Janice Steinhagen of Griswold spearheaded the creation and distribution of 18,000 free cloth masks by starting a Facebook group, Griswold CT Masks for Heroes, in March 2020. She sprang into action after seeing repeated social media comments from people offering to make free face masks but not knowing where to send them and requests from agencies, nursing homes, fire departments and other organizations.

“At that point, of course, PPE (personal protective equipment) was practically unavailable and you couldn’t find the N95s (masks). People in nursing homes were trying to nurse N95s along for weeks on end,” Steinhagen said during a telephone interview.

Donations were also made to police departments and a Black Lives Matter rally in Jewett City at Veterans Park in the summer of 2020.

“One of the main goals at the very beginning was just to get elastic. Elastic was like the toilet paper of sewing at that point. Walmart was cleared out. You couldn’t get stuff by mail. It was just unobtainable,” said Steinhagen, formerly a reporter for Reminder News/Courant Community, Willimantic Chronicle and other publications.

Fortunately, she was able to track down Flo White, a Sunday vendor at the College Mart Flea Market in the Slater Mill in Jewett City.

“And God love her, she was unaware that there was a nationwide shortage of elastic. But when I called her, she essentially offered us all that she had on hand in her little warehouse at her house. So I started measuring that out into 10-yard lengths and bagging it up and handing it out of my front door like Halloween candy.”

“In those early days,” Steinhagen said sewists were using donated cloth and material from their personal stashes. They also purchased sheet sets at Ocean State Job Lot and cut them up, “because you couldn’t get yardage anywhere.”

At the peak of the pandemic, between 20 and 24 sewists within a 50-mile radius of Griswold were volunteering their help. Others who couldn’t sew “were invaluable” in other ways, she said, by “cutting stuff,” laundering fabric so it was pre-washed and ready to cut, packaging the finished masks, and printing up little tags.

“When people knew what we needed, it appeared magically,” she said, laughing.

Over 2,000 multi-layered, coyote-brown colored masks were given to crews coming into the Groton Submarine Base during COVID, she said, admitting the colored material was challenging to find. For the inside linings, volunteers used “really funky prints, cars, pinup girls, ships, anchors and animals,” as well as hunting and Duck Dynasty designs and they “were just so tickled.”

Upon the request of the Griswold High School PTO, volunteers also made about 200 masks for graduating seniors’ drive-through graduation in the spring of 2020. The masks featured a little wolverine paw created by Joshua Burkart at the high school print shop.

Since the beginning, Griswold CT Masks for Heroes has communicated through its Facebook page, Steinhagen said. “People have posted links to patterns, little sewing hacks, fun masks that they made for some particular reason. Last year, Santa and Mrs. Claus, asked if they could have some masks, because they were doing a meet and greet. “It’s like, ‘Oh, my God, we’d be honored.’”

To maintain a contactless production line, volunteers and recipients would choose from plastic bins lined up on Steinhagen’s stone wall, which included bins with fabric, thread, elastic, and completed masks for people to pick up. Another container included “buttons because we were also making scrub caps for health-care people whose ears were getting worn down by wearing elastic all day long over their ears. So we could loop elastic around the buttons and that would take the pressure off.”

Volunteers were grateful that “they were doing something positive in a situation where effectively nobody felt like they had any control. You know, at least you can do this. You can make some positive impact even in just a terrible situation,” she said, adding people were also glad to have something to do.

Now that lockdown has ended, some of the volunteers went back to work, Steinhagen said. “And so, they weren’t able to help us out as much. But we’ve had a handful of really faithful people who have continued to donate what they can whenever it’s needed, so that’s been a real gift.”

Steinhagen plays down her role of starting the Griswold CT Masks for Heroes as “just a facilitator” to allow “all the generosity of the people in the group to pass out into the community.”

The need for masks has slowed down over the last eight months, she said. However, they still receive requests from schools, pediatricians’ offices and other agencies.

Steinhagen said she never ceases to be amazed by “the generosity in this community. People really just poured so much love and energy and thought and concern into all of these little garments that people put on their faces.”

Jan Tormay, a longtime Norwich resident, now lives in Westerly.