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| Contributed photo Phyllis Hutchins of Chapman is quite crafty when it comes to making toys and other treasures to contribute to worthy endeavors like the United Way’s Santa’s Sleigh and Linus projects. Together with her husband Leonard, the couple have put their talents toward making life brighter for many in Aroostook, young and old. They invite others to do the same. |
By Phyllis Hutchins
Special to the Aroostook Republican
At age 82 (pushing 83), confined mostly to a wheel chair, and one eye legally blind, I am a very lucky old woman because I am not at all useless and I have “a project.”
Perhaps my brother, Herbert, planted the seed for my project during Great Depression winter evenings, as I remember him sitting in an upstairs room near a warm chimney, beside a table and a kerosene lamp, after the day’s farm chores were done as he whittled and whittled and whittled making gifts for us. He made a pencil box for me, and in my family of eight children, I had something of my very own. I prized that pencil box, but over the years I lost both my brother and my pencil box.
During those years I grew, married and had children. My husband, Leonard, made toy trucks and doll cribs and I lived the joy of painting toys and making doll clothes and crib sheets, blankets, and pillows and I remembered my pencil box. Our next generation yielded all boys, but it was fun to paint toy trucks and cars for them and we still have a shelf full of those toys although I wish I had my pencil box to add to the collection.
Retired, we had time to make lots of toys, but it’s a long time between generations when there are no little ones around and over those years we acquired a nagging useless feeling. On the other hand we thought that the United Way of Aroostook’s Santa’s Sleigh project was an application of genius and although we bought toys and contributed year after year, it wasn’t as much fun as making the toys ourselves.
Sometimes it takes a long, long time for the obvious to become an idea and finally we wondered if the United Way of Aroostook could or would use homemade toys. These toys would not be as smooth and shiny as store-bought things —but they would be homemade and we could furnish more of them than we could buy for the Santa’s Sleigh Project. We decided to take our chances, make something and ask. So, Leonard made two doll cribs and again I lived the joy of painting and sewing doll things, all the while wondering if our work would be acceptable.
Our apprehension was rewarded when the ladies at the United Way of Aroostook had places for our work and several hundred more pieces in years to come. (That number is not exaggerated.) Wow! I had my project. Leonard and I listened to suggestions, looked again at the toys our children and grandchildren used and then designed a line of toys to meet the United Way’s needs — cribs, high-chairs, teddy bear chairs (rockers work well on teddy-bear chairs), pickups, trucks and tractors with trailers. The United Way of Aroostook has places for them all. My favorite job for the project is tacking a doll crib-sized blanket which is something that every old woman should do and by the way, we have a 90-year-old friend who embroiders doll crib blankets for the project and they are beautiful.
As noted before, sometimes the obvious eludes becoming an idea and even then it needs help. Leonard saw an article on TV about many Houlton women making “Linus” blankets, which are child-sized blankets. Why, we wondered, would so many ladies in Houlton all make the same item, and then Leonard checked the Linus Program on his computer to find that the effort is international. When we recalled that our friends at the United Way of Aroostook needed several hundred items just for Aroostook County and that Linus is in the Peanuts comic strip needed his blanket for security we began to wonder how many kids need that security and at that point my project became bigger than me. So, I joined the Houlton ladies along with a lot of others who make the Linus blankets — but I still make the crib blankets too, of course, and my friends at the United Way of Aroostook and in Marden’s fabric corner, which is the local Linus blanket place, are there to help.
Please join us.
