The Willow Glen Resident

Photograph by Skye Dunlap

Helping Hands: Volunteers for Others member Juanita Ernst crochets a lap robe at the Willows Senior Center. The group donates these robes and other items to local organizations.

Senior volunteers remember others throughout the year

Hand-crafted donations include quilts, lap robes and Easter bunnies

By Michelle Ku

During the holidays, volunteers of all types come out of the woodwork to make Thanksgiving and Christmas nicer for those who are less fortunate, but for a group of retired seniors in Willow Glen, volunteering is a year-round commitment.

Every Monday, retired seniors ranging in age from 64 to 80 gather for 212 hours in Room 10 of the Willows Senior Center to create a variety of arts and crafts projects to benefit others.

From quilts to lap robes, cancer caps to wheelchair side pouches, and Thanksgiving baskets to slippers, the ladies of Volunteers for Others create and donate items to various organizations to show that they have not forgotten those less fortunate.

The group was formed a decade ago by four ladies who wanted to keep busy while helping others.

"The group started about 10 years ago by ladies who needed to do things and didn't have anything else to make," said Esther Peterson, 76, an Evergreen resident and a nine-year veteran of the group. "They could only make so many lap robes and crafts for their families."

Since then, Volunteers for Others has grown from four to approximately 20 members, and they donate their handmade items to seven local convalescent homes, Shriner's Hospital and Valley Medical Center, to name a few.

During the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, the group put together grocery baskets and gave them to needy families. They also donated part of their "penny money"--spare change they collect every week to help purchase supplies for their projects--to the Salvation Army and CityTeams Ministries.

Many of the projects they do are timely. They try to do something special for each of the major holidays. For Christmas, they distributed Christmas candy boxes to local convalescent homes. Last week, they assembled penny Valentine's cards. Soon they will begin their Easter project--bunnies.

A fairly recent project is the making of cancer caps, turbans made out of cloth that can be dressed up by using different accessories to hold the cap together.

"We began making them because a member of the group has cancer," said Dorothy Register, 74, the leader of the group. "Cancer caps are more fun to wear than normal knit caps because of the different accessories you can use."

Other items that Volunteers for Others make are slippers, booties, clowns made out of spools of thread, crocheted and quilted items and Christmas gifts. The next big project the group will undertake is to make angels out of shoulder pads, Peterson said.

The supplies to create their arts and crafts are purchased by individuals or the group. They also accept donations of yarn and other materials to use in the creation of their projects. "We're self-sufficient," Viola Hansen said. "Financially, we don't get any help from the city."

Volunteers for Others is always looking for donations or suggestions on where to make their donations.

"If there is a need somewhere and we can help fill that need, we would like those suggestions on where we can make our donations," said Lora Davis, a program coordinator for the Willows Senior Center who is in charge of Volunteers for Others. "If people have yarn and materials that they would like to donate to us, we would appreciate that."

For more information, call the Willows Senior Center at 448-6400.

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