Local resident plans to continue knitting more hats for local hospitals
Published in the Oct. 16, 2013 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Marty Cheek
Photo by Marty Cheek
Back row, from left: Camille Stevens, Jan Heller, Shirley Todd, Diane Tanda and Prem Kumar. Nancy Sager is sitting in the front. The group knits chemotherapy hats in honor of her
daughter Cindy Jackson, who died of cancer at age 55 last spring.
Photo by Marty Cheek
Back row, from left: Camille Stevens, Jan Heller, Shirley Todd, Diane Tanda and Prem Kumar. Nancy Sager is sitting in the front. The group knits chemotherapy hats in honor of her
daughter Cindy Jackson, who died of cancer at age 55 last spring.
Knitting 55 wool hats for people undergoing chemotherapy was a labor of love for Nancy Sager. The local resident and avid knitter took on the project as a tribute to her daughter Cindy Jackson, who died of cancer at age 55 last spring.
Knitting one hat for each year of Jackson’s life, she got help from her good friends at the Continental Stitch shop in downtown Morgan Hill owned by Shirley Todd.
“Cindy and I were both avid knitters and we loved to knit together when we were together,” Sager said. “Knitters get a lot of extra yarn and they never seem to finish it all up. So I took her stash of yarn from her house in Idaho and joined it up with my stash of yarn. And because she used to knit hats for the wounded veterans because she was in the Red Cross, I thought what better way to use this yarn than to make chemo hats. When I went to chemo with her, I would see hats there for people to take. So I figured that if I could make 55 hats in memory of her, then it would be one for every year of her life.”
Sager clustered the hat colors and designs into five-year segments because her daughter would plan her life around five-year spans of time. The first five hats had knitted ruffles because Jackson was a “girlie girl” as a child and loved ruffles, Sager said. The last five hats knitted use yellow and orange yarn and are called “the sunshine years” because Jackson brought so much sunshine into her mother’s life.
Jackson worked for many years as an executive for the American Red Cross. She helped coordinate volunteers for emergency activities. When Superstorm Sandy hit the east coast last year, Jackson was undergoing chemotherapy but still did her work from her home office by email and phone. She worked until mid-January. Sager and her daughter had one last vacation together that winter, enjoying the big island of Hawaii with the weakened Jackson enjoying the sunshine.
“She just basked in the sun,” Sager said. “We didn’t do a whole lot. We didn’t need to do a whole lot, but she just basked in the sun. Life is short. You take every moment you can take with whomever you want to take it with.”
On March 25, Jackson died at her home in Swan Valley, Idaho with her husband Trevor Jackson and Sager there with her. Shortly after, Sager came up with the idea to knit the hats and decided to call them “Cindy caps.” The hats would go as gifts to patients at the Teton Cancer Institute in Idaho where Jackson had undergone treatment.
“She lived a full life. There’s nothing I could do to bring her back and I’m not going to go around in a funk,” she said. “By knitting, I could reminisce.”
Sager received group support in the project from other knitters who regularly enjoy each other’s company at Continental Stitch. “I made some really nice friends there,” she said. “Shirley Todd, the owner of the business, has created a ‘club house’ of friends to come together and knit.”
The knitters plan to continue with the project and knit more Cindy caps for people going through chemo. These hats will go to people in local hospitals including Kaiser Permanente in Gilroy, she said.
“This is a human interest story,” Sager said. “We’re all human. We need to look after each other. And the ladies at the Continental Stitch shop are looking after each other.”
