Posted on 01/06/2006 7:16:50 PM PST by rhema
In December 2004, Ginger Dosedel, an Air Force wife from Dayton, Ohio, was spending endless hours at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Her son Michael, then 11, was receiving postcancer physical therapy in an orthopedic unit, where he met soldiers who had been seriously wounded in Iraq. Michael knew what they were suffering. Until recently, like many of them, he had worn on his leg a large, unwieldy "fixator" -- a metal scaffold affixed to the bone with pins.
Jeans and sweatpants don't make it past the ankle when you're wearing a monstrosity like this. So Dosedel had sewn her son special fleece pants with one wide leg, which allowed him to move around in public with something approaching a young man's sense of comfort and style.
One day, Dosedel and Michael saw an injured soldier they knew being interviewed on TV. Because he wore a fixator, he had to appear in his open-in-the-back, drafty hospital gown. "I asked Michael if he would go on national TV wearing a hospital gown," recalls Dosedel.
" 'Well, Mom, no one's sewing special clothes for them,' he told me. 'You should sew for them.' "
After a week of Michael's persistent badgering, Dosedel gave in. She sewed some pants and modified boxer shorts and delivered them to Walter Reed, where grateful soldiers began clamoring for them. Then, on a visit to the Twin Cities at Christmas 2004, she enlisted Michele Cuppy of Burnsville and Debra Galligan of Apple Valley to help.
Sew Much Comfort was born.
"Our mission is to give our soldiers back a measure of dignity and comfort as they recover from their injuries," says Cuppy, an interior designer who, with Galligan and Dosedel, now devotes about 40 hours a week to running the unique nonprofit.
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
Cool story. Thanks for posting!
Love knows no bounds. This mom deserves a huge Semper Fi.
just wonderful!!
bttt
Ping to the VRWKNWC! You might be interested in this.
"Cuppy recounts the reaction of one of the first young recipients of Sew Much Comfort pants. "His nurses told him he couldn't receive his Purple Heart award wearing a hospital gown. He was completely dejected, because he had nothing else," she says. "When the nurses surprised him with a pair of our pants, he was ecstatic. At last, he could go downstairs with a sense of pride in his appearance."
Oh...man!
These folks are wonderful!
His "nurses" need to lose their commissions.
A beautiful story and beautiful people doing a beautiful thing.
Wonderful post. Thanks.
OK, maybe I didn't read closely enough.
Thanks for the ping. This is a wonderful project.
ping
Thanks for the ping! Not all angels wear wings.
This sounds like a great project!
I broke my ankle and a volunteer group at the Army hospital gave me some wonderful knitted "caps" to wear over my toes that were exposed by my cast. No sock was going to fit, that was for sure.
It was a very touching and practical gift.
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