farragutpress

Linus Project ‘celebration’ at CUMC March 8

Children dealing with trauma benefit from monthly blanket-producing event; volunteers sought

March 12, 2025 by Tammy Cheek

“We would only do this (event) every three or four years, but we have a sewing day almost every month,” said Deb Miller, Project Linus coordinator for the East Tennessee Chapter. “We move them around the area” in churches and stores.

“We provide blankets to children in traumatic situations,” she added.

Those situations can be everything from an emergency room hospital stay to homelessness and children removed from homes because of domestic violence, child abuse, being impacted by the recent flooding and fires.

The chapter serves the Greater East Tennessee area, including Knox County and immediate surrounding counties, such as Monroe, Roane, Cumberland, Morgan and Scott. It also works with Mission of Hope, Knoxville Area Rescue Mission and many more organizations.

“We work a lot with the Child Advocacy Centers, which serves kids who have been abused and sexually abused,” Miller said. “We provide to area hospitals, like East Tennessee Children’s Hospital, University of Tennessee Medical Center or Methodist Medical in Oak Ridge.

“The organizations we give the blankets to, they’re the ones that actually distribute to the children,” she added. “We’ve got volunteers all over East Tennessee who make handmade blankets. That might be quilts; it might be a crocheted or a knitted blanket; it might be a fleece blanket.

“I’ve got groups of Girl Scouts and Sunday School groups with members 5, 6, 7 years old who help make blankets,” Miller said.

“And, I’ve got some women well into their 90s, including my mother, whose still making blankets for us,” she added.

Anyone wanting to get involved in Project Linus can contact Miller at Deb@ProjectLinusEastTN.org or visit 865-719-2862.

The East Tennessee Chapter was established in April 2003, but the national organization was started in 1995.

“Nationally, we’ve just gone over distributing 10 million blankets to children across the United States,” Miller said. “Locally, one of the big things that we’re celebrating is that we have distributed 50,000 blankets to children in East Tennessee.

“What really impacted my dedication to Project Linus was one time, when we were in our group meeting with (member) LeighAnna (Colgrove) at our Project Linus meeting at (CUMC), the women had just come back from Thanksgiving vacation and (Colgrove) said she met a young man who had who had a Project Linus tattoo,” said Sheri Ratliff, her voice breaking with emotion. “When he was a little boy, he received a blanket.

“That was an extremely impacting moment for me, like ‘oh my gosh, if he was that moved by his blanket, think of what these blankets do for kids all over the nation,’” she added.

Along with making blankets on Saturday, Miller said there were demonstrations on different techniques and members who crocheted blankets.

“Each blanket gets a Project Linus label,” Miller said. “They’ll be putting blankets on in the fellowship hall.”

The organization also supports military personnel.

“Their kids get patriotic blankets,” Miller said.

Additionally, “if daddy is serving away overseas and mamma goes to the hospital to have a baby, they get a patriotic blanket for the baby, but then they get a small pocket blanket to send to daddy to carry while he’s serving overseas,” she said.

Another Project Linus product is Bead Bags of Courage, which Lisa Palesch-Hawk makes.

“East Tennessee Children’s Hospital uses those,” Miller said. “When a baby is born in the (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) and they are real tiny, they put one of these bags next to their NICU unit, and as they achieve goals — gain so much weight or they can eat on their own — they get beads to put in the bag and collect.

“When they take the bags home with them, the parents can string the beads up in the nursery to show all the different accomplishments,” she added.