Creating Hope by the Capful

It’s 9:30 Thursday morning, and like clockwork, Lee, Annelie and Jan are knitting, pearling and working glue guns at the West Valley Jewish Community Center for the sake of sick children throughout Southern California and beyond.

Before lunchtime, these women and a dozen others will finish about 100 knitted stocking and decorated baseball caps for children with cancer at UCLA, Northridge Hospital Medical Center, Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles and City of Hope, to name a few.

“I’m in a bug mood today,” says West Hills resident Jan Kanowitz, as she glues plastic ants and silk leaves onto a beige cap.

Whether it’s a baseball cap decorated with insects or a multicolored beret with a classic knit and pearl pattern, both kinds of hats can nicely cover up bald patches left after chemotherapy.

“If you’re wearing a really cool hat, nobody’s going to notice that your hair is gone,” a 16-year-old cancer patient once told Kids Kaps With Love organizers.

Kids Kaps With Love began creating and supplying hats to area hospitals for sick kids in 1995. A year later, the nonprofit group was fulfilling requests from hospitals in Boston, North Carolina, Tennessee and more than 20 Ronald McDonald Houses throughout the country that provide temporary housing for sick children and their families during treatment.

Last year the woman shipped 12,000 such hats, including some for children with AIDS. And recently they’ve added knitted pink and blue booties and caps for premature babies.

“We need to belt all these hats out as soon as possible,” said 73-year-old Cherie Tibor.

Tibor worked before retirement as a fashion illustrator--and it shows.

The Tarzana resident recently took leftover twig shavings headed for the waste basket and fashioned them into curled whiskers for a baseball cap designed like a dog’s head. Fuzzy red ears and a white cotton pompom nose in the middle and, viola, another masterpiece.

The women pause from their knitting and gluing for a moment to admire Tibor’s latest ingenious creation.

There’s a child out there who is really going to love that one, they all agree.

The women get as much out of Kids Kaps With Love’s Thursday work sessions as the children who receive the hats.

“I like connecting with the other ladies,” Tarzana resident Teri Ansel said. “We chitchat.”

A handful of the most dedicated milliners even take their work home. “I’ve had too much cancer in my family to not pay back,” said 83-year-old Lillian Cohen, who often churns out a hat and matching booties while watching television at night.

“It just takes a few hours and you’re done,” she shrugged.

The women’s needles click in between conversation at one table. The larger group of gluers eyeballs its creations on white head mannequins.

“It used to be the knitters and the gluers and never the twain shall meet,” laughed Marge Wollman. “But now, women often bounce back and forth between tables, wherever the conversation is the liveliest.”

Elaine Mandler, a 76-year-old knitter from Encino, has volunteered with Kids Kaps With Love since she became a widow three years ago. “I was looking for something to fill the gaps,” she said while threading tiny plastic baseballs and bats onto a Dodger-themed knitted cap. “I try and put a little whimsy in my hats.”

Almost any design is possible for both the knitters and the gluers. The women chose from bins filled with plastic lizards and elephants, shells, toy cars, beads, buttons and bows. Organizers have been told that children love the hats so much that they often have difficulty choosing one.

“These children are going through an awful lot,” Mandler said. “If these hats put a smile on their faces, that’s good.”

The group has met every Thursday morning at the West Hills community center since the group’s founding. Once in a while the room goes dark for a holiday and some women miss for an occasional doctor’s appointment. But usually attendance is pretty steady and can reach as high as 40. Area students sometimes join in the fun to fulfill community service requirements at some schools.

“Thursdays are my favorite mornings,” said Elaine Lerner. She doesn’t knit or glue, but organizes the group, yells out accolades, reads thank-you notes from hospitals, raises funds and buys tubs and tubs of supplies. “We are an extended family.”

Lerner estimates the operation runs on about $10,000 a year, provided by cash donations from corporations and foundations. Often the group will get supplies too, like bags of yarn in all shades.

“You don’t know what you’re going to make until you see the yarn,” Cohen said. “These are all handmade. There’s nothing else like it.”

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