Linda Clark’s years of dedication to knitting and crocheting hats for premature infants began with the red-yarn-filled basket her late mother left behind.
Clark, 70, a grandmother of nine living in Knoxville, Tennessee, says she discovered the basket and a preemie hat pattern in her mother’s apartment in Phoenix after her death about a decade ago.
“I (wondered) what she was going to do with it,” Clark told USA TODAY.
A note on a small card revealed both an answer and opportunity to honor her mom.
“She was making it for the society for babies that had heart issues, so I took the yarn, made the hats and sent it to them,” Clark said.
Since then, Clark has devoted spare time to creating hundreds of colorful and comfortable hats and blankets for cancer patients, the elderly in senior living facilities and premature babies in East Tennessee Children’s Hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit. Over the past year, she started creating tiny graduation caps for babies leaving the NICU.
The retired missionary and teacher, who says she enjoys keeping her hands busy, can make a preemie hat in about 20 minutes.
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“I’ll get a color yarn and I’ll make four or five sizes of hats, little to big, because preemies can come in all sizes,” Clark said.
Clark has never charged money for her designs and has no plans to sell them.
“I want to do it out of the love of my heart, I just want to give back,” Clark said.
‘Helping a parent deal with this’
Clark taught herself to knit and crochet while she and her husband worked in Chile as missionaries for 16 years. After she finished where her mother left off, she continued searching for places to send her creations.
“I sent a lot to a North Carolina group, I did a lot of cancer hats for several years,” Clark said.
Mailing fees and yarn costs began adding up, so Clark searched for donation opportunities in Knoxville. It’s how she began giving hats and blankets to East Tennessee Children’s Hospital about four years ago.
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The grandmother spends about six hours a day creating a variety of colored hats for different seasons. She’s now working on spring and Easter-themed caps. Clark aims to bring 50 to 75 hats to the hospital each month, she said.
“Sometimes, the baby doesn’t make it, then the mother has a hat and a blanket as a memory of her baby, which is really what tugged at my heart to want to do it,” Clark said.
“I hope I’m making somebody happy, I hope I’m helping a parent deal with this.”
‘It means a lot to us’
The Givens family, who welcomed Grady Givens into the world last Halloween, benefited from Clark’s generosity.
During a mostly smooth first pregnancy, real estate agent Katie Givens, 35, birthed her son six weeks early after physicians noticed the baby wasn’t moving as it should in the womb.
Grady was transported from his birth hospital to East Tennessee Children’s NICU, where it took doctors five weeks to diagnose him with neonatal onset multisystem inflammatory disease, or NOMID. The rare disorder can cause inflammation and tissue damage that affects the skin, joints and nervous system, according to the National Institutes of Health.
“There’s about 100 people in the world that have this disease and about 50 that they know of in the United States,” Grady’s father, Jared Givens, told USA TODAY.
Grady has been “doing great” while on treatment, his parents said. He went home shortly before Christmas, WBIR Channel 10 in Knoxville reported.
He wore one of Clark’s homemade graduation caps as he finished his time in the NICU.
“We are so grateful that someone put the time, effort and creativity into doing something for us and for people they don’t know, it means a lot to us,” Katie Givens said. “Having our little graduation for Grady is something we’ll always remember.”