May 2020 | 13
MarshallNewsMessenger.com
Masking Up To Save Others: Locals Construct Masks to Help Protect Citizens, Healthcare Workers By Bridget Oritigo and Jessica Harker News Messenger journalists
E
ast Texans have been banding together in myriad ways to help keep each other safe during the COVID-19 pandemic and one of those ways is by making homemade face masks for workers to wear as they go about providing needed services to the community. Waskom resident Della Alford said two Waskom quilting groups, Waskom Quilt Guild and the Faith Sewing Group joined forces in April to make 120 handmade face masks for East Texas Burger King workers. East Texas Baptist University’s Mask Ministry also got into the swing of things with about two dozen volunteers cutting cloths and filter fabrics, making ties and sewing together face masks to make more than 1,000 masks that were sent to ETBU graduates who are fighting the coronavirus pandemic on the frontlines. Some
of the masks also went to ETBU staff and faculty when they return to on-campus work. “A lot of us group members go down to the Burger King here in Waskom a lot so we are friends with the workers and managers there,” Alford said. “They reached out and asked us if we could make them 120 masks so we went and bought the fabric in Burger King’s colors, orange, green and beige and we sewed together double layered face masks.” The fabric and craft stores were all out of elastics to keep the masks on the workers’ heads so the quilters used ingenuity to make the masks stay secure. “We couldn’t find any elastics anywhere so we used headbands,” Alford said. By making handmade masks for the workers, ETBU and the Waskom quilting groups are saving precious PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) that could be sent to frontline nurses and doctors, Alford said.
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