40,000 and Counting — A Huge Hug of Bears
It’s not just a few teddy bears a week; it can be as many as 60-80 every couple of weeks. And they add up—to 40,000 teddy bears! Yep, the volunteers of the St. Luke’s Boise (Idaho) Teddy Bear Group sewed their 40,000th bear in mid-January 2019!
Started in 1998 by a pediatric nurse for the children’s surgical recovery unit of St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital in Boise, the group of ladies make the bears for children facing procedures at the hospital—procedures ranging from minor to major, x-rays to surgery–needing something to hold on to for comfort (the children can’t bring anything with them from home because it’s not sterile). And even if it’s a parent who’s ill, the child can get a teddy bear because it’s frightening for them to see a parent go to the hospital.
What better than a teddy bear? And so the labor of love began, and so it continues. And although the design may have changed somewhat over the years (see top picture) it’s still a teddy bear.
The ladies meet once a week, Thursday mornings, from 8:30 to noon, in the Boise, Idaho, Senior Center, about 15-18 ladies each week. One is 90; two more will turn 90 in the spring of 2019. They started in a room at St. Luke’s, but outgrew it a year ago. The Senior Center now gives them a room plus a locked storage cabinet for their supplies. And on Thursday mornings a maintenance man unlocks the storage cabinet and puts their supplies in the room for them.
There the ladies cut the fabric, sew the pieces together and stuff the bears, much like an assembly line. Each lady does her part. The original bears were made from cloth; now they’re flannel because it’s more warm and cuddly. They use juvenile prints so the bears are fun to look at, such as animals and even Star Wars. They also don’t make the faces; the embroidered faces come from Taiwan because, it seems, nobody mass produces embroidered products in the U.S. any more.
At first, the ladies paid for their supplies out of their own pockets, but that grew to be too expensive. So the volunteer auxiliary now financially supports the project, which has proved to be a blessing. They also accept donations of materials; one estate brought them spools and spools of thread!
Sometimes they make only a few bears in a morning; other times it’s a lot. There are more stuffers than sewers, so some of the ladies will take the fabric cutouts home to sew and bring them back the next week to be stuffed. Talk about stuffing—in one week alone recently, they went through two 10-pound bags of stuffing!
The children’s reaction? They love their teddy bears! One day a young girl of about 10-12 years old came into the volunteers’ work room when it was still at the hospital; she had had 27 procedures and was in for her last, and 28th, one. The girl had saved all 27 of her teddy bears, and had even named them—after her nurses. Even boys and teenagers like the bears. One boy, now in his 20’s, told the volunteers he still has his bear!
Only one bear was ever rejected by a child, and that was when the girl was told by the nurse that the procedure wouldn’t hurt—and it did! The girl got so mad she threw the bear at the nurse, and it wound up on the floor. The bear was taken home by one of the volunteers, washed, sterilized, and put back in the box going to St. Luke’s.
As if they don’t have enough work to do to supply the hospital with teddy bears, the group has recently taken on another project—a children’s shelter where children up to youths have been pulled out of their homes because of abuse. They leave their homes with nothing but the clothes they are wearing, so giving them a teddy bear makes it possible for them to have a toy all their own.
Besides the satisfaction they get from making teddy bears for St. Luke’s young patients, what would the ladies want? According to volunteer Evelyn Behneke, that other hospitals will start similar programs making teddy bears for their patients.
For who doesn’t love a cuddly teddy bear?
(Note: photos used with permission of St. Luke’s Health System, Boise, Idaho)