Garner Retirees to the Rescue; Making Masks Makes a Difference in Local COVID-19 Battle
“We are just using what technology skills that we know how to do to meet the need. We’re all stuck at home with nothing to do. It kind of adds a little power to what we can do in our retirement,” said Nancy Cope, a retired educator. “We do not sell them, and we do not have any for sale. Our focus is healthcare and frontline workers like the police and the fire department.”
BY MARGARET DAMGHANI
An unexpected endeavor started in mid-March with an email sent to the students of a sewing class at Saint Andrews United Methodist Church looking for anyone interested in fulfilling a request for homemade cloth masks needed by a medical center in Elizabeth City.
In the weeks since then, an impromptu team of about 20 people, mostly residents of the Village at Aversboro retirement community, have contributed to the production and delivery of 721 masks to organizations near and far. After that first email and the accompanying pattern, the idea to create masks was put out through the Village’s messenger service.
“We are just using what technology skills that we know how to do to meet the need. We’re all stuck at home with nothing to do. It kind of adds a little power to what we can do in our retirement,” said Nancy Cope, a retired educator. “We do not sell them, and we do not have any for sale. Our focus is healthcare and frontline workers like the police and the fire department.”
It kind of adds a little power to what we can do in our retirement.”
- Nancy Cope
There are at least six sewers making two different types of masks, along with pattern cutters, a quality control person to snip the threads and insert filters, others help to prepare coffee filters to improve the masks efficacy, a courier, and those that donated materials all contributing to the team of people that have now been working at it for nearly a month.
“We have a system going. We have baskets on our porches, and the deliveries come in Ziploc bags and we leave them in the baskets for several hours, and some of us spray the bags before bringing it in the house,” Cope said.
They only exchange fabric, finished masks, and other supplies through the baskets and are adhering strictly to social distancing guidelines to protect everyone involved, including not accepting donations from the public.
“It really has been neat, the sharing, the community,” said Mary Gail Ellington, a retired nurse and Garner native. She, like many of the sewers, has spent full days sewing.
“It’s a need, and the love of Christ I have, to be his hands.”
- Mary Gail Ellington
The recipients range from Garner’s local first responders to numerous medical offices, hospitals and assisted living facilities, and even a few to caterers and individuals handing out meals to school children that are missing school lunches. The Garner police received 70 masks total, including 50 for their officers and 20 in smaller child sizes, made in kid-friendly fabrics as requested.
The sewers have gone to great care to pick out fabrics suited to the recipients, such as special fabric for the fire department and the cheerful ones for nurses and police officers.
The supplies to create this volume of masks come from a variety of fortuitous circumstances. Spearheaders Cope and Ellington both run Bless This Child programs at their churches𑁋Saint Andrews United and Plymouth Church, where Ellington’s son is a pastor.
The programs provide homemade clothing to children in the U.S and during mission trips abroad, and thus there was already a network of people who, as luck would have it, have an abundance of scraps saved that are too small to do much else with.
Garner Officers Cameron Driver and PL Kevin Pena sporting their Garner grown face masks.
One current issue for anyone producing masks is obtaining enough elastic, which has become nearly impossible to find locally and across the country. Ellington just so happened to have an abundance of elastic she had held onto for years, ever since a local store changed hands, enabling her to give away 10 yards or so to others.
“‘Okay God, you showed me what I’m going to do with that elastic.’” Ellington said. She had recently been wondering if she should just throw it out after holding onto it for so long. “That first week when everybody was sewing, I think I’m the only one in Garner that had elastic.”
The group also received more than one donation from a quilting store in Angier, Sew There. Owner Bonnie Glover has been giving sewers between 10 and 20 yards of elastic at a time, according to Cope.
“Our neighbors were a tremendous source, and the lady at the quilt store (Sew There), Bonnie (Glover), has been very helpful,”
- Nancy Cope
“Our neighbors were a tremendous source, and the lady at the quilt store, Bonnie, has been very helpful,” Cope said. “Just about everybody in this neighborhood found elastic at their house, so we had many sources of elastic...One of our sewers brought me 288 yards of elastic. 288 yards for me and 288 yards for her. I’ve already shared quite a bit of it.”
Jana Soward with Johnston County Pediatrics was one of the first to receive a Garner grown mask.
The spirit of sharing seems to permeate everything the neighbors do, and the requests have not slowed down since they started, though they managed to complete all of the larger requests just before Easter Sunday. They have even begun sending masks by mail to family members and have a list of at-risk residents of their community that may need a mask for medical appointments who will get extra.
Cope said they will continue “As long as we’ve got energy and threads and elastic. Every time we think we’ve finished our list, somebody else calls.”
You Probably Don’t Know How Much You are Going to Miss Brandon Zuidema
It is hard to conceive of a better police chief than Garner’s Brandon Zuidema, the energetic, community-focused chief who has led the Garner force for 10 years and gained statewide, national and international recognition in the process.
Photo by Rick Mercier
An era is ending in Garner and you probably didn’t notice.
It is hard to conceive of a better police chief than Garner’s Brandon Zuidema, the energetic, community-focused chief who has led the Garner force for 10 years and gained statewide, national and international recognition in the process.
He is taking a position as an assistant town manager in Morrisville, a career change that he knew was coming eventually and is suddenly here after 26 ½ years of carrying a gun, driving a car with blue lights and rushing into places as most people rush out.
Zuidema, a native of New York, did his job as few others have. We were lucky to have him. We’re going to miss him.
He came to Garner from Lynchburg, Va., where he was a police captain. Hardin Watkins, then the town manager, interviewed him for four and a half hours before deciding he was the guy who could move a very good police department to the next level.
But Watkins probably couldn’t imagine that he was hiring a man who is not only held in high esteem in the county, but also in the state. And in the nation. And all around the globe.
You probably didn’t know that either.
That’s not surprising. Zuidema does many things well, but commanding the stage is not one of them, unless you count his performance in a play about the 1987 football team. He believed in being involved in the community and agreed to take the role of Chris Dorman, a fiery fullback and linebacker. Zuidema played Dorman by being Brandon Zuidema on stage.
There was a toughness inherent in both. Fearless. Motivated. No backing down to a challenge. And just as importantly, living by the idea of it doesn’t matter who gets the credit as long as the job gets done.
This is the guy who has walked in our midst, enjoying almost every day protecting and serving the people of Garner.
He told an overflow group at the Garner Civitan Clubhouse, a place where he spent many hours in community service, that he enjoyed most days.
Photo by Rick Mercier
Not all the days were filled with fighting crime, though. There were many discussions about “birds, hens, deer” and the other problems that crop up in a community. Like traffic. And a dead animal on the road.
All the problems were important to someone and he treated them as such.
He was thankful for the people that he worked with. He called them “good folks” and said that he pursued the job in Garner 10 years ago because it was big enough to present law enforcement challenges and small enough to know the people that he was working with.
Rodney Dickerson, the town manager, summed up the feelings of many of the people at the dinner. Dickerson said he was sorry to see the Chief leave, but happy for him to begin this next phase of his career. Everybody knew this day was coming. Most everybody is sad that has come now.
Zuidema said people had asked him if he knew what he was doing. He said he hoped so. This day has been a long time in coming and it is now time to start a new challenge.
He handled the old challenges very well.
“Garner is a better because he was here,” said Matt Poole, the Garner fire chief.
Zuidema leaves a department that is a flagship agency, a department that has impacted police departments all over the state.
The speakers at the dinner, many of them the chiefs of police in other communities, lauded Zuidema as a servant leader chief. No task was beneath him, nor any task too tough to tackle.
He has been recognized on the state, national and international level. He has been chairman of the SafeShield Committee of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. The SafeShield Committee is dedicated to protecting law enforcement officers.
Some of the programs that he developed in Garner have been emulated in other places. One of his favorites was the Garner P.A.A.L. program (Police Athletic/Activities League). P.A.A.L. is a nonprofit organization that provides opportunities to enhance youth and family achievement while improving police-community relationships and reducing delinquency in our community.
He was a chief that took care of the immediate while looking to the future.
“I look forward to seeing our first law enforcement officer from the P.A.A.L. program,” he said. “I am so glad that we started it.”
And the folks in Garner are so glad that he has been a part of our lives for 10 years, even though many of us never noticed.