Wrapped in Kindness
Project Linus Delivers Handmade Security Blankets…
You’d be hard-pressed to find any American member of a living generation today who has never heard of Charles Schultz’s venerable comic strip “Peanuts.” Even before they can read, kids recognize the faces of its characters, like Charlie Brown and Lucy and her younger brother, Linus, the child serenely snuggling his blanket.
As “Peanuts” reaches its 75th birthday, a nonprofit called Project Linus looks back at a prolific 30 years of its own, beginning with one person’s idea to request use of Linus’ name and face to identify an effort to supply a free security blanket needed by every infant, child and teen in the country. Today, Project Linus distributes such care and comfort to traumatized youth in all 50 states.
They accomplish this through local chapter coordinators who organize volunteers in their counties. Our local Project Linus coordinator is Redding resident Debbie Childs. When she took over two years ago, the chapter was Project Linus of Shasta County. She added to that, so now her chapter can be found on her Facebook group page Project Linus of Shasta, Butte, Siskiyou, Tehama and Trinity Counties.
With that reach, Childs regularly delivers security blankets to hospitals in Chico and Red Bluff. She works with Enloe Health Mother & Baby Care Center in Chico and Ampla Health, both in Chico and Yuba City. She teams out west with Columbia School District, which covers Hayfork and all the surrounding areas. Nearer to home, she drops blankets off at hospital neonatal wards and community health agencies.
Naturally, meeting that level of demand requires a lot of product.
Childs’ volunteer force makes her a monthly average of a couple hundred blankets, which she processes through her home. “I used to have a spare room that had a bed and everything for company. Now I have a spare room that’s full of blankets and everything it takes to bag them up,” she says with a laugh.
On the fourth Monday of every month, she meets with a group of her volunteers to sew, label and bag blankets. They rendezvous at Blue Iris Quilt Shoppe in Palo Cedro for a few hours, and from that get-together Childs gathers about half of the month’s expected blankets. Shop owner Kimber Rickey says when she heard Childs was looking for a place to meet and sew, Rickey offered her quilting classroom.
“I extended the invitation because Blue Iris is really a community space, and I wanted to continue that legacy,” Rickey recalls. “I’m born and raised in this area, third generation; my grandfather helped build the Shasta Dam. So this is how I build relationships and community. I give them a place to come together with a common theme, and they’re learning from each other.”
A recent fourth Monday get-together draws 16 blanket makers, with ages ranging from 10 to 87. Most here are volunteers well-acquainted with sewing and with each other. They follow the rule laid down by the Project Linus national headquarters in Kansas City, Mo.: handmade only. Starting with new fabrics, seasoned seamstresses sew together sheets of cotton or fleece and/or flannel, and bind the edges, by hand or by machine. They finish by stitching on an official Project Linus label.
Their hands knowing the way, volunteers are free to engage in conversations, filling the room with the chatter of camaraderie. Ask any one of them why they are here, doing what they do, their answers tend to overlap.
Betty Dickerson’s response is a good summation. “Your families grow up, you’re having a lot of time on your hands and so you try to find something that’s worthwhile,” she shares. “I was looking on Facebook one day and saw an advertisement. So I came and started and got hooked. It’s very rewarding that you know you’re giving your time and your efforts to help little babies and children.”
Looking back, it seems Coordinator Childs was destined to lead these efforts.
Raised in Santa Rosa, she carries fond girlhood memories of skating at the town’s ice rink, which just happened to be owned by Charles Schultz. Yes, he lived in Santa Rosa and drew daily “Peanuts” comics in an office upstairs over his skating rink, so the girl caught glimpses of him as she grew up. After marrying, she took these beloved memories with her, following her family to Redding.
Childs spent the last 13 years of her working life serving lunch to preschool kids. In her spare time, she crocheted blankets. It was during this time, seven years ago, that she witnessed firsthand the potential of Redding’s rain-scarce summer combined with high winds. The Carr Fire roared up to her doorstep and took away her home and everything in it. Shortly after, she received from a charitable organization a quilt, handed to her at work.
“It made me feel really good, because I had a couple of my grandmother’s quilts that were from her mother, from 1916, that I lost in the fire,” she recalls. “That blanket was very comforting for me.”
So when a friend told her about Project Linus two and a half years ago, it’s easy to see how primed she was to join an effort to give out blankets to others facing trauma, especially through an organization licensed to stitch on “Peanuts” artwork. And it’s not surprising that six months after Childs joined, her retiring coordinator asked her to take over.
When away from the Blue Iris, Childs coordinates her region of Project Linus through her Facebook group, which now numbers around 240 members. She invites anyone interested to join. She also collects donations, which can be blanket-making materials dropped on at the Blue Iris, or cash sent through the national Project Linus website, and marked for her chapter, officially (and alphabetically) titled Project Linus of Butte, Shasta, Siskiyou, Tehama, & Trinity Counties.
Closing remark for “Peanuts” fans: Now we know why Snoopy drives a Zamboni. •
Project Linus of Shasta, Butte, Siskiyou, Tehama & Trinity Counties
www.projectlinus.org/donate
(530) 227-3197
Find them on Facebook
Blue Iris Quilt Shoppe
9348 Deschutes Road, Suite D, Palo Cedro
www.blueirisquiltshoppe.com
(530) 547-2228
