One North Rock Creek 4-H Club member spreads grace to those in her community through her charity projects.
Grace Hobbs, 12, most recently led a project to make Valentine’s cards for all eight nursing homes and assisted living centers in Shawnee. Grace was able to deliver 465 cards for nursing staff to hand out, surpassing her goal of 300.
She had help from her grandmother, Judy Peters, who donated supplies; her mother, Charity Hobbs, a teacher at NRC High School; several NRC teachers and their students; and her fellow 4-H Club members.
Grace’s aunt, Courtney Branch, works at Seminole Care and Rehab and told her that patients “never get anything for Valentine’s Day.”
“So I decided to make them Valentine’s Day cards because it’s easier than doing anything else,” she said during a 4-H council meeting at the OSU Extension in
Shawnee on Feb. 8. “I hope it’ll be good for them (and) it’ll make them feel happy that someone thought of them.”
This isn’t the first time Grace has contributed to the happiness of nursing home residents. Last year, she and her 4-H group donated 300 homemade Christmas cards.
She has also donated holiday decorations to be hung on doors at the Seminole nursing home for Valentine’s, Easter, and Christmas over the past couple of years.
Also, over Christmas break, Grace used her sewing skills learned in 4-H to create 25 scarves for robotic cats and dogs, which the American Red Cross was sending to veterans’ nursing homes in Texas to assist dementia patients in their therapy, said Charity.
When her grandmother, Lynna Lindsay, had cancer, and her port made it painful to wear a seatbelt, Grace decided to sew her a port pillow. Then, she went on to sew 25 port pillows for other people with cancer.
In addition, Grace made and sold Christmas gnomes, raising $500, and she was able to buy fabric with that money. So, in Nov., she held a workshop where 14 fellow 4-H’ers sewed 30 lap blankets for hospice patients.
With the leftover money, Grace plans to host another workshop to sew pillowcases for Ryan’s Case for Smiles to benefit patients at OU Children’s Hospital.
Grace began her community service projects in 2020 when Branch mentioned that there were no masks for her or her co-workers. Another friend had a hole in her mask and couldn’t find them to buy. So, one night, Charity and Grace stayed up late sewing masks. Eventually, they and their friends had made 110 to donate.
“I don’t remember how many we made that first night, but we were like, ‘We want everybody that can work there to have a mask on their face that doesn’t have a hole in it. What’s the point of that?’” said Charity.
