Colfax Marine honored with quilt

Colfax High School graduate Caleb Lyon’s service with the U.S. Marines will be warmer thanks to a quilt he received from a local quilting guild Tuesday morning.

Lyon has served with the Marines since he graduated from Colfax with the class of 2007. He served an eight-month tour as a prison guard in Iraq.

“I really grew to appreciate the Marines,” said Tami Drader, a member of the Whitman Samplers group that made Lyon’s quilt. “You guys really put yourselves out there on the line.”

Drader served 24 years in the Navy and trained and worked alongside Marines while with the Navy’s chaplains corps.

Caleb is the son of Steve and Rebecca Lyon.

Though the warmth of the quilt might not be the top priority for his current station guarding a U.S. embassy in Kingston, Jamaica, Lyon was appreciative of the work of the women who made the quilt.

“It’s really an honor they would take the time to do this for me,” said Lyon.

Lyon was part of a unit that ran a detention facility at Camp Ramadi in Iraq from September 2008 to April 2009. There, he was in charge of security for convoys and helped release several detainees to Iraqi police.

Lyon is currently serving with the corps’ security guard program. He said the quilt would have been useful in his last embassy guard duty in Slovenia. After another six months in Jamaica, he hopes to be sent back to Europe for his third and final duty stint as an embassy guard.

“Maybe they’ll send me to a colder country next time where I can get some real use out of it,” he said.

Lyon’s quilt is a brilliant concoction of 30 patriotic patches, each sewn by a member of the Whitman Sampler’s quilting guild.

The Whitman Samplers stitched the quilt as part of the national Quilts of Valor organization, which takes donations of quilts from around the U.S. to give to veterans.

Lyon was home for a short time, but enjoyed the chance to let a few days’ stubble gather on his face. As an embassy guard, he must report for duty every morning immaculately dressed and manicured.

Drader said the Whitman Samplers group is looking for relatives of more local veterans who would like to be honored with a quilt.