Since Hurricane Helene struck Western North Carolina in September 2024, people have come together in myriad ways to help with recovery and healing in the aftermath of the disaster.
About 30 members of Let’s Sew, MadCo! responded stitch by stitch with the creation of three memory quilts that pay tribute to and capture the spirit of two young brothers who tragically perished in Helene. Founder Karen Governo Ingraham began a Facebook group for Let’s Sew, MadCo! in August 2023, and there are now close to 600 members in that online community. Meetings of the group remain intimate in number, however. “Apparently, the community is interested in our community service efforts as well as our teaching sewing,” Ingraham says.
Mountain Breeze Preschool director Rachel Maietta, who had taught the boys at her Madison County preschool and kept in touch with the family through the years, had the idea of creating memory quilts for their father and grandparents as tributes to 9-year-old Felix and 7-year-old Lucas Wisely. The two brothers, their mother Alison Wisely and her fiancé Knox Petrucci all lost their lives during Helene as they tried to evacuate from their home in Green Mountain, a community along the Toe River in Yancey County.
Maietta had made a memory blanket from parts of her own children’s clothing and says she shared that idea with Felix and Lucas’ father Lance Wisely. Sometime in the spring, Wisely gave her a box of T-shirts, pajamas and other clothes of the boys’ that were his sons’ favorites and had special meaning to him…