From that dream, 212,024 veterans have been honored with a Quilt of Valor.

In 2003, Catherine Roberts had a dream about a young man being tormented by his war demons.

She then saw him wrapped in a quilt, and his demeanor changed from despair to hope.

It was the quilt that had made the difference.

Chapin’s American Legion Post 193 recently awarded 11 Quilts of Valor to area veterans.

One recipient, Thomas Ryan, is a 97-year-old Pearl Harbor veteran. He is one of only three Pearl Harbor survivors left in South Carolina.

Ryan enlisted in the Navy in 1940 after he found himself unhappy at Ohio State University. He was assigned to the U.S.S. Pyro.

December 7, 1941, started off like every other day.

Ryan had just started his shift in the boiler room. Soon after his shift started, panicked soldiers began scrambling down the ladder.

He asked what was going on. The soldiers replied, “We are being bombed.”

Thomas had heard nothing deep in the ship’s boiler room.

After the first attack, he volunteered on a motor launch to rescue survivors.

Soldiers leaped from sinking ships, only to land in the burning oil on the surface of the water.

Ryan remembered trying to pull a soldier out of the burning water. The man slid underneath the water, leaving only the skin of his forearms in Ryan’s hands.

They went out in-between raids to rescue soldiers and brought them back to the Pyro, where doctors attended the wounded.

The ship was carrying ammunition for the USS Nevada and was supposed to have docked next to it. Luckily, it had docked in another area.

“If we had got hit like The Nevada did, it would have been very bad,” said Ryan.

Other recipients of the quilts served in all areas of the armed forces, from WWII to Iraq and Afghanistan.

South Carolina gives out more Quilts of Valor than another state.

“The ordinary fellow, who in times of war and strife, goes off to serve his country, offers up his life,” said SC QOV volunteer Jodi Donnelly, as she read from a poem.

Visit the Quilts of Valor website at https://www.qovf.org/ to request a quilt for a well-deserving veteran.