First grade students at Eagle Grove Elementary school had a very special visitor this past week, "Tutu the Bear Making Elf", one of "Santa's elves" who specializes in making teddy bears. And she brought a hand sewn, unique teddy bear for each and every first grade child! And, every first grader also got a book to read to their teddy bear.
The project was part of an effort begun through the United Way in Indiana, which has since been spreading through Iowa, including area communities like Humboldt and Webster City, and has now arrived in Eagle Grove.
Speaking to students, "Tutu," (aka Deb Townsend, an Eagle Grove High School graduate who now lives in Indiana) explained the program like this. "So I make the teddy bears that Santa delivers to boys and girls for Christmas. And in January I got an email from Santa, OK? And he said, 'Tutu, you know what? There is this great group of boys and girls in Eagle Grove and I want them to be super good readers. What can we do about that?' And you know we thought, and we talked about some different ideas, and Santa said 'well you know you're the teddy bear making elf. Maybe we could make a teddy bear for every boy and girl in Eagle Grove in first grade.'" Tutu told the kids that normally the bears she makes are too big for first graders, bus Santa instructed her to make "a little bear that fits in a little arm, so they can hold their bear and read out loud to it everyday."
She described the process of making the bears to the kids as well. "So I had to kind of make a new pattern," she explained, which she calls the Chubby Bear, "because it's got a little chubby tummy … But it's nice and Squishy and you can hold it while you read." She explained how she traces the pattern on donated fabric, and cut it out before taking it to her sewing machine. "And I sew it up, but you know what? It's just flat. So we have to put stuffing in, and I leave an opening in the back and I put stuffing in so he gets a big tummy, and a big nose, and little chubby arms, and little chubby feet. And I have to do buttons for eyes and then I sew on a little nose and this cute little smile."
Townsend described how she was talking with her friend and classmate Barb Dooley about the project, "and then she said, her church, Samuel Lutheran, had a lot of fabric left over from making quilts, adding "maybe some of it could be used for Bears?" "And I'm like 'oh my gosh," Townsend said, "that would be fabulous!" Samuel Lutheran's Little Disciples also provided the books.
Then another classmate of theirs who operates Out of the Attic in Goldfied offered up more fabric. Then still another old classmate, Greg Beckel, who now lives in Arizona and had heard about the project, and was talking to a friend about it. Who, according to Townsend, then told Beckel, "oh my God I used to be a quilter. I have boxes of fabric." "They sent me a ginormous box a fabric," Tonwsend said with a chuckle, "the postage was $80 to get it here!"
Army bear beginnings
"I started doing this when I was sort of semi-retired," Townsend related, "and the United Way In Porter County, Indiana (which is Valparaiso) approached me and said 'you know we have this program called crafting for love.' And I said 'well I don't knit and I don't make afghans and stuff."
But the United Way explained to Townsend that they were looking for something for military families, to give out at the Adam Benjamin Center in Crown Point Indiana. "They have a lot of families there that have military parents that are deployed, one or both," Townsend said. "They each get a little Army bear. The boys get more of the traditional Army bear looking fabric. And the girls, oh, some of them choose the pink," Townsend said with a wink. "Then that becomes their bear to keep, and becomes their special gift from Mom or Dad (who's deployed). They don't know that I do that, they think it's from their parents. So It's a neat program."
At first, Townsend said, the patterns were "hideous", so she came up with a better one. In the first year she reckons she made 39 bears. Then 59 the next year. Then "it just went crazy after that!" She's donated to Toys for Tots, "I think about 50 Bears went there," Townsend recalled.
Then the United Way came to her about the Reading Buddies program, in which "upwards of, I don't know, 3,000 students" are enrolled, Townsend said. Every year the United Way holds a stuffed animal drive for the program, which is designed to help kids become better readers and earn better grades and test scores.
"The Valparaiso schools system would give us pre and post testing," Townsend explained, "and they would keep one group as a control grou. And the groups that got the Bears scores were high," Kids in groups that didn't get bears, Townsend said, scored "a lot more average."
"It's like that adage if you give a man a fish they eat but if you teach him how to fish they can eat forever. If you teach these kids to read, they can do anything! It's a small thing to do," Townsend said, "but if it helps it's all worth it.
Townsend thought, "well, I could make bears for this, right?
"I Consider them little soft sculptures," Townsend, a retired art teacher, said with a laugh. And aside from the artistic expression, she finds making the bears very rewarding. "I told my husband on the way here," Townsend related, "'This is nine months worth of work. you know? And when their little faces light up,' I said, 'that's the payoff right there. That is the sweetest thing in the whole world!'"
Classmates, old friends, and new beginnings
Townsend had a lot of help through it all, and a lot of them were Eagle Grove Alumni. Among "Santa's helpers'' were her husband Doug Townsend, Tony Townsend and family, Megan Myers and family, Brian and Kate Forbes, (class of '76 and '77) Michelle and Lewis Pergande (classes of 74 and 76), Greg Bachel, (class of '76), Carol Denne, Linda Schreifels, Barb Dooley (Class of '76) and family, Cheri Comstock (class of '76) and family, Lorene Mountain and family, Mike McCleary, Terry Streen (class of '69), Don Luhman, the First Grade teachers of Eagle Grove Elementary, Samuel Lutheran Church of Eagle Grove, Pieceworks Quilt Shop of Winterset, Iowa, and Arcadia quilts, of Arcadia, Iowa.
At her latest count, Townsend has now made over 16,000 teddy bears for kids through the programs. Today, Reading Buddy sites include the Adam Benjamin Center in Crown Point, Indiana, the United Way of Porter County, in Valparaiso, Indiana, Taft Elementary and St. Mary's Elementary in Humboldt, Grundy Center Elementary, Pleasant View Elementary School in Webster City, and Eagle Grove Elementary.
Editor's note: Photos taken for this article were lost due to a corrupted memory card. We regret this unfortunate technical failure.
