Students drive effort to sew, donate masks

Chloe Van Duyne ‘23 has been keeping in touch with a family friend in the healthcare industry — and the friend’s situation is alarming.

She’s been wearing one face mask for the past few days, and has three on-call shifts in the next three days. Usually, she’d have multiple masks per day but has been making due with the same one. Based on the updates from this friend and reading the news, Van Duyne is concerned about the plight of health workers.

“I’ve looked online, and there are a lot of health providers that are getting coronavirus,” Van Duyne said. “They’re the ones risking their lives to help us, so I feel like they don’t have the tools to protect themselves. It’s a lot we’re asking them, to put their lives on the line for everybody else.”

Starting this week, Van Duyne and a few of her fellow Roanoke students are doing what they can to support health workers in need. Eddie Dixon ‘23, Tess Weidenkopf ‘22 and Van Duyne are spearheading Maroons Make Masks, a drive to get fellow students, staff and faculty to sew simple cloth masks.

They have a website that provides instructions on how to make masks and donate from home. The site also tracks the number of masks, goggles and surgical caps that the program donates. People can share photos of their masks or them working on their masks on the site. They're also encouraged to share photos on social media, with the hashtag #maroonstogether.

Donations are set to go to the Bradley Free Clinic in Roanoke, where one Roanoke junior is filling a key role as an intern during this time. If people have a preferred organization, they can donate elsewhere. 

Dixon said the point is just to get people active in making masks and caps. While the overarching goal of the project is to help those in need, Maroons Make Masks also allows people stuck in their homes to feel like they’re involved in the response to the pandemic.

“Some people may be bored and want to do something to help,” Dixon said. “Some people can feel helpless at this time, and this gives them a sense of, ‘Maybe I’m helping.’”

Weidenkopf is leading the sewing side of the operation. She said she was “obsessed” with the “Little House on the Prairie” books as a child and got very active in sewing and crafting. Now, she’s putting those skills to use. She’s going to hold a Zoom live video session every Wednesday night to teach people how to make these masks.

Weidenkopf said it doesn’t take long to make the masks. She can make one in three minutes with a sewing machine, and one in 10 minutes by hand-sewing. She works in a grocery store, and is hoping to make masks for her co-workers and her family so that heavy-duty manufactured masks can be saved for health workers.

“That way, all the manufactured masks can go to the hospitals, whereas we can use these masks,” Weidenkopf said. “Like Chloe said, we’re not really risking ourselves as much as people who are treating people with the virus.”

The endeavor springs out of the creation of the Students Interested in Careers in Healthcare (SICH) club that began this school year. Dixon, Van Duyne and Weidenkopf are pre-med and brought the club together after Dr. Tim Johann, associate professor of chemistry, told them at a retreat that the school used to have a similar club and there could still be interest in it.

The club is meant to get pre-med students connected and involved. The club’s first meeting came at a somewhat unfortunate time — the evening of March 11. That’s the day the College made the choice to send students home as a precaution in the face of the spread of COVID-19. As President Michael Maxey addressed hundreds of worried students in the quad that evening, SICH was holding its first meeting. Ten people showed up, which wasn’t a bad showing considering the circumstances.

Recently, Johann again reached out to the three leaders of the club. He said he’d seen examples of other schools doing mask drives and thought it would be a great opportunity for Roanoke students to help. He also pointed out that leading a project like this could jump-start SICH and get it some exposure.

So the three students decided to go for it, and quickly got the project under way. None of them are from the Roanoke area — Dixon is from North Carolina, Weidenkopf is from the D.C. area and Van Duyne is from New Jersey — but they want to help the Roanoke community by keeping those at the Bradley Free Clinic safe.

“I feel like Roanoke is a very ‘reaching out to our community’ kind of school,” Van Duyne said. “Even though we’re not with our Roanoke family right now, we’re doing what we can to help our home away from home.”

A strong start

The College’s chemistry department has already donated 60 pairs of goggles, which went to Carilion Clinic, Johann said. Doris Duff, who runs quality control for the Emergency Department at Carilion, is the mother of Emma Duff ‘20, and reached out to the College about possibly donating goggles. 

Johann rounded up 60 pairs of goggles, which help students protect their eyes while working with potentially harmful materials in the chemistry lab. At Carilion, they’re being used to help prevent virus transmission through eye contact, Johann said. 

Maroons Make Masks is also accepting donations of goggles.

Carilion has long been a valuable College partner, Johann said, and it was good to support them in this way.

“Roanoke College has a long history of supporting the surrounding community,” Johann said. “From volunteers at the Bradley Free Clinic to the Center for Community Health Innovation at Roanoke College, students, faculty, and staff are actively working to make the Roanoke Valley a better place. Here in the Chemistry Department, we’re happy to be a small part of that.”