Quilting club makes Ken Berger memorial quilt for Lion's Club raffle

When Monroe attorney Ken Berger died in a crash in his seaplane May 24 of last year, Rosie Tatel took it hard.

For one thing, her friendship with Ken Berger's wife Deb had helped Tatel meet her current husband. Deb had met Ken through a Jewish dating service, and had suggested that service to Tatel, who subsequently met her husband Harvey through it.

For another thing, in the weeks before the crash, Tatel had been working on arranging a plane ride with Ken for her husband as a surprise. The thought that she, too, could have lost her husband on that flight was very sobering.

So Tatel decided to honor Berger's life by contributing to a cause he had held dear; that of the Monroe Lion's Club, of which he was a highly active member. In order to do so, Tatel mobilized the members of the Busy Bee Quilters Guild, a Snohomish quilting club to which she belongs, to produce a quilt that the Lion's Club could raffle off to raise funds for their various philanthropic activities.

The club members made 12 quilt blocks with airplane designs, then assembled them into a quilt. Then Harvey, Rosie's husband, who himself enjoys quilting, machine quilted the final product.

Tickets for the quilt are $2 and can be found by messaging the Lion's Club through its Facebook page, www.facebook.com/Lions.Club.Monroe, or through any Lion's Club member. The winning ticket will be drawn Nov. 18.