by Tiffany Isselhardt, Exhibits Curator
One of my favorite things to do on tours is to surprise guests. What is the most unexpected item on display? What story challenges our assumptions?
At first glance, this seems to be a traditional Applique Christmas Tree quilt. It is red, green, and white with trees all around. No name is embroidered; no tag identifies the maker. But a deeper look at the catalog record reveals something very few visitors expect – it was made by a U.S. Marine!
Applique Christmas Tree quilt by Lt. Col. Belmont Forsythe (1920-2005). 1999.17.1
Lt. Col. Belmont Forsythe of Belton, Kentucky, made this quilt in 1986-87. Quilting was one of his favorite hobbies (along with needlepoint and jazz). And if you’d ever met Belmont, you would have heard a lot of interesting stories.
Belmont was born in 1920…in the Belton post office. His mother, the postmaster, waited too long to go to the hospital. Belmont was the son of two postmasters – his father being the first postmaster of Belmont by declaration of President Woodrow Wilson. His mother took over the job at some point, and Belmont helped in the post office as a young boy, emptying mail bags for a penny apiece.
Interviewed before his death, Belmont remembered going by his grandmother’s frame house and begging her “to tell stories about Lincoln, or watching Civil War battles, which she’d witnessed first hand. She was passing on an oral history.”
Log Cabin scrap quilt variation by Lt. Col. Belmont Forsythe (1920-2005), 1999.17.2
Belmont attended Western Kentucky State Teachers’ College (now WKU), graduating in 1940. He taught mathematics and band in Scottsville until the attack on Pearl Harbor, when he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps on December 8, 1941. For twenty-five years, Belmont had a storied military career: drill instructor, mathematics instructor in Washington, D.C., and eventually a lieutenant colonel. His career took him throughout 103 countries as well as service in World War II and the Korean War. Within that time, he also married and had four children. Returning to civilian life in 1966, Belmont became a Senior Army Instructor for the Junior ROTC Department at Punahou Academy in Hawaii.
In 1972, Belmont and his wife retired to Seattle. A year later, Belmont sustained a fall – breaking his neck. Sitting motionless in a brace, he took up needlepoint – and later quilting. That passion led to the creation of Belmont’s quilts in our collection.
Inspired in part by his grandmother, Belmont began documenting his life through tape recordings and writings. Copies of the interviews are housed in WKU’s Special Collections Library as “The Forsythe Saga of Civilian and Military Life.”
“Before I quit and die,” Forsythe stated in an interview, “I wanted to leave, for my grandchildren and great-grandchildren, the stories of my life, much like the stories I used to hear from my grandmother.”
Boston Commons pattern quilt by Lt. Col. Belmont Forsythe (1920-2005), 2005.23.5
Help preserve these quilts and their stories! Our Adopt-a-Quilt campaign allows you to symbolically adopt a quilt by making a gift to support care and conservation of our incredible collection. Lt. Col. Forsythe’s quilts are Bronze Tier ($150 each) and may be adopted by making a gift online here.
To learn more about the program and view additional quilts available for adoption, please click here.