September 4, 2002
Retired nurses knits hats for hospital babies
Dolores Anderson completes her 1,000 hat for youngest patients
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Part of a family whose commitment to nursing spans generations, retired LPN Dolores Anderson still does her part. Nowadays, the retired medical-surgical nurse is taking care of the youngest patients at Munson Medical Center - newborn babies.
For the past five years, Anderson has been knitting or crocheting petite hats for the new babies to wear to help preserve their body heat after birth. Whenever she gets a bag full, she drives them to Munson and, without fanfare, drops them at the information desk. Just completing her 1,000th hat last month, Anderson said she has no plans to slow down.
"My cousin got me started when her daughter was in O/B," said Anderson, whose mother was an LPN, sister is an LPN and two granddaughters are RNs. "I've done 200 a year. This is my volunteer work."
A great grandmother four times over, Anderson admits before she retired in 1986, she preferred to work with older patients who could talk.
"My mother worked with babies, but I never did," said Anderson, who worked at Munson for 27 years. "But I like to do this, the babies all need warm heads."
Family and friends also benefit from her caring and she has previously made teddy bears to give to children coming into the Emergency Room or the Pediatrics ward.
"If I have somebody in the family who has a baby, I make sure I make them a hat," she noted.
Anderson does most of her work during the winter months and also makes hats appropriate for various holidays. She uses red, green and white yarn for Christmas hats and red, white and blue for babies born on Independence Day and orange with a green tassel for Halloween arrivals. She also makes a variety of sizes to account for different baby birth weights.
"Dolores really personalizes many of the hats she does," said Pat Ritola, maternity manager at Munson Medical Center. "We certainly appreciate her efforts here at Munson."
Parents often consider the hats a keepsake, fit for baby albums or memento boxes. Marcia Conlon has saved her hats from her two children, Jack, 4, and Casey, 20 months.
"They brought a few different ones and we got to pick one out," said Conlon of her daughter's birth. "Any thing you bring home from the hospital is special, I would never throw it away or sell it."