Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Sew Be It: Inez Van Epps was "stunned" to receive a Children's Champion award for her work hand-sewing whimsical quilts for the Lucille Salter Packard Children's Hospital. "It makes me happy if I can get a giggle" from the children, she says.
Volunteer on a quilt trip
90-year-old garners Children's Champion award for her work comforting the kids
By Michele Leung
Summer has just barely announced its presence, but Inez Van Epps is already thinking about Christmas. After all, she only has six more months to make quilts for her children. The kids at the Lucille Salter Packard Children's Hospital, that is. This 90-year-old woman has been blessed with a sharp eye for color and nimble fingers for sewing, which has won her a Children's Champion Award from the San Jose Auxiliary.
"I'm stunned," Van Epps said. "I've never had an award before. Every time I look at it, I'll think that it's lovely."
The Willow Glen native, who has lived in San Jose all her life, learned the art of sewing from her mother. Over the past year she has made 25 quilts for children at the hospital.
Van Epps says she always has a whimsical angle in mind for her kids. "Some of these cats [on the print] have glasses. But children are merciless, and they say that kids with glasses have four eyes. Those children with glasses would be crazy about this quilt," she says.
Kid-friendly motifs such as dancing animals, juggling clowns and letters of the alphabet spilled across the blanket are frequent themes in her work. "It makes me happy if I can get a giggle from them," Van Epps says.
Van Epps is homebound these days, so her son Chuck Boysol frequently does shopping duty. She runs out of material very quickly, so when Boysol once came home with a sewing mother lode-- a sack full of thread and prints from a recent estate sale-- it was a pleasant surprise.
"He's a very good shopper," she says. "I tell you, I nearly had a stroke when I looked at what he brought."
But more often, Boysol gets his mother's supplies from the Thrift Box on Lincoln Avenue. The store is staffed by volunteer members of the San Jose Auxiliary to the hospital, and it exists for the sole purpose of providing funds for patients. The hospital has a policy of accepting all patients. Through the efforts of the auxiliary and the revenue generated by the Thrift Box, all patients' uncompensated expenses at the children's hospital are paid for.
For Van Epps, working on a pint-size quilt is its own reward. She has never met the children and will never allow her work to be sold, but sewing is physical and mental therapy. It was her mother long ago who taught her the spirit of giving.
"This is for the chemo babies. I want them to have a security quilt, like Linus," she says.
"It grieves me terribly that these children can't have a childhood like my son had," she continues, recalling memories of Boysol when he "played the livelong day."
Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Patcher Perfect: Inez Van Epps' son, Chuck Boysol, displays one of his mother's colorful quilts.
The nonagenarian vows to continue as long as her health will allow. She doesn't reveal any spectacular secrets to longevity, though a doughnut or toast and a cup of joe give her proper motivation when she wakes up. Aside from muscle spasms and a slight deafness, she doesn't have any other serious ailments. "Not more than any other 90-year-old," she says.
Perhaps, then, it's the young people she has in mind who rejuvenate her. She has previously crocheted afghans for residents of a nearby rest home, but she found she was running low on her creative juices. "I got depressed," she said.
For each project, the quilter spends about eight hours over two or three days of work. She culls ideas from quilting books or her favorite TV show, Simply Quilting. But her life doesn't just revolve around remnants. Her other choice television diversion is watching tennis ace Pete Sampras breeze by his competition on the courts.
Van Epps is now onto a new quilting idea: sewing on scraps--dog ears--that the kids can pull and play with. The hospital should be assured that more quilts will arrive this winter. "But do I make too many of them?" she says.
The women of the auxiliary allay all concerns. "The children are thrilled to death," says Liz Grim, present manager at the Thrift Box. "They're in the hospital for months on end. The parents appreciate [the quilts]."
Van Epps now sees a lack of interest in humanitarianism around her, which has motivated her to do as much as she can to make sure the small patients are cared for. She welcomes requests and says she will search high and low for a specific print. "I do it for kids to feel more I-love-yous, more I'm-listening-to-yous," she says. "Those words aren't even in the dictionary anymore."
Then again, because of her, Christmas might just come early this year.
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
