A small stitch of compassion becomes someone’s lifeline

I was attending Temple University in Philadelphia during the tumultuous years of the Vietnam War. Many of my friends were drafted, and a few didn’t come back. It was the practice on campus to wear a bracelet with a soldier’s name on it in order to pray for his safe return. My father, who worked at the Philadelphia Navy Yard building aircraft carriers like the Kitty Hawk, heard rumors that the soldier whose name I wore had returned to the local VA hospital. He asked me if I wanted to visit him, and I said yes.

Standing at the foot of his hospital bed with the pungent antiseptic smells of a hospital room, I could see that he was around my age, but he had come home without arms or legs. Courageously, he tried to make a joke about being a basket case to ease my shock, but I couldn’t stop myself from crying and the tears flowed. At that moment, I made a promise that I have kept for over 50 years: to serve those who serve us.

Galvanizing the shuls in Northeast Philly was an act of love. Caring folks collected tons of necessities like toilet paper and socks. At the time, I was an inner-city schoolteacher and had met some amazing women who were stationed at the Willow Grove Naval Air Station. They were volunteers at my school, helping children to learn to read, and one day I asked if they could give me a hand transporting supplies requested by soldiers who were serving in Operation Desert Storm. A caravan of three military trucks was subsequently stuffed to the brim with toilet paper, toiletries and other necessities. But even though everyone was thrilled and cheering as the trucks trundled away, that wasn’t personal enough for me. I wanted to express my hakaras hatov to every man and woman in the military. The problem was that all the secular organizations I joined sent out care packages for their holidays, so I asked Hashem, “What about our people?”

The idea came to me through an old edition of Guideposts Magazine, which contained a few lines about a female soldier who had found a crumpled pillowcase with a watermelon pattern that had reminded her of home. That’s it! I thought to myself. There was my answer.

I eventually moved to the wonderful Jewish community in Pikesville, Maryland, following my retirement after decades of teaching in Philly. I then got a job as the Middle School English Department chair at the Talmudical Academy of Baltimore and started teaching again. Here my story takes another twist.

While shopping at Seven Mile Market one day, I saw a sign soliciting support for KosherTroops.com, a group that is headquartered in Lakewood, New Jersey. I called and told them that I sewed beautiful pillowcases for members of the military and asked if they would be interested. The two women cofounders were curious, because they had never heard of such a project, so I sent them three samples. They were thrilled, and every year since then I have involved my eighth grade students in this chesed. The pillowcases are included in Pesach care packages and shipped all over the world to places like Afghanistan, Kuwait and even submarines, essentially wherever a Jewish soldier serves. Each pillowcase is wrapped in cellophane and always includes a personal note of gratitude. I believe that the best way to influence teenagers is to model compassionate behavior. My goal is to send 1,000 pillowcases.

However, after more than five decades, I began to wonder if the pillowcases were still needed, and for the second time I asked Hashem if I should continue.

About two weeks later, I was poised for Black Friday shopping at the local fabric store. My cart was overflowing with bolts of bright, colorful prints of galaxies and underwater scenes. When the employee at the cutting table asked me what I was going to sew with all that fabric, I replied, “I make pillowcases for the military.”

This woman, whom I had never seen before, replied, “I just got back from Afghanistan two weeks ago, and while I was there I received a beautiful pillowcase made out of a blooming cactus print.”

In slow motion, as I was taking the bolts of fabric out of the cart to pile on the cutting table, I tried to sound casual. “By any chance, was the cuff of the pillowcase adorned with underwater pebbles?” I asked her. We both froze. Time had stopped. She then came out from behind the table and bent down—she must have been six-foot-five—and gave me a hug. “You saved my life!” she said. To which I said humbly, “It was only a pillowcase.”

“No, you don’t understand!” she insisted. “Living in the desert for two years and not seeing my husband and children was unbearably depressing. I had thoughts of giving up, as so many others had. Then I looked over at my cot and saw your pillowcase and said to myself, ‘If someone 7,000 miles away could care enough to make this for me, I can make it home.’ And I did.”

I closed my eyes and whispered heavenward, “Message received.”