Seniors help Marines keep their cool
By JO ANNE KILLEEN / joanne.killeen@lee.net

A request that has taken on national proportions has residents at Onalaska’s Eagle Crest Senior Community picking up their sewing needles, ironing boards and bottle caps to help the U.S. Marines beat the 140 degree heat in Afghanistan.

Neva Daylwinfrey’s grandson Joshua Vaughan is a member of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines based at Camp Pendleton, Calif. Nicknamed Geronimo, the unit is about to be deployed to Afghanistan.
Joshua’s mother, Neva’s daughter Susan Vaughan in Bakersfield, Calif., heard about something the troops could use — a neck cooler — and decided to try to make some to give the troops when they leave. She had a major problem, however. They needed 900 of them.

A neck cooler is a 45-inch cotton strip divided into four pockets, each filled with 1/8 teaspoon of polymer. When the completed strip is moistened, the polymer swells and becomes cool. Daylwinfrey said they stay moist about two weeks in California and might last one week in Afghanistan. But they can be remoistened repeatedly for continued use.

Worn around the neck, the cooler helps prevent heat stroke and heat exhaustion.

When Susan sat down to try to make them, she found she could only make four an hour.

Time to call Mom.

Mom, Neva Daylwinfrey, found a ready source of hands belonging to all the friends she has made at Eagle Crest since moving there from San Antonio almost a year ago.

About 10 women were gathered in the community room in assembly-line fashion, putting together the pieces of the neck cooler. Elaine Skarstad, with a sewing machine, became the chief engineer of the project, while Daylwinfrey obtained the pattern as well as the polymer, which she ordered online.

Two of the women were doing the stitching, another was ironing the seams flat, others were measuring out the polymer into bottle caps and still more were inserting the polymer into the pockets and stitching the ends closed.

The group plans to complete 100 of the neck coolers for Daylwinfrey to take with her when she visits her grandson for his 21st birthday.

The other 800 neck coolers? The entire senior class at Bakersfield High School is gathering in the school gymnasium for a massive assembly line to complete the rest of the needed neck coolers.

Ellie