Inspiring Women SUMMER 2020
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AWC Hamburg Heart Pillow working bee results<br />
in-laws’ lake house in northern Germany.<br />
Early on I began teaching and<br />
tutoring English and only<br />
recently retired from that after<br />
30 years. I have been very<br />
active in the AWC Hamburg for<br />
over 20 years. I needed to be<br />
able to have a conversation<br />
without having to explain my<br />
culture and to laugh out loud<br />
without being judged. Dietmar<br />
and I have two daughters,<br />
Rebecca (24) and Allison (21),<br />
who were raised bilingually. We<br />
have always been a close<br />
family, taking vacations<br />
together, having game nights,<br />
and spending weekends at my<br />
How did you get involved in the COVID-19 response? Through a friend in my club’s Stitch n Bitch<br />
group, Jette R., a few of us began sewing nose and mouth protectors for my local hospital. We<br />
received the fabric and instructions from the hospital and from time to time, Jette stops by and<br />
picks up finished masks to deliver. After I posted on Facebook about this, I received a request<br />
from a former employer to make masks for his staff for when the schools re-open. I have also<br />
sewn masks for neighbors and friends. My fabric supplies are rapidly dwindling!<br />
Still in the midst of sewing face and nose protectors, I also received a request from the hospital<br />
where the AWC Hamburg’s From the Heart Working Bee delivers heart pillows and drainage<br />
bottle bags to please deliver another batch for their patients. Ally and I quickly cut, sewed and<br />
delivered over 50 drainage bottle bags.<br />
Since COVID-19 started, tell us about a typical day for you. The biggest change in my typical<br />
day is that I do not get up before 8:30 a.m! I usually eat breakfast with the girls in front of the TV<br />
watching something truly silly like Temptation Island or Too Hot to Handle. I watch 30 minutes of<br />
CNN and the German news channel N24 for an update.<br />
I spend time at the computer working for the FAWCO<br />
Foundation Board, researching topics I have never had the<br />
time for, finishing online photo albums I started two years<br />
ago and reading, reacting and staying in touch with<br />
friends on Facebook.<br />
Afternoons are spent sewing and doing household and<br />
garden chores. If the weather is great, I’ll commandeer a<br />
lounge chair and read from the stack of digital magazines<br />
that have collected on my iPad.<br />
We trade off cooking dinner which is a treat because I<br />
don’t particularly enjoy it. We watch TV in the evening,<br />
either just released movies, a sitcom or classics no one has<br />
seen but me but which I feel my family would be<br />
enlightened by: Dances With Wolves, The Last of the<br />
Mohicans, Blues Brothers, Spinal Tap, and the like.<br />
What has surprised you most about life dealing with COVID<br />
-19? I find I don’t do well lounging about the whole day.<br />
A Stitch n’ Bitch Quilt<br />
6
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