Daughter gives thanks for journey of deceased mother's quilt • South Dakota Searchlight

HURON — There are those rare times – very emotional, memorable instances – when all of the good things fall into place and the outcome is a heartwarming experience for everyone involved.

This is the story of one of those times.

It begins, oddly enough, at a neighborhood rummage sale in 2015 or 2016. What makes it odd, with what was to come, is that Jeanine Tschetter Greenwood is not really sure when she came across a partially completed quilt top, folded up and in a bag with other items.

“I remember taking it out and thinking to myself, ‘My gosh, someone has $2 marked on this!’”

The pieced top was in a classic quilt pattern referred to as “Trip Around the World.” Small identically sized squares, in this instance more than 1,200 of them, are sewn together in a concentric diamond shape. The pattern starts with a single central square, and the use of varied prints and contrasting colors accentuate the diamond design as it radiates outward.

Jeanine is quick to note that she is not a quilter. “Not like cutting little pieces of fabric and sewing them together into a pattern. I have done a tied baby quilt with a panel on it, but nothing to the extent of what I found in the bag.”

She thought that perhaps it could be a good winter project for when she and her husband Doug went to Arizona. Which is what she did. After washing and ironing the top to determine a size, she began working with a fabric store to select a border fabric that she added to the pieced top.

“I shared how I came upon the top with a woman at the shop and we both marveled at the work that had gone into the cutting and sewing the blocks.”

She went back to the store, selected fabric for the back and binding, the batting to layer between the top and the back and had the fabric store do the quilting. “They sewed the binding on the front,” Jeanine said, “then I took it home and stitched the binding to the back.”

She said that the quilt saw use in Arizona on the couples’ king-size bed, and, after she sold the property there, on her bed in Sioux Falls.

“Every time I saw the quilt or made the bed,” she recalls, “I thought about the work that some woman put into creating this beautiful quilt, only to have it end up in a bag at a rummage sale with a bunch of stuff.”

Jeanine grew up in Huron, graduating from Huron High School in 1970. She worked at Bell Telephone for 17 years, 15 years in Huron until the company closed the Huron location. She then moved to Rapid City with Bell and worked there for two years.

She had been married and had three children, but later divorced. While in Rapid City, she met Doug Greenwood, who was with the Air Force, and they married. His career took the couple to Germany for three years until he retired, when they moved to Huron. 

“Doug grew up on the East Coast and always wanted to move there again,” Jeanine said. “So, when my youngest graduated high school, I was out of reasons for not going and we moved to New Hampshire.”

It didn’t take long to determine that living 45 miles away from work in Boston was difficult. A year of fighting traffic was enough and they moved to Sioux Falls. 

During those years, Jeanine worked in various departments of the federal government, landing at the EROS Center when they returned to South Dakota in 2000. In 2012, Doug and Jeanine retired and within a couple of years, the increased population in Sioux Falls led them back to Huron in 2017. 

While they lived in Sioux Falls after retirement, the couple owned a cabin at Lake Byron, spending time there throughout the summer, and it was on one of those summer trips to the area that Jeanine found herself at a rummage sale, set up in a garage in the alley behind 895 12th Street, SW.

“Doug was very big on not accumulating ‘STUFF’” Jeanine said. “He said ‘Jeanine, it’s just STUFF. Life doesn’t have to be about STUFF!’ So, it was really odd that I found myself at a rummage sale, looking at ‘stuff.’”

A short time later, Doug received a kidney transplant, as the effects of Agent Orange, with which he came in contact during the Vietnam War, caused issues. After the transplant, the couple returned to Sioux Falls to be nearer his medical provider.

“When we retired,” Jeanine said, “We had vowed to do what we could for as long as we could and we did just that.” Doug Greenwood passed away Sept. 11, 2023 – on Patriots Day.

“I decided that I didn’t want the Arizona property and ‘stuff,’” Jeanine said. “I sold it, packed up the things I wanted and headed home.” When she got back to Sioux Falls, she went through a storage unit and got rid of more “stuff.”

“But that quilt was always there,” she said. “I decided that I would do what I could to find someone – I figured a granddaughter – of the woman who had made the quilt and try to get it back to a member of her family.”

She didn’t have much to go on. 

“I grew up there, remember,” she said. “And while I was at Bell, I had gained a pretty thorough knowledge of the area and remembered the neighborhood where I hit the rummage sale.”

Armed with a cup of coffee and a computer, she went to work, using Google Maps to zero in on the house. She used street view to be positive she was looking at the correct home.

Next, she turned to social media for some assistance.

“I posted pictures of the house and the garage, with the address, on the Facebook site ‘I grew up in Huron, South Dakota and damn proud of it!’” she said. “And a picture of the quilt. I guess I hoped someone would recognize the house, know who may have lived there and would share the information. But I didn’t know.”

That was on Oct. 21. The response was more than she could have expected. Dozens of people were commenting what they recalled and even more people were sharing Jeanine’s post.

Brenna Bowerman-Stark also grew up in Huron, and is a 2005 HHS graduate. She is a real estate photographer in Springfield, Mo., an area to which she moved after graduation.

When she checked her Facebook on Oct. 22, she was inundated with messages from friends of hers and those of her mother, pointing out the address with the same question: Didn’t you grow up there?

She had. 

“I lived there with my mom and stepdad,” Brenna said. “My mother’s name was Melanie Haugen and my stepdad was Lee. Mom was diagnosed with cancer and passed away in September of 2004, only nine months after her diagnosis.”

After Melanie’s passing, Brenna and her twin brother, Bryan, moved in with her mother’s sister and lived there through graduation. She had planned to attend SDSU, but plans change. An opportunity to live with a family member and attend school in Missouri was too good to pass up. Brenna left Huron the summer after graduation.

“Brenna sent me a private message the next morning,” Jeanine said.

Jeanine shared that Brenna told her Lee remarried, later passing away as did his spouse. The folks in charge of cleaning out the house had no knowledge or connection to anyone from more than a decade earlier.

“We never had the opportunity to claim any of Mom’s things after her passing,” Brenna said. “I had a photo of her with another quilt she made and shared that with Jeanine. I told her that I really appreciated her posting and sharing the quilt that Mom spent so much time making.”

Brenna said, thinking back to that conversation, that it was almost like her Mom was overseeing the process. “Mom had wanted ‘Dust in the Wind’ played at her funeral service,” Brenna recalled. “When my wife sent a message to Jeanine, with some details to demonstrate that we were who we said were, ‘Dust in the Wind’ came on the radio as she was leaving for work.”

Jeanine got Brenna’s address, folded the bulky quilt for one final time and put it in the mail.

“I stayed in touch with Brenna, letting her know when I mailed it and shared tracking information,” Jeanine said. “It was, ironically, scheduled to arrive the Saturday that they were hosting their wedding reception.”

Unfortunately, delivery didn’t take place until the Monday after the reception. “It would have been so great to have it arrive when all of my brothers and sister were there,” Brenna said. “It worked out in the end though.”

She said her niece Skylar, who was there for the reception, was scheduled to fly out on that Monday. “In fact, when we dropped her off at the airport, I got a notice that the quilt had been delivered.”

Brenna said she got home, opened the package, and for the first time held the quilt her mother had pieced together more than 20 years before. Someone with no connection to her family had rescued the quilt, finished it and then took the additional steps to find a family member and return it to them.

A short time later, Brenna got a call from Skylar. Skylar’s flight had been delayed and she ended up staying two more days. 

“She is my mom’s first grandchild and the only one born before Mom passed,” Brenna said. “She slept under her grandma’s quilt both nights she stayed with us.”

“I do believe this is one of the final things she made,” Brenna said. “When Jeanine sent the photo it was familiar to me. Mom was always making something. Knitting, making candles – a lot of different things. And sewing and quilting.”

She added that an aunt suggested the quilt become a “traveling quilt,” moving among Melanie’s five children and their children. “But nothing is decided yet. Right now, I am just enjoying the quilt.”

“I just feel good about this,” Jeanine said. “We need to be kind – nobody knows what people are going through. I just feel that we can all help somewhere. I am glad that the quilt is back in the hands of the family of the person who made the quilt top and they will have it to love and cherish forever.”

When arrangements were underway to ship the heirloom, Brenna offered to pay for the postage, but Jeanine declined.

“I told her that she could consider it a wedding gift from her mom – and from me.”

“We’ve stayed in touch,” Jeanine added. “I hope that we can meet at some time.”

Brenna described how it feels to have a piece of her mother’s creation.

“Oh it’s perfect,” she said. “It’s big and it’s cozy. And it’s perfect.”