While some kids play video games or play on their iPads in their spare time, 11-year-old Garrett Lowry from the Littleton area in Colorado has a unique after-school activity: he knits hats for kids with cancer. The hats all go to the Colorado Children’s Hospital and is entirely a labor of love.
Although Garrett loves to play baseball with his friends and participate in sports and other activities, he says he finds knitting a calming activity. He learned how to do it from his grandmother, who sometimes helps out with his project. So far, Lowry has knitted and donated over 50 hats to the hospital and has no plans to stop any time soon.
Sheryl Lowry, the boy’s proud mother, said her son was motivated by the idea of showing kids struggling with their health that someone they don’t know cares about them.
She said:
“It’s really about giving back to them and giving them something to make them feel better. He just felt like it was something he could give kids who are going through chemotherapy to let them know someone cares about them.”
Garrett, who is affectionately referred to as Bam-Bam on his baseball team, is fairly nonchalant about the whole thing. He told a local Colorado news outlet, “Some people say it’s unusual, but it’s just a part of my life.”
The project started out as one assigned by his school and took off from there. Originally, Garrett was given the task of doing something to help out in the community. He chose to knit 15 hats, but decided not to stop there after the school project was over. Instead, his mother and grandmother got in on the action and so far, they’ve created over 50 hats for kids in the hospital.
Garrett is also expanding his inventory and is now making smaller hats for infants and larger hats for adults and teenagers.
He told a local Colorado news outlet of his project:
“Going through that kind of thing might scare people, and I just want to make something that can make them more comfortable while they are in the hospital.”
Sources:
9 News