With needle and thread, women sew comfort for cancer patients
04-02-2010Heather Hahn
Editor
TEXARKANA, Ark. — With thread, needles and scraps of colorful cloth, members of Sugar Hill United Methodist Church warm the heads and renew the spirits of cancer patients.Women in the church get together every other month to sew turbans and headscarves that they call “tiebacks” for those undergoing chemotherapy or nearing the end of their days. The decorative head coverings offer an alternative for those who find wigs uncomfortable or unaffordable.
Keta Gray, who leads the ministry, distributes the completed head coverings to area cancer treatment centers, local hospices and the American Red Cross.
“We’re trying to make people feel more comfortable,” said Gray, who herself is a cancer survivor. “Doing this makes you feel like a part of their lives. We let them know we care and we’re praying for them.”
Every turban and tieback comes with a label attached that reads, “A Gift of Love from Sugar Hill United Methodist Church.”
The ministry started in mid-2001 when then-church member Alice Raggett invited women in her Circle Sunday School Class to sew hope for the ailing. Raggett knew from experience how comforting the soft head-coverings could be. Fifteen years earlier, she had lost a kidney to cancer.
Initially, church members donated scraps to provide the ministry with fabric. But then the owners of local sewing stores and hobby shops learned of the ministry and started sending Sugar Hill UMC the unused remnants from their cloth bolts.
The ministry continued to attract volunteers. For about a year, one of the volunteers also sewed children’s caps for the Arkansas Children’s Hospital.
The ministry was going strong by 2004 when Raggett and her husband moved to Florida to be closer to family. But then Raggett’s cancer had returned, and she died in 2009. Still, Gray and Jean Wren, the wife of the church’s pastor emeritus Herbert Wren, made sure Raggett’s ministry remained stitched together.
The woman who made the children’s caps has since moved. But the women who remain continue to minister to the sick and dying.
Since Raggett started the ministry nine years ago, Sugar Hill UMC members have distributed more than 1,800 hats, turbans and tiebacks.
Serious fun
After a hiatus over Christmas, 15 women filled a Sunday School classroom on Feb. 16 for the first sewing day of the new year.
While their task was serious, the women’s mood was lighthearted. The staccato of women’s laughter frequently overpowered the whirring of sewing machines. The women talked about recent snowy weather and their families. Some teased Gray that they only showed up for the doughnuts she brought.
Many of the women agreed that the fellowship as much as the satisfaction of helping others keeps them involved in the ministry. Indeed even women who don’t sew are eager to help out by preparing the noontime meal.
“Not one of us is a native of Texarkana,” said Gerane McWilliams, one of the women preparing lunch. “This strengthens our connection with each other and with our faith.”
By noon, the women had completed 10 turbans and 10 tiebacks.
The vast majority of the women’s creations go to people they haven’t met and likely will never meet.
But their work has won several fans. Among them is Sarah Cooper, the volunteer coordinator for Hospice of Texarkana.
She visited on Feb 16 to pick up head coverings for clients who were losing their hair not because of cancer treatment but because of age or other conditions.
“We want to encourage them to get out and about,” Cooper said. “These turbans we hope will give them the confidence to do that.”
Help for loved ones
Still, some of the seamstresses knew their handiwork would end up in loved ones’ hands.
Marilyn Irwin, who has volunteered with the ministry since Raggett founded it, was at work on a turban for her daughter-in-law, who had been just diagnosed with the terminal cancer.
Dian LaVoice, who has been involved with the ministry for about a year and a half, said she recently sent a turban she had made to a friend undergoing cancer treatment in Houston, Texas.
“Cancer touches everyone,” LaVoice said.
She said her friend wrote a kind note, saying that the turban was perfect to wear at home when the wig seemed too hot.
“You don’t want to walk to the mailbox of go to the store with nothing on your head,” LaVoice said. “This gives her something cool to wear.”
One of the recent recipients of a Sugar Hill tieback is Jean Wren, who helped keep the ministry going after Raggett left and is now battling cancer herself.
Wren made a surprise visit to the Sugar Hill sewing circle on Feb. 16.
“I want to be the one out of the 10 lepers who comes back to say thank you,” she said, as she walked in wearing a snakeskin-patterned tieback. “I appreciate this.”
Wren faces an uncertain future, but she said she’s very grateful for the support she’s received from friends — not least of all the gift of a fashionable do-rag.
“It’s wonderful to be able to do this for others and now wear this,” she said.
