DAR Awards Quilt of Valor to St. Louis Park WWII Navy Nurse
Wayzata, MN – Members of the Lake Minnetonka Chapter, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) presented a hand-crafted Quilt of Valor to deserving World War II veteran Grace Knight in a private ceremony at her St. Louis Park home on Sunday, March 10. Ms. Knight served as a nurse in the United States Navy during World War II.
Quilts of Valor are awarded to veterans who have been touched by war with this heartfelt expression of gratitude: “We honor you for your service, for leaving all you held dear, for standing in harm’s way in a time of crisis, and for protecting us from the effects of war. We know freedom is not free. The cost of freedom is the dedication of men and women like you. This Quilt of Valor is our way to say thank you for your service, sacrifice, and valor.”
The week of her 101st birthday in February, Ms. Knight sat down with Lake Minnetonka Chapter DAR Service to Veterans Committee Chair Laura Roth to record her story for the Library of Congress’s Veterans History Project.
Ms. Knight was born and raised in South Dakota. She completed three years of nursing school and enlisted at age 19 as an ensign in the United States Navy. She did so on the advice of her father, a WWI United States Army veteran, who told her, “the Navy would be good for you.”
She was stationed at Great Lakes Naval Hospital in Chicago where she served her entire tour of duty. “The Navy was serious business,” she recalls. She was assigned to care for patients in a variety of challenging departments, including infectious diseases and the tuberculosis ward.
While serving at Great Lakes, Grace met her future husband Charles Franklin Knight, a corpsman in the United States 4th Marine Division. Charles was wounded in the battle of Iwo Jima in February 1945. After surgeries in Hawaii and California, he arrived at Great Lakes Naval Hospital for treatment and recovery. The couple dated while Charles was a patient and he proposed to Grace when they were on a boat tour together. They took leave to share the news with her family in South Dakota and his family in Indiana. When the war ended in 1945, they were married in Illinois.
Grace was discharged from the Navy upon her marriage because, “the Navy didn’t like married women to serve” at that time. Adjusting back to civilian life was difficult, especially food rationing. “In the service,” Ms. Knight recalls, “we had everything!”
Ms. Knight credits her WWII experience with broadening her view of people. “The war made me think more about others,” she recalls. She enjoyed working with people of different races and nationalities, learning “there are good people everywhere and they are all created by God.” When she became a mother after the war, she passed those values on to her children, teaching them “to appreciate people’s differences” and the importance of being “gentle, kind, and loving to others.”
The Quilt of Valor presented to Ms. Knight reflects the perspective she gained through her naval service. Her quilt was carefully sewn by members of the Lake Minnetonka Chapter DAR and is rich with meaning. The many colors and shapes on the top of the quilt represent the diversity of America’s citizenry. The warm batting in the center of the quilt represents our hope that this quilt will bring comfort, peace, and healing to the veteran who receives it. The backing is the strength that supports the other layers, representing the strength of the recipient and the support of our communities and our nation. Every stitch holding the layers together represents our gratitude for the sacrifices the recipient made to protect our country.
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