Volunteer matching service, mask makers epitomize compassionate pandemic response
by Judy Stringer
While most of us were still adjusting to the sobering reality of a statewide COVID-19 shutdown, dozens of generous Hudsonites sprang into action, using their time, talent and resources to help others.
The staff at Western Reserve Academy, for example, powered up the school’s laser cutters and 3D printers to make plexiglas medical face shields, which WRA donated to hospital staff and first responders. A local Girl Scout troop gifted hundreds of cookie boxes to first responders from Akron to Cleveland, and two women created an Adopt-a-Senior program to support and encourage graduates, who are missing sacred milestones as a result of the pandemic.
The newly launched Hudson Oh Helps organization and an army of tireless mask makers are two more examples of how industrious residents rose to the occasion.
Todd Zedak formed Hudson Oh Helps after noticing a number of posts on the Hudson Roundtable Facebook page from community members who wanted to assist those in need with tasks like grocery shopping or picking up medications during the early days of the shutdown.
“There were so many people who are eager and happy to help, but if you were someone who needed help, you’d have to remember the post and/or scroll through all the posts looking for the right one,” he said.
With the help of Hudson High School senior Sean Scarnecchia, Zedak created a website (hudsonohhelps.org) to connect people who need help with available volunteers. Both those seeking help and those wanting to help can fill out online forms, which are used to identify matchups. The group also manages a help hotline.
“It’s envisioned to be a neighbor-to-neighbor approach,” Zedak said. “If you knew your neighbor needed milk but couldn’t go out or needed help mowing the lawn, you’d help them out. We wanted to make those neighborly connections.”
He and other Hudson Oh Helps organizers feared too many at-risk citizens would run to the store or pharmacy rather than ask complete strangers to do it for them. If they know that “helper” lives down the street, however, they might be more willing to seek the assistance, Zedak said.
To that end, the organization works on matches who are as closely located as possible.
The site currently has about 120 registered volunteers, and about 20 different assistance requests have been made online or via the hotline. Many of those involve running errands like getting groceries, but volunteers have also provided yard work or delivered hot meals. Zadek is particularly proud of helping connect a local nurse – who didn’t have time to put together an Easter basket for her children because of the pandemic – with a neighbor who was “thrilled” to do it for her.
He added that Hudson OH Helps has received a few requests for “bigger needs” like money or assistance with food on a longer term basis, which it referred to other local organizations like Hudson Food Pantry and Helping Hands.
“We also have those phone numbers and [website] links on our site,” he said.
Recently, enough funds were raised to purchase signs advertising Hudson Oh Helps services. Zedak said five of those 20 assistance requests came in after the signs went up around town.
“If it were only one additional call, it would have been worth it,” he said.
Masking heros
Crafty Hudson area residents are responsible for literally thousands of fabric masks being donated to frontline medical and safety personnel as well.
One of the community’s most prolific groups “Hudson Face Masks Gone Viral” sewed nearly 7,000 masks, which were provided to first responders across the region, including those at Mercy Medical Center, Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals, the Hudson Police department and a number of nursing homes, according to organizer MJ Lehman. She and Kelly Turner started the Facebook group in early March after their friend Donna Pinto sent them a video of how to make a mask. Soon the two began recruiting supplies and volunteers primarily via Facebook.
Lehman credits a large fabric donation – “hundreds and hundreds of yards,” she said – from Teri Thom, who also lives in Hudson, with allowing the organization to operate on a very limited budget. Other friends and community members sent in material and cash donations as well.
At its height, Hudson Face Masks Gone Viral had as many as 100 people helping with everything from sourcing materials and cutting fabric to distributing mask-making kits and delivering finished masks.
“It was a lot of work, but fun, and helped pass the time, especially in the beginning when really there was nothing else you could do,” she said.
A similar sentiment was echoed by mask makers Dr. Caroline Sokol and Maryann Wohlwend, who both said sewing masks was a great way to avoid “idle hands” while helping in the fight against COVID.
Wohlwend has personally made and donated over 1,400 masks. The fashion design major once ran a handbag-making business called Maryann Designs and later a nonprofit named Lydia’s Purse, but now works at the Akron Art Museum. When coronavirus shut the museum down, she sought refuge in sewing.
“By the morning of March 21, I knew what I was going to be doing,” Wohlwend. “Since that day, my sewing machine has been out on the dining room table, and I have been sewing on and off around the clock.”
Her masks have landed at area hospitals, nursing homes and senior groups as well as her son’s Naval Base and the hard hit Navajo Nation, among many other destinations.
Sokol, who is a physician with St. Joseph Warren Hospital, began making masks for herself and her colleagues casually as far back as the second week of March, but was more than eager to become part of the Mask Our Heroes group when it launched in April. The organization was started by two University of Akron graduates in response to a shortage of medical masks at Akron Children’s Hospital.
“They would provide cut fabric, which made it go a lot faster, and they did not really care where [the masks] went as long as it was going to a first responder,” Sokol said.
She estimates she’s made about 300 masks – many of them for doctors, nurses and even security officers and the hospital’s cleaning crew. Sokol takes her sewing machine to work and sets it up in the doctor’s lounge so she can sew during downtimes. “Keeping your hands busy is good therapy,” she said.
Feature image photo caption: Hudson resident Caroline Sokol was one of dozens of community members who sprang into action to provide coverings to frontline health care workers.
