The Southwest Voice

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Something exceptional is going on at Loudon Elementary School, and it has nothing to do with awards, sports or scholastic endeavors.    

There’s knitting going on, and the students are inspired.

Loudon Elementary is an idyllic little campus in Southwest Bakersfield dotted lushly by landscaped quads and immaculate concrete corridors, not at all showing its age of 19 years. It is a Title I school — meaning many students are at risk for not achieving state-defined academic proficiency — that faces a variety of challenges, including keeping kids in the classroom. In other words, Loudon is not the typical Panama-Buena Vista Union School District school.

There’s one thing, though, that sets them apart from their higher-achieving district counterparts: They knit.

It started sometime before Christmas, when Title I Clerk Lynne Eid felt a tugging on her heart to do something for a student who was having trouble staying in school.

“I got a crazy idea,” said Eid. “I asked Chantel if she’d like to learn how to knit.”
Fifth-grader Chantel Johnson wasn’t coming to school regularly and was having trouble socializing, but she said yes to Eid’s offer. Eid, who is 51 and has been knitting since the age of 16, started meeting with Chantel at recess and taught her how to knit a scarf.

Soon, other students wanted to learn, too. Before Eid knew it, she had a handful of knitters spending 35-40 minutes with her each day at lunch.

In January, the knitters learned about Sam Philips, a 5-year-old suffering from neuroblastoma, cancer of the nerve tissue, who was undergoing chemotherapy at the Portsmouth Naval Hospital in Virginia. Sam is the grandson of Loudon kindergarten teacher Vicki Philips, who now divides her time between Bakersfield and Portsmouth.

Inspired by Project Linus, a non-profit organization that creates handmade blankets for fragile children, the Loudon Knitters decided to make a blanket for Sam.
Knitting for Sam was a big draw. Soon, the club had 30 members, all spending their lunch hour with Eid and knitting with yarn mostly from Eid’s personal supply. “Do it for Sam” became their mantra.

“It became clear very early that something special was going on here that I had no control of,” said Eid.

Original members of the club, like Chantel and El’teanna English, taught newcomers how to knit. Soon, knitting became as addictive to the Loudon Knitters as video games are to other kids their age.

“Everywhere we go, we carry (our knitting),” said El’teanna. “If we have a basketball
game, we carry it. If we have a volleyball game, we carry it.”

“We knit while we walk home,” added Chantel, who also said that knitting is fun and helps with her stress problems.

Girls aren’t the only knitters. Daniel Estrada actually liked the knitting so much that his mom had to enforce some rules: He must eat, rest and do his homework before he is allowed to knit after school.

After Sam received his blanket, the knitters weren’t finished.

“I’ve got 60 knitters on my list, and their projects are getting more complicated. We have completed and delivered three blankets and are working on a fourth,” said Eid.

“It’s an incredible miracle,” said Vicki Philips, who flew to Virginia and delivered the blanket to grandson Sam herself. “When I can remove myself from the emotions over Sam, it is amazing to just look at how people have been moved to reach out and do things for other people.”

Indeed, like Eid, who was moved to teach one child how to knit, then watched her efforts multiply and blossom into a group she considers “a blessing.”

To the Loudon Knit Club, though, the blessing is Eid, who offered the inspiration — and the creative know-how — to make a difference, one stitch at a time.