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Meet Morrie

We all know them, people who are so generous, so willing to give or help that you never have to ask, they just do whatever they can to support.  I have been lucky knowing about a half dozen of such people in my life, more than my fair share.  There is no way I will ever to able to balance what I owe them, but I do try.

Morrie Boogaart is such a man.  He has been helping others his entire life by shoveling snow and mowing lawns for neighbor ladies and running a local bakery.  It seems Morrie is indeed one of those persons, those who give so selflessly.  At the age of 91 he is making hats for the homeless.  Spectrum Heart Beat wrote that after he'd made 8,000 hats he quit counting.

"You keep going around like that, one at a time and pull it over that peg," explains Boogaart. "Keep it going all the way around. I do it awfully slow, it maybe takes me two days to make a hat."

Morrie Boogaart and his loom (photo from Spectrum Health Beat)
After his wife died in 2000 Morrie was looking for ways to fill the long days and nights he spent alone. His obsession with hat making started in 2001 when his daughter taught him how to use a circular loom as he recuperated from hip surgery at her home.  He says he ". . . enjoys the splashes of colour, the texture of the fibers in his fingers. . ." and how productive and useful he feels when  making hats for unknown others.

Some of Morrie's hats
Morrie is creating his hats at Cambridge Manor, a hospice care home.  He has skin cancer and knows his time to help others is limited.  He is confined to his bed most of the time, but has found a way to be of use despite these limitations.  "That's what keeps me going," he says.

"It's not so much of a story, but it means a lot to me," said Boogaart.   I can see why Lion Brand Yarns wrote about him recently; he deserves all the praise and gratitude we yarn folks can muster.  Morrie Boogaart is the type of guy who focuses on the plight of others instead of wallowing in self pity, a quality in relatively short supply these days.

Read more about Morrie here.

P.S.  I am on the road for the next few days so new posts will be in short supply.


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