Pistol packed in quilt
She sent grandmother’s quilt to West Allis for repair, not knowing an antique gun was inside
She sent her grandmother’s quilt to be repaired — not knowing an antique pistol was wrapped inside.
At least eight decades ago, Cecela Miller crafted a beautiful quilt made from yellow and lime-green patches.
Through the years the quilt warmed and comforted Miller and her family. As the years went by, it deteriorated and ultimately was packaged in plastic and ended up with Cecela Miller’s granddaughter Velvet Miller.
Velvet Miller called her beloved grandmother Little Mom, and she decided last month to see if the family heirloom could be repaired. She learned that one of the nation’s premier antique linen cleaning and restoration businesses is located in West Allis.
When she carefully boxed up her grandmother’s quilt and sent it from her home in Indianapolis to Wisconsin, she did not know it held a secret.
Until she got a call from the West Allis Police Department.
Cecela Miller was born in the 1890s, likely the granddaughter of slaves. She married a Methodist minister, and they raised five sons and three daughters in Canton, Miss. One of her sons was a member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen during World War II. She operated a small convenience store out of one side of her house, selling food staples as well as soda and candy.
When civil rights workers passed through Canton on their way to the state capital of Jackson in the 1950s and ’60s, Cecela Miller fed and housed them in her home.
“My father and his brothers got upset about it because she was in danger,” said Velvet Miller, now 75. “We just loved her. She took no crap from anybody.”
Cecela Miller was a quilter, and she tried to instill her love of quilting in her grandchildren. Velvet Miller resisted.
“I didn’t help her with quilts. I didn’t know how to do it. She tried to teach me but I was no good at it,” she said, laughing at the recollection. “My grandmother said how I am going to get a man if I couldn’t quilt? I did marry.”
Quilts passed down
After her husband died, Cecela Miller moved to Milwaukee in the 1970s because some of her family had migrated there. She lived into her early 90s, dying in Milwaukee in the mid-1980s.
Velvet Miller and her siblings have seven sons between them — no daughters — and each son has been given a quilt from either Cecela Miller or their maternal great grandmother, who was called Big Mom.
After seeking advice from friends, Velvet Miller contacted The Laundry at Linens Limited in West Allis and was told to send the quilt. When employees opened the package and began unfolding the quilt, they found a bundled piece of tapestry inside the quilt.