James Blair lifts a green and yellow toy airplane he made out of a battered cardboard box and gently lays it on a workbench.
Blair mentions that when he was growing up in foster homes it would have meant the world to him to receive a gift he could have called his own.
“I’ve been there,” Blair said.
While he serves a prison term for theft and forgery at the Twin Rivers Correction Unit at Monroe Correctional Complex, Blair, 42, believes that making toys for children and other items for auction is helping him and the community.
“Making stuff for kids gives back to the people I screwed up,” Blair said.
Blair is a volunteer member of Community Aid Coalition, a 20-year program at the prison, whose members hold food fund-raisers and make quilts, pillows, jewelry and toys to be donated to charitable organizations throughout Snohomish County and beyond.
Bryan Bechler, recreation director for the Monroe Correctional Complex, has been working with inmates at Monroe for four years.
“Prisons have a negative stigma,” Bechler said. “This is something positive.”
Inmates make about 1,200 quilts a year on average. They have completed 225 since January. Those pillows and toys go to organizations such as Veteran Administration hospitals, breast cancer foundations and women’s shelters.
“We will be working on a teddy bear pattern soon,” Bechler said.
The hobby shop at Twin Rivers smells of freshly shaved wood. Behind secure cages and on shelves are works in progress: intricate birdhouses, peaceful prayer trees, dream catchers, and beautifully painted and crafted drums.
Materials for the woodworking and other crafted items are either bought by the prisoners from their own accounts or donated by people and companies such as Martin Lumber in Everett.
Todd Nelson, a yard manager at Martin Lumber, believes that working on charitable donations keeps inmates busy and helps them to contribute to the community. The company recently shipped a load of wood that wasn’t suitable for sale and has a second load of wood stacking up now.
Nancy Underwood Long, a Washington State Community Resource Coordinator with Families for Kids, a program of Lutheran Community Services Northwest, a prison volunteer and a sponsor of Community Aid Coalition goes out into the community and collects material, sheets and batting for the inmate quilt program.
“I think it means to them that they are still part of our world,” Underwood Long said. “They are valued human beings and have worth.”
Quilts with red and cream triangles, patchwork pillows and Mickey Mouse fabric adorn the small sewing room at the prison, waiting to be packed up and sent to local charities, churches and others in need. Instructions on the wall show the inmates how many squares are needed for a lap quilt or baby quilt.
“This room is a blessing,” said Ron Aldrich, 35, an inmate who is in the sex offenders program at Monroe.
When Aldrich first came to Twin Rivers, he said, he looked in at other inmates in the sewing room and thought, “What sissies.”
But Aldrich gave the program a chance and now serves at its secretary.
“It really opens an inmate’s eyes,” Aldrich said.
Aldrich says that he has seen all the hurt and hate he has caused. When he attends volunteer appreciation nights or when sponsors come to see the men, Aldrich can see the love and care in their eyes, he said.
“I can see the new me because of the sex offender program and this,” he said.
Letters, such as one from a single mother who received a quilt for her child, make Aldrich feel as if the work he is doing is good.
“I had clothes when I was out there,” Aldrich said. “The only thing that baby had was a quilt.”
One of Joel Alexander’s friends was involved with the coalition while he was in Twin Rivers. Four years ago he asked Alexander to consider quilting.
“I thought ‘eeeh,’ ” he said.
Alexander, 28, who is serving time for a sex offence, now acts as chairman for the group’s board of directors and does all the administrative work. He hopes that what he has learned will help him when he gets out of prison. He’d like to start a ministry and through the community outreach program he’s learned to operate a business.
“It has helped me a lot to take the focus off myself,” Alexander said. “There’s no pride about it. We’re just helping people less fortunate.”
The men receive bags of yarn and materials of different colors that are donated from various groups, including seniors. Black and dark blue are discouraged because the colors could mimic guard uniforms. Bed sheets and clothes are recycled instead of heading to the landfill. Two commercial sewing machines, each more than 50 years old, are used to sew the quilts and pillows.
Churches and local organizations can put in requests to the Community Aid Coalition and other programs at the reformatory for items that they might need.
Across the way in the state reformatory, Antonio Wheat takes care of 14 or 15 other volunteer programs, including pizza sales, collecting stamps and cutting coupons. Money raised from those also goes to charities,
Wheat, 60, who has been incarcerated for 40 years, says that prisoners who volunteer for these programs are doing no more than people outside. They are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts and not for publicity, he said. “We’re often classed as scum of the earth.”
He recalled a request from a food bank many years ago. Things were bad. They needed help, so the prisoners raised and donated $2,500.
The inmates at the reformatory and Twin Rivers will likely raise and donate $6,000 to $8,000 this year.
Some quilts are donated to World Concern, a Northwest Christian humanitarian organization that provides emergency relief to people throughout the world. World Concern started the program with inmates at Monroe in the late ’80s.
Merrilou Burris, administrative manager of World Concern in Lynnwood said quilts have gone as far as Afghanistan, Mongolia, Haiti and Vietnam.
“Having new blankets and quilts to send is wonderful,” Burris said, adding that the covers are a blessing to those who have nothing.
Reporter Christina Harper: 425-339-3491 or harper@ heraldnet.com.
Donating materials
For information on donating yarn, fabric, quilt batting and bed sheets to the Community Aid Coalition, call Bryan Bechler at 360-794-2676.
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