Despite a full-time job, Leger finds time to give back

WINSTED — MaryPat Leger enjoys giving back to her community — she said it’s fun for her as well as rewarding. While she does maintain a full-time job, she considers that to be more of what she does in her spare time.

Leger grew up in Newington and moved to Winsted about 27 years ago. A mother of three, JoelPatrick, 28, Tony, 20, and Emmarose, 16, Leger held a variety of jobs, ranging from an architectural designer to teacher, while raising her children. She is married to Victor Leger, local artist and teacher. Leger is currently employed as a reading consultant at the Cherry Brook Primary School in Canton.

While her work is fulfilling, Leger’s passions lie in gardening and quilting.

Throughout spring and summer, travelers of Main Street may see Leger, complete with her wide-brimmed hat, planting flowers in the medians or clearing brush off the bands of the Mad River near the Riverwalk. Leger has taken over the maintance of the two areas.

"When you go to an arboretum, they are so beautiful. It only looks that way because someone is managing it," said Leger. "It takes a lot of management. The first year we focused on the middle of the hillside, the second year we focused on the little bank that goes down to the river. This year we are focusing on the upper bank, which goes from the paved path to Prospect Street."

In the first year that the Riverwalk rehab project began, Leger said she had a great deal of help and community support, but the last few years she has managed the project with mostly her family members. The team works to clear brush, sumac and invasive plants and trees, such as the thorny black locust tree that has taken over the banks of the river.

Aside from her "adopted" gardening projects, Leger has also taken on a massive quilting project, which began with the creation of a quilted panel in 1976.

Throughout the years, Leger carried with her a patriotic quilt panel she designed for a college class. She never quite found the time and energy to complete the quilt. It was when her oldest son, JoelPatrick, was to return home from Iraq, where he served with the 101 Airborne (the Screaming Eagles), that Leger found the motivation to complete the quilt.

"When JoelPatrick was in Iraq, the Riverton Grange sent him, at our address, a commemorative pillow with his name, rank and dates," said Leger.

After seeing the pillow, she placed it on his bed and decided it was time for her to finish her quilt and give it to her son.

"I had a month. I got out the patchwork top and got it together and quilted it up and that was when I got hooked on quilting," said Leger.

Leger began quilting for everyone. JoelPatrick mentioned Quilts of Valor, a group that makes quilts for wounded servicemen. After researching the organization, Leger began making and sending quilts for military personnel injured in the line of duty. Joining forces with some friends, Leger took her passion one step further and created Sew Grateful Quilters.

Twice a month Leger and her group meet at the Winchester Congregational Church and make quilts for Quilts of Valor. Since the group’s inception, almost two years ago, Sew Grateful has sent 45 quilts overseas.

While the group is mostly women, there is one man who wanted to be involved and charged himself with providing refreshment to the busy sewers.

In addition to the sewing, making the quilts takes a lot of ironing, cutting and stitch removal (for the occasional mistake), and Leger encourages anyone who would like to be involved to join. "We have several people who don’t sew, but iron and rip, and keep the people at the sewing machines going."

During the course of one of the group’s sew-a-thons, Leger was trying to decide how to fill in a blank space on the quilt she was making. She decided to stitch in a screaming eagle, in honor of her son, and asked that it be given to a soldier from her son’s unit, if at all possible.

"It actually went to a patient who came in from the Screaming Eagles the night the quilt arrived," said Leger, who received a note from one of the nurses in the hospital. In addition, Leger received a long letter from the serviceman’s wife, who was pregnant at the time and missing her husband. Leger was so moved that she made a quilt for the woman and her baby and sent it to their home in Tennessee.

For Leger, quilting is a way of giving back. She also says it’s her way of giving a hug.

When you see a soldier, Leger said, "You think this is a big tough Marine, but the war has affected them so much that they are curled up in a quilt and that is their only comfort.

"In past wars women came together to roll bandages or sew uniforms. So this is our way to come together to show that we care."