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Ailing Kids Blanketed With Warmth

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By MEGAN HUSSEY, Tribune correspondent

Published: November 25, 2007

PORT RICHEY - Hoping the green fleece baby blanket she made in her consumer science class might comfort a critically ill child, Samantha Martin included designs she thought might be soothing for a youngster, such as a rattle, duck and horse.

Martin, 14, and her classmates in Sue Evanoski's eighth-grade class at Chasco Middle School spent this semester making blankets for children with cancer. This month, they gave them to Hernando-Pasco Hospice to distribute.

"I feel good doing this because my grandmother died of cancer," Martin said.

Though hospice works with just a handful of children with cancer, some of the blankets already have found homes.

Steve Brown, a grief counselor who accepted the blankets and spoke to Evanoski's class, said he left two with a 17-year-old New Port Richey boy he visited after leaving Chasco Middle.

"The odds of that happening are almost nil," said Brown. "The timing was almost providential. It was just destiny."

The teen, who was diagnosed with Stage 4 Hodgkin's lymphoma in September, is one of three children with cancer on Brown's caseload. Even though the blankets were designed for infants and young children, the boy gravitated to a baby blue blanket with a hood, which will help keep his head warm, and a bright yellow one with a genie-themed design.

"He was so thrilled with this," Brown said. "He opened up that bag, and the first one he saw was baby blue, and he said, 'Baby blue is my favorite color.'"

The project also carried special meaning for the 15 students who made the blankets.

"This was a chance for these students to do something productive and feel good about it," Evanoski said.

Working with fleece, thread and patterns depicting everything from dogs to Disney characters, the students designed the blankets themselves and used an embroidery machine to finish them. With a little help from their teacher, students cut the fleece, added the fringe and worked with two embroidery machines.

The blankets were as varied as they were colorful. Truman Woodworth, 13, designed a checkered red, pink and purple blanket with a butterfly design. Fourteen-year-old David Martinez went with a purple blanket with fringes and images of blue fish.

Laura Kairaityte, 14, made a purple blanket with pink flowers and fringes.

"It felt good to know the blankets we put so much hard work into will go to someone who needs and enjoys them," she said.

The idea behind the project was to give the students practice with the skills they were learning in class and to give them a way to directly help other kids, Evanoski said.

"I wanted them to have a sense of purpose, something aside from their own circumstances," she said.

Evanoski remembered her experiences with her son, who was in and out of hospitals as a child, and how many of the children she saw didn't have pillows, blankets or things to help them through those difficult experiences. So she asked the school social worker to find an agency that worked with children.

Brown said he had never seen a project where children had reached out to help other children with cancer.

He may see it again, though. Provided she can make the financing work, Evanoski said she would do the project with future classes.

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