Threads of Love Quilt Squares

Doug Clark

To our precious son and brother –
We love you so very much and always will. May you be in peace with God.

Matt Carr

Matt was fun loving and full of life! His relationship with God was highly expressed through his lifestyle and the people he touched along the way. The prayer poem on this quilt was written by Matt himself. It was discovered a couple of months after his passing. It has touched many people in many, many different ways. Matt was a tissue donor and helped 200+ people. This prayer poem explains his personal relationship with God and how his main goal in life was to touch the lives of others...and he did just that! His life will live on forever through his memories, dreams, family & friends. We love & miss you Matt!!

Lindsay Jones

My quilt square was made with love for my daughter, Lindsay Alyce Jones.

The background is from a pair of Lindsay's scrubs that she hoped to wear after completing a degree in nursing. Her picture is sewn onto her favorite pair of Express Jeans and the 17 hearts reflect Lindsay's 17 years of life on this earth. Each heart has a special trinket of hers such as the Carnival Cruise ship pin that was from our cruise on Lindsay's 16th birthday, a fake diamond - she was all about jewels!! I also included her favorite store - Express and her love of her Tiffany heart bracelet. Lindsay died on her 10th day of her senior year of high school at Dublin Scioto, so I also included that on her quilt square. Lindsay's step mom, and her two little sisters, also helped create this special memento to honor our precious Lindsay.

Kathy Harrington, Lindsay's mom

Roger Lee (Bud) Leugers, II

4/16/84-9/26/02

Bud was in a bad accident September 25, 2002. He was unconscious when they arrived at the scene. They had to put him on life support and life-flighted him to St. Rita’s Trauma Center. When we arrived at the hospital the doctor told us he had a lot of swelling of the brain and he was in a coma. When we finally got in to see him in was in ICU. They need to get him to surgery due to internal bleeding. He was in surgery for four hours to remove his spleen, repair tendons in his left hand and a fracture to his right ankle. Later that evening, his blood pressure went sky high, and they told us his brain was starting to die at the brain stem and that he would be gone in a couple of hours. We stayed at his bedside and prayed to God for a miracle that our son would pull through this.

On September 26, 2002, they told us they needed to do an EKG to see if there was any brain function. After the test the told us he was legally brain dead. At that point, we decided to donate his organs since he was a healthy and strong young man. Then we found out he also wanted to be an organ donor too. We stayed by his side until they found matches for his organs. He was able to donate his BIG GOLDEN heart, a lung, pancreas, kidneys, liver and both eyes. He could not donate tissues and a lung due to the trauma.

Bud was always a good boy. He was shy until he got to know a person. He loved to pick and tease. I remember when he was about four years old, he was a little farm boy. He loved to spit. I would tell him not to spit and he would say, “Mommy, boys spit, not girls.” His older sisters, Pammy and Jenny, always picked on him when he as little and he would get mad and cry. I told them someday he would grow up to be bigger than them. And he did. He stood six feet tall and weighed 175, and was rock solid. Everyone that met him would always comment on his beautiful smile and how polite he was.

His dad was a dog racer when I met him, but he quit. When Bud was ten years old, his dad took him to a race and he was hooked. He has his room full of plaques that he won at the races. In 1996, he was awarded with “Sportsman of the Year.” That made him a very proud young man. He and his dad went to the races just about every weekend through spring and fall. They were best friends.

He liked to play sports. At the age of four, he began to play t-ball. In middle school, he started playing basketball and football. When he turned sixteen, he got his license and found out he enjoyed to work. His first job was roofing. He roofed all summer.

He and his dad got matching trucks. The only difference was the color. Bud’s truck was a white sports truck he called his “chick magnet” and his dad’s truck was black and he called it a “grampy truck.” He loved his truck and he would wash, wax and polish it every chance he got.

His last two years in high school he went to JVS to be an electrician. He just enjoyed doing that on the side for different people. After he graduated, he went to work building silos out of state. But every weekend he would drive home to spend time with is family and friends. Finally, he got hired at his dream job, a construction worker at a big farm in our area. Ten days later, he had his wreck on the way to work early that morning in the truck he loved so much.

I never thought I could go on living if I lost one of my babies, but I just kept thinking he is in heaven with BIG angel wings. He was the best son any parent could have dreamed of having. I just think of the “Gift of Life” that he gave to the six recipients out there that got a second chance at life, and it makes us very proud of him for being such the giving young man that he is. I am so glad that he gave the “Gift of Life” so those families out there don’t have to stand in our shoes and can live healthy lives. He always wanted us to be proud, and even after death, we are very proud of him.

Or dream is to meet each and every one of the recipients that he gave the “Gift of Life” to, but most of all, the recipient who received that big golden heart of his. But just remember each and every one of you is always in our thoughts and prayers.

He had four nephews, a niece and a godson, and we will always keep his memories alive so they will think he didn’t leave us when they were so little.

Some days it seems like a nightmare and I will wake up and he will be home. Then I know that’s not true because of the empty feeling I have in my heart. The day I get to heaven, I hope my son will be waiting for me at the golden gate. Until that day, I will always hold him in my heart and I will keep his memories alive.

Missing that wonderful, loving guy with a beautiful smile.