From Houston (Pa.) to Houston (Texas)
When Washington County commissioner and Houston-area resident Harlan Shober heard about Margie McKinley’s project – to send dolls and personalized cards to Hurricane Harvey victims in Texas – he knew he needed to be a part of it.
“From Houston to Houston. It’s a great idea,” he said. “If we can do anything to ease their pain, we should. We need more of that.”
More than 450 cards and 150 gingerbread dolls will make their way this week from Southwestern Pennsylvania to a Houston, Texas, neighborhood that was devastated by the late-August storm.
“People lost everything,” said McKinley, a Mon Valley resident.
When the storm touched down in Texas, McKinley worried about family and friends living there, including longtime friend Susan Whitacre, with whom she attended Pittsburgh’s Winchester Thurston School.
Whitacre was fine, but so many others weren’t. Intense flooding destroyed homes and everything within them.
Whitacre told McKinley about St. Peter’s United Methodist Church of Houston ministry to help about 500 such families. McKinley decided to contribute some comfort.
“People need money, but it’s not all about money,” she said. “I wanted to give something to hold onto.”
Thus began the gingerbread project.
McKinley, who had made the dolls in a variety of sizes before, started gathering supplies – she depleted three craft stores of gingerbread-colored fleece and heart-shaped buttons – and started cutting panels.
When friends, including Caroline Fecek, Sandy Rupnik, AnnMarie Paci, Cindy St. Clair Rager, and McKinley’s 93-year-old neighbor, Doris Dishong, found out what she was doing, they wanted to help.
Soon, an assembly line of cutters, sewers and stuffers formed. Creating 150 dolls didn’t seem so daunting anymore.
McKinley designed a card to send with each doll. That project, too, took off.
Almost 500 cards have been written by First Presbyterian Church of California members, California Area high school and elementary students, Center in the Woods participants, California Head Start students, Washington County commissioners and Washington County employees.
“I was just going to do this myself, and so many people have joined in,” McKinley said. “It’s such a blessing.”
McKinley met with Shober, Commissioner Larry Maggi and county employees Thursday to thank them for their help. She told them that although the hurricane hit more than a month ago, the donation would arrive at just the right time.
When McKinley told Whitacre the group was working hard to get the shipment out this week, Whitacre told her not to worry.
“The timing is God’s timing – perfect,” said Whitacre. “People are coming out of the shock and having to face their new realities. This hug from afar will mean even more now. It will renew their faith that, indeed, they have not been forgotten.”