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VIRGINIA BEACH — Nancy Blackwood collected her family’s antique quilts for decades. She was the keeper of her grandmother’s, her great-grandmother’s and her mother-in-law’s creations. Blackwood, who lives in Broad Bay Point Greens, had 50 — until a tornado tore through her neighborhood April 30.
“They were all nicely folded in a bin in a closet upstairs,” said Blackwood, 67. “It just happened to be a room that lost its roof.”
In the aftermath of the storm, she found most of them in her house on Haversham Close. They were soaked, but otherwise in good shape.
She also noticed a handful were missing. Over the past two weeks, neighbors have helped her recover a couple.
Haversham Close experienced the worst damage from the EF3 tornado. Nine homes were destroyed and 36 rendered uninhabitable in Virginia Beach. Initial estimates revealed more than $15 million in residential damage.
Last week, a woman whose parents live in Broad Bay Point Greens posted a picture of a red and blue quilt on the Nextdoor app.
“Looking for the owner of this antique quilt … found in a tree on Broad Bay Golf Course after the tornado … want to get this heirloom back to her family.”
Several residents quickly replied that it belonged to Blackwood.
“Everyone who knows me knows I have a lot of quilts,” Blackwood said.
Another neighbor spotted one of her quilts in a tree on the golf course about six houses away. A friend climbed the tree to retrieve it.
“They washed it and fluffed it,” said Blackwood. “It’s gorgeous.”
It’s a lap quilt, made before 1970, when her grandmother started crafting that style, she said.
One of Blackwood’s favorite quilts survived the tornado in her sunroom. It was originally a quilt top that her grandmother made for a baby’s crib in 1931. Blackwood has continued to work on it over the years.
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Several quilts are still not accounted for, but Blackwood hopes they’re buried under debris in the bedroom where she had stored them. Three of the four walls of that room blew away, but the headboard is still there and the mattress is upright, Blackwood said.
Tangled in a hole in her house where the chimney used to be, she has seen an afghan blanket — another family heirloom — and hopes to recover it soon. She’s only had to throw away one quilt that was too damaged to repair.
Friends have been helping her and her husband, Vaden, gather other important belongings from the house and move to a nearby apartment.
“Our community is amazing,” she said. “I still get teary about it, not because it’s sad, it’s heartwarming.”
Even if she doesn’t find the missing quilts, Blackwood’s happy most of them made it through the storm, and that a couple made their way back to her.
“I don’t need 50 quilts, but I’m OK with 47,” she said.
Stacy Parker, 757-222-5125, stacy.parker@pilotonline.com