Sewing smiles: Williamsburg group makes sock monkeys for pediatric patients

WILLIAMSBURG - Two years ago, when Jayna Snodgrass, then 6, suffered severe burns in a kitchen accident, she went through months of painful surgery and rehab - with Lulu, her sock monkey, by her side.

Lulu is one of the thousands of handmade sock monkeys given to pediatric patients at the University of Iowa Stead Family Children's Hospital for the past 25 years.

The comfort animals are made by an assembly line of volunteers - most of them in their 70s - in the basement of the Williamsburg Public Library the third Monday of every month.

The group, with about three dozen volunteers, have spent an estimated 40,000 hours stuffing, stitching and sewing the sock monkeys over the past quarter century.

Monkeys are hand painted with careful precision and dressed in hand-knit hats and vests. Some monkeys get a mustache. Some look like superheroes.

Each monkey takes at least three hours to make, sometimes longer if they have more intricate features, according to Alice Bardole, the group's leader.

Bardole estimates the group makes around 700 monkeys each year, but at one point the women were making more than 1,000 a year during former leader Dotty Stewart's 10-year tenure. When Stewart's husband died in February, Bardole took over.

'It's a lot of work, but it's fun and worthwhile,” she said, describing the reward of giving a scared, sick child a new friend to snuggle in the hospital.

'It's a wonderful thing to do, to help children and to give them something to be happy about,” added Gloria Haasis, a volunteer from Williamsburg.

Ellen Seiger, a volunteer at the children's hospital who delivers the monkeys to children, said, 'When you're a sick kid, having something to cuddle is really just essential. It's just one of those basics ... I think is so important for kids to have. It can turn a tough day around just having a new friend.”

When Jayna received her monkey at the hospital, she was 'overjoyed,” said her father, Daniel Snodgrass of Palo.

'She didn't spend lots of time debating which monkey to pick, even though they were lined up by the dozens,” he added. 'It was as if she identified with hers right away.”

Recalling picking out her monkey, Jayna, now 8, said she chose it not only because it was pink - her favorite color - but also because it was 'kind of alone, in a row by itself,” she said.

Lulu, she thought, needed a friend as much as she did.

'I talked to her and dressed her up in clothes. She was a good distraction,” she said. 'It really cheered me up in the hospital.”

'It was like she had a little friend,” said Kristin Snodgrass, Jayna's mom.

'She was so happy to snuggle with it, and eventually decided it was just like she was so she'd talk about how the monkey was going to have surgeries and was burned like her,” Jayna's mom added. 'Maybe it helped her process a little bit.”

Two years later, Jayna still does everything with Lulu.

'She takes it along whenever there's an appointment and plays with it almost every day,” Kristin Snodgrass said. 'She really loves it.”

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