GALION — Every month the conference room off the main lobby at Galion Community Hospital is transformed into an old-fashioned sewing bee. An assembly line of fabric, ribbon, sewing machines, ironing boards and boxes and boxes of hats.
Dream Hats, that is.
These volunteers are spending their Saturday morning making Dream Hats, colorful caps which are given out free to patients undergoing chemotherapy or anyone experiencing hair loss. For some, the hats provide a sense of dignity. For others, they offer comfort and hope.
“Word of mouth just got out and over the past few years, we’ve had over 125 volunteers help out from all over the country,” said Helen Burdine, who introduced the Dream Hats program to Crawford County. “The great thing is you don’t have to sew. There are so many jobs to do.”
Burdine, risk manager for Avita Health System in Galion, heard about the non-profit organization and its mission from her two sisters, Sue Burke and Lynda Fox, who are registered nurses at the James Cancer Hospital of The Ohio State University in Columbus, where the program was founded.
Dream Hats is the brainchild of Rae Ream, an operating room nurse at The James, who on her own had been sewing surgical hats for the O.R. staff. In 2010 she ended up giving one to a 22-year-old breast cancer patient. It was a fun pattern with stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs on it, perfect she thought, for a future nurse.
“I told her I wanted her to have the hat to remember that even if she does lose her hair, nurses are all heart and soul. Hair doesn’t matter,” Ream said. “With tears in her eyes, she thanked me and gave me a big hug. Then I wanted every patient that needed one to have a dream hat.”
Ream fulfilled her dream.
In 2013, Avita became the first hospital to partner with the organization. It started out small – on a kitchen table – but Burdine was also inspired by a young cancer patient who was devastated by her hair loss and found her wig uncomfortable. She called her sisters in Columbus to request a few hats.
“This woman was so touched by the gesture that she and her sister went out and bought some beautiful fabric and matching ribbon to donate to the cause,” Burdine recalled. “They even came to the house and spent the next few hours sewing with us. That so touched my heart.”
The brimmed caps – in cheery and seasonal designs for men, women and children – are still made with Ream’s pattern, cut out from cotton and fleece. Some volunteers do the sewing, others use recycled laparoscopic instruments or “turners” to turn the material inside out.
Once ironed and trimmed, they’re packaged in individual bags tied with colorful ribbons and a card that reads, “This hat was made especially for you by those who care, and we want to wish you the very best!”
They’re distributed to the oncology departments and main lobbies at Avita in Galion and Bucyrus.
Burke, who actually has a “dream room” at her house in Grove City and a closet filled with more than 1,000 hats, loads up her Ford Explorer with sewing machines, ironing boards, bolts of fabric and other needed supplies, then picks up Lynda for the trek to Galion the first Saturday of each month. It’s become a tradition.
“People stop in all the time during sewing sessions and say, ‘are you making Dream Hats?’,” Burke said. “Once a lady came in to say thank you. She had taken one to her friend who was in the hospital with cancer and said her house had just burned down too. We were all crying that morning.”
Ken Parr of Crestline became acquainted with the program when he was a patient in 2016. Not even allowed to drive following his surgery, Parr’s wife brought him the first few times.
He’s only missed once.
“It’s really a nice feeling that you’re helping someone else going through some hard times in their life,” said the sewing whiz.
The volunteers, who range in age from five to 87, have made about 10,000 hats so far. They have been mailed as far away as Iowa and Colorado. They have been made for an 18-year-old battling brain cancer and a three-year-old who requested Dora the Explorer. They have been made with love, and sometimes a silent prayer.
Because Burdine has seen firsthand the good that comes from a few hours of fellowship. And she believes the story is worth sharing.
“I tell people to take seven Dream Hats, so they have one for every day of the week,” she said. “We’re an emotional group, but that’s the beauty of this.”
Donations of fabric and ribbon are always accepted
For more information or to make a donation, contact the group on its website or its Facebook page.