VENTURA COUNTY LIFE : Knitters Blanket Area With Gifts for Children

As a child I needed something to cling to as much as the next guy, but I couldn’t grasp the power of the security blanket. I understood the power of the stuffed frog and the corduroy clown, but the blanket didn’t do it for me.

My brother was different. He would drag his security blanket from room to room, day after day, rubbing the yellowing material between his right thumb and forefinger in that meditative way children have. By the time he tired of the blanket it was paper-thin and in an advanced state of disintegration.

It was obvious the blanket meant something special to him, but what it was eluded me.

I remained unaware of the value of blankets to young children until I met Ruth Drobman, who is to security blankets what Michael Milken was to junk bonds. Where others saw stitched yarn, she saw opportunity.

Drobman is among 10 B’nai B’rith women in the Thousand Oaks-Agoura area who have knitted together for years. Drobman readily admits the knitting was just an excuse to get together and talk. But eventually, they got an idea. “As long as we’re getting together and knitting and talking and wasting time, instead of knitting for ourselves, we should do something for someone else,” Drobman said.

So they started donating their time--and talent--to Project Linus. Named after the Peanuts comic strip character known for his cloth obsession, the national nonprofit group donates handmade blankets to seriously ill and traumatized children around the world.

When I met her, Drobman was in a mild state of anxiety--facing a yarn shortage. Luckily, a yarn philanthropist came to her aid, and Drobman’s supply has since been restored. That is good news for her and good news for children throughout Southern California.

Since the inception of Project Linus in 1995, volunteers have created and donated more than 100,000 blankets. Drobman’s group alone has contributed 500 to local children.

“We get such satisfaction from it, knowing that children will hold on to them when they’re ill and in desperate need of holding something,” Drobman said.

It’s nice to know that in a world where it’s common to find a young child seeking comfort in a video game, blankets still have their place. But I still didn’t quite get the allure until I talked to Jeanine Doyle, Project Linus coordinator for Ventura County and the west San Fernando Valley.

“A blanket is a soothing object because it can be picked up, carried and taken wherever the child goes,” Doyle said. “The object is to make them feel comfortable and secure.”

In the past four years, Doyle’s and Drobman’s handiwork has soothed children at Casa Pacifica and at Los Robles Regional Medical Center’s neonatal clinic, among others.

Volunteers like Drobman rarely know anything about the children who receive their blankets. But John Sandbrook of Ventura is one recipient who was happy to talk about the difference it made for him.

Four years ago, when John was 12, he was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a potentially fatal disease that begins as a cancerous tumor in the muscle. As a chemotherapy patient at Childrens Hospital in Los Angeles, John spent many nights away from home.

For most of those long nights, John counted on a blue teddy bear for comfort.

“He had that teddy bear since he was a 2-year-old, but it got lost on one of the hospital stays. Some tears were shed on that,” Rick Sandbrook, John’s father, said. “That’s about the time Project Linus came along.”

The timing couldn’t have been better. The blanket became a constant companion.

“It was really sweet of Project Linus to do all that,” said John, whose cancer is in its third year of remission. “For kids, it means a lot just to know that someone out there wants them to get better and wants them to trust in something. The world ain’t that bad.”

“We still have the blanket somewhere,” said Rick Sandbrook. “You don’t get rid of something like that.”

There are plenty more coming from Drobman and her fellow knitters. “As long as we keep getting members in our group, we’ll keep knitting,” Drobman said.

As for me, I think I’ll call my mother to see how my frog and clown are doing.