Volunteers set sights on see-through masks
A few incidents sowed the seeds for Mask Force 2020’s next big project.
Ruth Dennison, a retired nurse from Lehigh Valley Health Network who helped coordinate the massive grassroots maskmaking effort in March, heard about a pregnant patient who relied on reading lips, so doctors had difficulty safely communicating with her through masks covering their mouths.
Dennison also encountered a man in Best Buy wearing a mask with a clear window over his mouth, and he told her, “I couldn’t exist without it.”
So she tried her hand at making a few samples of such a mask in early July, giving them to her daughter and her 5-yearold grandson, who is autistic and gets speech therapy.
“Instant light,” she said, describing his reaction. “It’s another door opening for expression and feeling.”
She turned to Facebook to once again rally the troops, but for a new purpose.
“As we begin to wind down with our Lehigh Valley community project I have wondered, what next?” she wrote July 17.
Demand had slowed, and volunteers had dropped off. The official count six weeks into the first project was 18,000 face masks, from the nimble hands of nearly 200 volunteers of “Mask Force 2020,” now a registered 501(c)3, one of the Lehigh Valley’s earliest and largest grassroots efforts to provide masks for front-line workers.
As the hot summer approached, hospitals and nursing homes told them they were up to speed, as companies like Majestic kicked in to fill demand. Volunteers grew tired, she said, their sense of purpose waning.
Now Dennison is pivoting and recruiting volunteers to create masks with a clear, vinyl mouth piece to benefit speech therapists, people with autism who rely on facial expressions, the hearing-impaired and others.
The group’s goal is to deliver 1,500 masks to Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Network, to benefit its dozens of speech therapists serving hundreds of clients.
And then to supply Lehigh Valley Hospital with “as many as they can make,” said LVHN’s major gift officer, Jane Nordell.
On a recent Saturday morning, Nordell visited Belfast Wesley United Methodist Church in Nazareth, where Dennison had a crew of about a half dozen people cutting pieces for maskmaking kits.
Joann Fabric and Craft Stores donated 25 yards of vinyl to get them started, which equates to about 4,000 masks.
“So many of our clinicians have expressed a need for this, and patients have expressed frustration with communication,” Nordell said. “As many as she can pump out, we’ll take.”
Mask Force has used the Belfast church space almost every Saturday for months. Last Saturday drew mostly long-timers to learn the new pattern, and some relative newcomers like 73-year-old Mark Theoret of Moore Township, who worked in textiles for 45 years.
“This is the largest group I’ve been with since the pandemic,” he said. “I’m just glad to help people.”
On Monday, Dennison delivered the first batch of about 75 masks to Good Shepherd. On Wednesday, the Banana Factory in Bethlehem opened its doors to her volunteers as a drop-off and pickup location for supplies.
They’ve taken a tip or two from others doing this work, like Katie Meyer in Bethlehem, who is part of a group of about 25 volunteers called Mask Making Mamas.
Toward the end of the school year, the group fielded a request about “peekaboo” masks from a child nursery in Nazareth, and from a teacher at Meyer’s child’s school who wanted to communicate better with her deaf mother.
Since then, the group has made close to 70 such masks.
As a substitute teacher, Meyer said she may use one herself come fall, depending on the classroom she works in.
“Little ones rely so much on visual cues, and kids on the autism spectrum really rely on facial cues for communication,” she said.
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. Other groups are finding different ways to help people with disabilities.
Mimi Ludwig, president of Autism Society Lehigh Valley, has been custom-making masks for teens and young adults she works with, tailoring the size to what would most easily stay on their faces and including patterns with their favorite cartoon characters on them.
One of Ludwig’s volunteers, Kathy Purcell, owner of Music Therapy Associates in Whitehall Township, enlisted her business-minded son to create a prototype for her patients.
He came up with a cloth attachment for face shields so her patients don’t have to wear face masks beneath face shields. This also gets around the potential issue of the clear vinyl patch fogging up.
With revitalized purpose,
Dennison hopes the volunteers come out of the woodwork as they did in March, because she can rattle off the names of many other people who could use the masks.
She thinks of people in the final stages of their lives, for example, who might be comforted to see a smile or other expression from a caregiver.
“There’s probably more need than anybody knows,” she said.
Information about how to get involved is at maskforce2020 .com.
Morning Call reporter Kayla Dwyer can be reached at 610-8206554 or at kdwyer@mcall.com.