Quilters bring their hobby to Richey Elementary

By Michele Miller, Times Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Jerry and Rhonda Legan, both 71, show a quilt during a presentation last week at Richey Elementary School. The quilt features pictures of the family’s ancestors, as well as the couple’s daughter, Bonnie Burgess, who is a fifth-grade teacher at the school.

It starts with a ball of cotton — the kind grown in the fields Jerry and Rhonda Legan pass on their long trek from Kankakee County in Illinois to Pasco County each year.

It's a trip well-worth making for the avid quilters, who come to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with their daughter, Bonnie Burgess, and her family. As tradition would have it, they also make a special jaunt to Richey Elementary School each year where Burgess teaches fifth grade.

That's when the quilts come out, about 40 by this year's count, that have been made over time by the couple, who are members of the Quiltmakers of Kankakee. It was Rhonda Legan, a master gardener coordinator for the University of Illinois Extension — Kankakee County, who got the quilting gig started about seven years ago. Jerry Legan, who retired as a state engineer in Illinois, came on board about a year later after his wife told him there was no way he could sew a quilt.

Turns out he can, as evidenced by a couple of award-winners he likes to show off, along with the others that help tell the painstaking journey of the makings of a quilt, from cotton ball to warm bed cover.