The Photo on the Cover

Many have asked about the photograph on the cover of THE TENNEY QUILT. The young woman on the cover (and to the left) is LaVanche Polifka (married name Solvie, then Gill). LaVanche was the original owner of the Tenney Quilt, and is my great aunt. LaVanche was born in 1899 in Tenney, and spent her childhood and young adulthood there. LaVanche’s story appears in Chapter 3 of the book. I mention in the book that LaVanche was an instigator, a jokester; a persistent, stubborn, active girl, definitely a mover and shaker in the village of Tenney. She had her heart broken as a young woman, so put her energies into her professional career, which began at the Tenney State Bank until it closed in the late Twenties. She then went on to work at banks in Sisseton (South Dakota) and Wheaton, MN, then held the position of county welfare worker in the courthouses in Breckenridge and Glenwood, Minnesota. She was a woman ahead of her time.

I was very close to LaVanche. She married late in life and had no children of her own. Therefore, she “adopted” her sister’s grandchildren—that would be me and my brother and sister—as her own grandchildren. I grew up with her. She was at every family event during my childhood and young adulthood, and my family took care of her needs in her later life, which lasted until the age of 99. She spoke of Tenney often—Tenney was “the good ol’ days.” LaVanche passed along the Tenney Quilt to my mother, and my mother passed it along to me. I loved LaVanche dearly, and there could be no more appropriate person to grace the front cover of THE TENNEY QUILT.