the gunman dead, the students formed a discernible, almost tribal unity.
“I know these people better, much better, than I ever did when they were just my classmates,” said junior Chelsea Wilson.
Wilson and her classmates, including the six surviving hostages, gathered to sew the patches for a vast quilt that eventually will hang in the Bailey high school hall.
The quilt is the brainchild of their teacher, Sandra Smith, who was with them that day. With the students’ enthusiastic support, Smith and the six former hostages conceived a design for the quilt that the group began sewing Tuesday at the Great American Quilt Factory.
Students and adults describe the quilt as “healing,” a way to patch together a lasting memorial, just as they’re piecing their lives together again. “This takes something unimaginably horrible and makes something beautiful from it,” said Smith.
Experienced quilters, recruited by store co-owners Nancy Smith and Lynda Milligan, were ready when the school bus from Bailey pulled up.
Some students sat at sewing machines, slowly gaining confidence as they guided the stitches. Others, such as Jaime Todd, stood by to cut and press the patches.
Most of the students were sewing novices, lured by the appeal of forging something vital from the horrific experience.
The finished quilt, measuring about 90 inches by 120 inches, will feature the name “Emily” in a pink heart surrounded by her parents’ and brother’s names and a sunburst above an appliquéd portrait of the school, and framed with signatures of the faculty and students.
“I want people to remember that one of my classmates died,” said senior Mica Mulcahy, “and that she was important in our lives, and in a lot of lives in our community. That she was someone who had a ripple effect.”
By early afternoon, when it was time for the bus ride back to Bailey, the group had finished most of the patches. Store staffers will finish the quilt, which will be installed later this spring.
This story has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to a reporting error, it misspelled two names. The teacher’s name is Sandra Smith and the co-owner of the Great American Quilt Factory is Lynda Milligan.
