25
c
ThE TRIBORO
s
t en
Serving Taylor, Old Forge, Moosic & Surrounding Areas
Around Town
Community Business Corner
Meet Kevin Nape of Nape’s Takeout Page 9
Times-shamrock communiTy newspapers 149 Penn Avenue Scranton, PA 18503 Phone: (570) 207-3473 Fax: (570) 207-3448 E-mail: triborobanner@ timesshamrock.com
July 9, 2015
www.thetriborobanner.com
A Source of Warmth
ON THE INSIDE See what’s happening in our area Page 4
BANNER
Taylor Community Library sponsors project for homeless by Stephanie Longo CNG EDITOR
She couldn’t witness it without trying to do something about it. That was how Flo Wheatley of Hop Bottom felt when, as an 18-year-old, she had witnessed a homeless man collapse on a New York City subway platform. Twenty years later, Wheatley was back in the Big Apple when her son, Leonard, was being treated at the Sloan-Kettering Hospital for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and she, her husband, Jim, and Leonard found themselves in a predicament. “We had taken a cab from the hospital to the subway that rainy Monday afternoon,” Wheatley recalled. “Leonard was feeling woozy from chemotherapy. I had to stop on the sidewalk outside the subway entrance and prop him up on one of our suitcases while he retched into a plastic bag. People pushed past us with that look-straight-ahead manner I remember from my own commuter days. As the rain fell harder, I silently prayed.” Wheatley’s prayers were answered in the form of a homeless man who had helped the family hail a taxi cab. As Wheatley slid a five-dollar-bill into his hand before getting in, he said to her, “Don’t abandon me.” Abandon him she did not, as her awareness of the plight of the homeless increased as she observed them on her return visits to New York. She had witnessed one man who, for two years, stayed around a bridge she would pass on her way back to Pennsylvania. “One morning something caught my attention,” she said. “He was now covered by a pink blanket, apparently homemade. It was a tiny detail against the vast backdrop of life in New York City, but it jumped out at me. ‘I could do that,’ I thought. Sewing was one of my favorite pastimes.” It was from that spark of inspiration that My Brother’s Keeper, now known as The Sleeping Bag Project, was born. Jeanie Sluck, the director of the Taylor Community Library, 710 S. Main St., heard Wheatley’s story recently and knew she had to do something to help.
TS_CNG/TRIBORO/PAGES [T01] | 07/08/15
10:59 | LONGOSTEPH
Jeanie Sluck, director of the Taylor Community Library, 710 S. Main St., sits at the library’s circulation desk, which is where people can drop off quilting supplies for The Sleeping Bag Project, an initiative to give handmade sleeping bags to homeless people. The library is looking for fabric, thread, batting and other supplies. Call 570-562-1234 for more information.
“Flo and Jim are a wonderful couple, they are so down to earth and passionate about this project that it is difficult not to be caught up in it,” she said. “After listening to their speech on how this project developed, I couldn’t help but want to be involved in some way.” Sluck is now accepting items to make quilts or sleeping bags for the area’s homeless community. Donations of fabric, batting, thread or other useful items can be brought to the library Mondays through Thursdays from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., Fridays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. “This project is on-going and supplies are always in demand,” Sluck said. “There’s no time like the present to get started collecting. Flo and Jim actually don’t take pre-made sleeping bags, as they would likely never make it to the intended
recipients. Once we begin to make the bags from the donated materials, they will be given to Flo and Jim. Jim actually does the delivery of these bags and I know that there is a demand for them in this area that is higher than what you’d expect.” The member libraries of the Lackawanna County Library System conduct a monthly collection for anyone in need and the Taylor Community Library has an on-going food drive. Sluck is hoping that other Triboro-area organizations join forces with the library for the Sleeping Bag Project. “We are a community library,” Sluck said. “What better way to live up to your name than to be involved with a project like this?” For more information, call the Taylor Community Library at 570-562-1234 or visit lclshome. org/b/taylor-community-library/.