The late Maureen Voorhees with Breakfast at St. Andrew’s founder Svea Gray. This year, the volunteers Voorhees taught knitted 74 scarves. | Photo courtesy of PEO
St. Andrew’s Breakfast Program was established in 1982 by Svea Gray and ever since has been serving breakfast seven days a week to the hungry, working poor, and homeless in our community. A typical morning will find 150–175 in the church’s gathering room. However, once folks have enjoyed a warm, hearty meal and packed a sandwich for lunch, they must depart.
On a recent cold morning, it was just twenty-one degrees!
It was on just such a day that our friend, the late Maureen Voorhees, enters our story. Development director at Greenhills School from 1981 to 1988, she volunteered at the breakfast, and she encouraged her colleague Dave McDowell to do the same.
“Maureen was a teacher at heart and never forgot that we were there for the kids,” Dave recalls. “The St. Andrew’s Breakfast volunteering was one of her many ways to broaden the experience for kids beyond the classroom. We offered the opportunity to any upper-school student who wanted to volunteer serving breakfast to accompany us, and we alternated Fridays. We met at school at 7 a.m., which gave us enough time to get to St. Andrew’s before 7:30, when breakfast was served. Our students not only met our homeless guests, they also worked with adult volunteers, many of whom were senior citizens and engaging role models. At a recent Greenhills reunion, a former student said to me that volunteering at St. Andrew’s was a highlight of her time at Greenhills.”
Seeing guests leave the warmth of St. Andrew’s on a cold winter morning, Maureen had an inspiration: An experienced knitter, she could make scarves for them! She invited us, her sisters in PEO (Philanthropic Educational Organization, a women’s service group) to a knitting bee at her home. “This was over 20 years ago,” recalls her daughter Kate Martin.
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Maureen had bins of beautiful yarn, lots of needles, and several simple patterns, which gave each scarf a distinctive look. She invited non-knitters to attend, too, teaching them how to stitch and purl, never critical, always encouraging.
Carolyn Shear tells the story of her first day learning to knit: “Maureen handed two needles and a very large ball of multicolored yarn to me. The colors of the yarn changed every few inches from red to orange to pink to green to blue, and on and on! With a twinkle, Maureen told me that she knew I got bored easily, and she was certain that this yarn would keep my interest.
“Over time, I became a knitter, finished that first long scarf of many colors and added it to the pile headed to St. Andrew’s. Imagine my delight one cold winter day in Ann Arbor when I saw a woman warmly wrapped in my colorful, rainbow-hued scarf!”
PEO sisters who had no interest in knitting joined our bees for Maureen’s delicious cookies and the group’s warm friendship, adding hats, gloves, and socks they’d purchased to the scarf pile. Our better knitters branched out into hats and mittens, too.
A member’s sister in Tennessee was so impressed with our project that she knitted up a storm and mailed a box loaded with scarves; when Maureen opened it, they popped up like a jack-in-the-box. At St. Mary’s parish, Maureen encouraged women who’d learned of our project to knit scarves for St. Andrew’s, too. And St. Mary’s Women of the Heart did!
Every year, Maureen knitted at least thirty scarves herself. She also created a heart-shaped label reading “knit from our heart for you,” which she attached to each scarf. Then, early in December, Maureen would load two large plastic bins with all the scarves and deliver them to St. Andrew’s.
One delivery day, she received a parking ticket! From then on, she had PEO sister Barbara Balbach drive and watch the car while she carried the bins into the church. Over the years, we have knitted and donated at least 1,000 scarves. In December, a group of us took seventy-four hand-knit scarves to St. Andrew’s.
Maureen passed away this past March. Before a recent meeting of our knitting circle, her daughter dropped off bins of yarn, Maureen’s gift to us. We will be knitting many more scarves for St. Andrew’s this winter, continuing what Maureen began.
