Editor’s Note: Residents have been eager to tell us about the positive things people are doing to help their communities through the COVID-19 pandemic. Though we have covered mask-making efforts thoroughly, here are a few vignettes detailing the work of three more individuals making masks and face shields that have not been included in previous articles.
The man who lives in the pale blue house on North Cross Road in Gill is named Charles St. Germain. But the actual saints, he said, are those working in health care.
That’s why the retiree and husband of a Charlene Manor Extended Care facility nurse decided to roll up his sleeves and assemble face shields that medical professionals on the front lines can wear to protect themselves against the novel coronavirus.
“I felt that there was a niche that I could fill,” the 69-year-old said, adding that health care workers have been extremely grateful to him for the donations. “I’ve heard that they’re easy to clean, they store flat and they’re better than what they had. It makes me feel good that they’re relatively easy to make and well-appreciated.”
St. Germain said he started his mission in mid-April and had made roughly 700 face shields, though he has committed to constructing more than 500 more. He has donated shields to Charlene Manor as well as Poet’s Seat Health Care Center and Buckley HealthCare Center. St. Germain mentioned he has committed to making 250 for the Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke (150 of which are completed) and 500 for Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton (with 100 finished so far).
St. Germain explained the face shields are made from 20-gauge vinyl plastic and come with a foam forehead pad and adjustable elastic straps. They protect from the top of one’s forehead to below the chin.
In his clean, orderly garage, he works on the shields with a setup and flow one might expect from a civil engineer. His admiration for health care workers has only intensified since January 2019, when he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer that affects plasma cells. St. Germain counts himself as blessed because, save for fatigue, he has few symptoms of the disease and few side effects of the treatment, which he receives at the D’Amour Center for Cancer Care in Springfield.
St. Germain believes focusing on making face shields has been good for him.
“It’s something to look forward to,” he said, “and getting good feedback makes it all worthwhile.”
St. Germain has set up a Facebook page, Chas’s Saint Face Shields Fundraiser, to raise money to help him purchase the materials to make face shields. The page can be found at bit.ly/3fHRlOZ.
Katherine Bruffee Maleno, regent of the Northampton-based Betty Allen Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, started making masks when the organization took on the cause. DAR is a non-profit lineage-based membership service organization for women directly descended from a person involved in the American war for independence.
Maleno, 64, who works at Greenfield Community College, said she has made over 350 masks. She started assembling them around March 22 and has given them to six local health care facilities.
“There was a need (for masks), and it basically comes down to that,” she said of her decision to participate. “It’s something I can do to help.”
She compared mask-making during the COVID-19 pandemic to volunteering to roll bandages for organizations like the American Red Cross during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which killed 675,000 in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Janice Fuller, 74, has made more than 100 masks, having started when the need for them began receiving media attention. She made her first masks for friends and family members and soon started giving them to neighbors. She said made about 16 for the people at her daughter’s workplace, Main Street Hair Design in Greenfield.
Fuller said she uses whatever material is left over from other crafts she’s created, having recently made table runners for her family. She uses hair ties and headbands for the masks’ elastic straps.
Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 262.