Youth service project provides blankets for other kids

PALMER — There was no doubt about who was in charge at the table.

“Wait, wait,” Zoe Woice said in an authoritative tone. “I have to check to make sure they’re all tied.”

And like good soldiers, the group of four men followed the orders of their 9-year-old general.

“She’s definitely in charge,” chuckled Bob Munger. “She’s the boss of this table.”

Munger was among a group of Kiwanians helping Valley elementary and high school students with a community service project to tie blankets to donate to The Children’s Place.

“We work with kids to develop blossoming leadership skills and a heart for service,” said Munger, a Portland, Ore., resident in Palmer to attend the Kiwanis Club’s regional conference.

One of six tables of volunteers working at Sherrod Elementary School to tie cut fringes around the edges of sheets of soft fleece to make the tied blankets, Munger was joined by fellow Kiwanians Dick Kosonen and Jaedon Avery, both from Anchorage, and this Frontiersman reporter. Woice made it crystal clear that anyone sitting at her table is a worker, and that a reporter can ask questions while tying blankets.

“You just take these thingies up from the bottom and pull it up and tighten it,” she explained about how to tie the fringes to attach the two pieces of fleece. “This is an awesome blanket,” she added. “It has kittens on it.”

That the blankets are destined to become beloved possessions of children who have been removed from their homes for a variety of reasons wasn’t lost on Sarah Gittlein, a Colony High School Key Club member and volunteer at Friday’s blanket-tying party.

“I think it’s really cool, because they’re having a hard time in their lives and it’s kind of cool to get a gift from a stranger,” Gittlein said. “It would make me feel good if someone made me a gift.”

Something as simple as a blanket can be very meaningful to those abused and neglected children, said Steve Brown, a local Kiwanis Club member and Court Appointed Special Advocate volunteer.

“A lot of the kids who go (to The Children’s Place), some of those kids are just shoveled from foster home to foster home,” he said. “Sometimes they’re pulled out of a bad situation and they literally only have the clothes on their back. So, something like a blanket means a lot. It’s something they can call their own and can take with them as they go from foster home to foster home.”

Although he never had a favorite blanket as a child, Brown said he did have a favorite pillow that served the same purpose of providing comfort and security.

“It was a feather pillow and it was, like, I used to read Peanuts as a kid and I knew Linus had his security blanket, and I thought about my pillow (the same way),” he said. “I had that pillow through high school. I literally wore the cover off that pillow. But if anyone ever messed with my pillow, man …”

CHS Key Clubber Greta Jenkins can relate. She recalled her favorite blanket while tying with her friends.

“I had a little one that was just, like, a piece of fleece,” she said. “It was pink, and I carried it everywhere and it went everywhere with me. It took me a long time to let it go — and yes, I still have it — but I wore it out so much. One time I got it too close to a fire and it burned in half. I kept that half. I lost it a couple of times and my mom would take me back to the store or wherever it was I lost it. I had several, but that one was the really special one.”

Stacia Cascio is another Key Club volunteer who said her favorite is actually a tied blanket she still uses.

“I have one of these and I still use it,” she said. “Mine fits on my bed, so in the summer, that’s all I use.”

While the older girls remembered their favorite blankets, Woice said she doesn’t have one yet, but described what it would be like if she had one.

“It would be big, warm and fuzzy,” she said. “And it would probably have a puppy on it. It would be pink, and (the puppy) would be a golden retriever.”

Contact reporter Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.