ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, October 3, 1996 TAG: 9610030003
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: BETH MACY
SOURCE: BETH MACY
This is not the story of the sunflower quilt, which is on display at the Roanoke Valley History Museum's new exhibit, ``A Stitch in Time Quilt Show.''
The quilt has a story, to be sure. But there's a mystery still to unravel, just as there is for many of the 34 quilts on display.
As museum educator Carolyn Mack says, ``They all have stories. We just don't know them all.''
And that is one of the biggest lures of this crafts-making tradition. Quilts tell the stories that the history books tend to leave out: the story of how women and families lived.
Their squares reveal what people wore - via leftover scraps of cloth pieced together from worn-out clothes. They teach economic lessons - via Depression-era feed sacks used when even the worn-out clothes were too treasured to spare.
And they tell of family hardships, such as the way a mother feels when her son goes off to World War I. A verse from the circa-1914 sunflower quilt:
And when the war is over...
In the garden of the homes when the Sunflowers grow,
There should always be each namesake,
In a nodding head of gold-
The names of each of those we gave and lost....
Sadie Nackley does not know the origin of the sunflower quilt, though she alone is responsible for its appearance in the history museum's show.
She's not sure if the son for whom the quilt was made returned home from World War I, who the mother of the soldier was, nor how exactly such a heartfelt rendering ended up occupying her own family's closets - and hearts - for 70-some years.
But amid her Bible-stacked living room, with her rosary beads firmly in hand, this 90-year-old woman weaves her own story of family and faith. She delivers you, with considerable storyteller aplomb, to the Roanoke City Market - long before the boutiques and espresso machines took over.
The year is 1918. Her parents, Lebanese immigrants Elizabeth and Moses Nackley, run a general and dry-goods store on a corner of the city market building. It's across the street from two saloons, two doors down from a drug store - above which the Nackleys live.
Sadie and her 10 siblings were born in that apartment. Most of them help out in the store. Sadie herself is just 12 and hasn't been to school since the second grade. She's been too busy slicing cheese, taking inventory, selling bananas and anything else her parents need her help doing.
A man comes in to the Nackley store. He's a soldier with only a worn-out uniform for clothes. His name is Buddy.
Buddy tells Elizabeth Nackley he wants to buy a suit for the train ride home to see his mother, but he only has a few dollars.
However, he does have this quilt. He proposes they make a trade.
He unfolds a cloth labyrinth containing four hand-stitched sunflowers, an eagle and two verses of poetry - one called ``Mother's Sacrifice for Democracy,'' the other ``The Birth of the Sunflower,'' which ends:
There would be a sad homecoming
And a sad, dull heart throbbing,
And my bud of hope all shattered to the wind,
If on returning, I should find
My mother missing from the land
From which she sent her own beloved,
Her hope, her joy,
Oh, yes, her baby, and Democracy's Sunflower Boy.
Sadie remembers her parents buying the quilt. She remembers Buddy living with the family for two months, helping out in the store. Then she remembers him catching the train to go home to his mother, a wad of money in the pocket of his brand-new suit.
The quilt belonged to one of Buddy's fellow soldiers; she's not sure who. ``He said he bought it from somebody,'' she says.
For years Sadie admired the quilt, taking it out from its space in the closet just to look at it - and wonder about the long-gone soldier. Her mother, knowing how she treasured it, explained that one day it would be hers. ``She figured I'd be the first to get married.
``She didn't know I'd turn out to be an old maid,'' Sadie says, laughing. ``She didn't know nobody'd have me!''
When Sadie's brother became the first to get married, her mother gave him cash. Lots of it. ``So she wouldn't hurt his feelings not giving him the quilt,'' Sadie explains.
Sadie worked at the downtown Roanoke store for 49 years before retiring in 1955. Since then she's undergone multiple hip replacements and been hospitalized for heart and kidney failure, and pneumonia. She has around-the-clock nursing care at her Roanoke County home, but she's quick to add: ``I don't have Alzheimer's. ... Honey, no, I'm very clever.''
So clever, in fact, that she knew her departure from this world could cause a family rift. ``I wanted to give the quilt to somebody before I died, but if I gave it to one in-law, the others would get mad.''
So, Sadie gave it to none of them, donating it to the history museum instead.
``And I never saw so much hell raised after that before I went into the ground,'' she says, cackling. ``Everybody fussing, everybody claiming Mama gave it to them ....
``I tell you, I just wanted to get rid of it.''
Even though the Nackleys don't know the original story behind the quilt, the sunflowers have become woven into their own family story - a tribute to their Lebanese-American ancestors who befriended a soldier named Buddy and to the sheer moxie of one very clever 90-year-old aunt.
``Oh, they laugh about it now,'' Sadie Nackley says. ``And they try to boss me around still. But honey, no, I'm too clever to let 'em.''
The sunflower quilt and 33 other quilts - some with known stories, others still a mystery - are on display through Nov. 10. Admission is $2, $1 for seniors. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 10-5 Saturday, 1-5 Sunday. 342-5770.
The museum is also selling $1 raffle tickets for a pictorial sampler quilt hand-stitched by Roanoke-area quilters which depicts sites in and around Roanoke.
LENGTH: Long : 113 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: A detail from a sunflower quilt made by a woman for herby CNBson before he went off to battle in World War I. It's on display at
the Roanoke Valley History Museum. color.