Features

“Content should move your soul.”

Group makes nearly 10,000 masks since March

Updated:Sep. 2, 2020 at 6:23 PM MDTTUCSON, Ariz. (KOLD News 13) -Many are doing their part to help slow the spread of COVID-19. For a group of women at the Voyager retirement community, their part is making masks—nearly 10,000 of them.

“If I’m bored…it’s not pretty,” said Connie Remetch, who makes masks.

Remetch makes sure she is never bored.

“My husband would say the (I’m the) cruise director,” she said.

When the pandemic hit, she had to do something.

“I dithered and prayed, and dithered and prayed, for about a week,” she said.

Then it hit her. As a quilter, she could use her sewing skills and fabric to make masks, but she needed help. Lynne Jensen, a fellow quilter and resident at the Voyager, was a good place to start. Her daughter works at a nursing home in Sedona, and that would be one of the first places they sent 50 masks to.

“I have a huge stash of fabric,” said Jensen.

Fabric is stuffed everywhere in Jensen’s house—kitchen cabinets, bedroom cabinets and a storage built-in along the hall. She has rolls and rolls of fabric. They started sewing, and cutting, and making a community, a mask production line with close to 20 other women.

“I just do it because it’s what you should do,” said Jensen.

This month, the group is expected to reach 10,000 masks made. They have an entire, socially-distanced assembly line.

Remetch, the “cruise director,” oversees operations and sews. Her house is home to “Mask Central.” Jensen makes mask kits with enough fabric and elastic for 10 masks. People pick the kits up at Remetch’s, where she has a golf cart outside with dozens of kits free for the taking.

Melinda Alcorn, a snowbird who stayed at the Voyager through the summer due to COVID-19, started picking up kits in the spring.

“Maybe this is the one little thing I can do from my house to help someone else,” Alcorn said.

Alcorn calls herself a “slow” sewer. Starting with a goal of only three masks, she’s now sewn about 300.

“If you just keep after it, all of a sudden you turn around and there’s 300 done,” she said.

Once she’s done, the masks are dropped back off at “Mask Central” where Remetch sorts, gathers and counts the masks for distribution. Her friend down the road, Pat Rapp has the connections on where the masks will all go. She spent time in the beginning of the pandemic calling health care centers, reservations, local organizations and more, figuring out who needed masks and how many.

” I’ve made some great friends, maybe one day I’ll actually see their whole face sometime!” said Rapp.

They group has sent masks to PACC, Banner, Indian Health Services, more than 2,000 to the Navajo nation, just to name a few. Of the nearly 10,000 they have made, 8,100 have gone outside the Voyager community. They’re currently working on sending about 550 adult and child masks to El Rio Health. It is a task that takes time for many, but Jensen can sew a mask, she said, in about four-to-seven minutes.

“I’m assuming I’ve done 600 to 700 masks,” she said

However, it’s not about the speed, it’s about the community each thread sews together. As COVID-19 has sent many indoors, including this group, they’re able to form a new community—a stitch at a time.

“It’s as beneficial to me as it would be to anybody who got the mask,” said Alcorn.

Making masks has brought these women who are blocks apart, closer—and people they’ve helped who are miles, if not states away, closer to them. The group has not bought any fabric but has used what they’ve already had on hand as quilters. Elastic is the only purchase they’ve made.

https://www.kold.com/2020/09/02/group-makes-nearly-masks-since-march/

Tucson’s dancing man on the north side spreads smiles

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By Megan McNeil

Updated:Sep. 11, 2020 at 6:11 PM MDTTUCSON, Ariz. (KOLD News 13) -You may have seen his moves, or at least a video. He’s known as the “dancing man” on the north side.

“I dance like I don’t care everybody’s watching, and I dance as if no one is watching,” said dancing man Rex Wilkins,

Hundreds of cars, bikers and walkers pass by him every day, including Roger Post.

“I’ve seen him out here a couple times, and a lot of the other walkers and bikers…we talk about him,” Post said. “I thought he was trying to be funny and make people laugh, and I was kind of curious if he had headphones, and what he was listening to.”

Wilkins’s dance moves are as varied as his music.

“I like rock and Brazilian music, and Weird Al,” he said.

From metal to jazz and everything in between, as long as it gets him in the “groove,” he’s plugged in. Some stare as he dances on the corner, some laugh and take a video. Whatever their reaction, he hopes his dancing doesn’t end on this corner.

“I have never seen it in person,” said Aylea Wilkins, Rex’s wife. “I think he gives the public his best work.”

Always known to be the life of the party and make others laugh, his dancing is no different.

“Maybe I make their day just a little bit brighter because I kind of understand how difficult it can be,” said Wilkins.

He didn’t always dance on the corner or run. As a doctoral student at the University of Arizona, stress piled on stress and depression sank in.

“It kind of came to a head somewhere around the fall of 2019,” he said.

Instead of running on roads like he does now, he’d walk by them to and from class. The deeper the depression—the darker the thoughts.

“I wonder(ed) really what it would be like to walk in front of an oncoming truck,” he said. “…because maybe I’d feel something.”

The person who was known to light up any room, slowly faded.

“It was very hard to know how much he was hurting and that he felt so alone,” Aylea said.

After having suicidal thoughts, he knew he needed help. Wilkins opened up to his wife and sought professional help for his depression, with counseling and medication. He eventually picked up some shoes and started running.

“I honestly thought it was going to be a temporary thing,” Aylea said.

Running along Oracle while seeking professional help, he slowly began to shed not only his depression and those thoughts but weight as well. At the start of his journey weighing about 280 pounds, he looks back on pictures of himself not with hate or negative emotions, but compassion.

“That guy in that photo is not a bad person, he’s not stupid, he was going through a lot, I was going through a lot,” he said.

Every run feeling more like himself, and happy, he started to dance overwhelmed with joy, and hoping others might feel some of it too.

Whether it’s more confidence and compassion toward their body, a laugh to stop negative thoughts for a second, or inspiration to try something new—he hopes with his silly moves, people understand their individual worth and see vulnerability is not a weakness.

“The worth of every soul is great,” he said. “If I can put a smile on at least one person’s face today, I’ve made a difference.”

If you or a loved one are in crisis—please seek help. Call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 800-273-8255 or visit the Suicide Prevention Lifeline by clicking here.

https://www.kold.com/2020/09/11/tucsons-dancing-man-north-side-spreads-smiles/

By Megan McNeil

Published:Dec. 2, 2021 at 5:39 PM MSTTUCSON, Ariz. (KOLD News 13) -At some point, many of us think about retirement and slowing down, but that is not the case for a 92-year-old Tucson man just getting started in the business world.

For much of his life, Philip Bellomo has been going off a feeling, one that made him need to create.

“I didn’t know what an artist was. I just knew I had to draw or paint,” said Bellomo. “When you get working with ceramics…well I become part of the work.”

For decades, he’s been an artist, from a painter, a teacher and a potter. His hands and body may show age now, but there’s more life in them than most.

“At 92, I’m going to keep going until I reach my goal. I’ve got to hurry. At 92, I don’t have much time,” he said.

Time is on no one’s side. It’s something that can’t be bought, but it’s something that can be made. While Bellomo may not have much of it left, it doesn’t mean he’s going to stop. At 92, he just opened up his first business. Legally blind, it’s selling his ceramics he still makes. He goes off of feeling.

“I have to use mostly my sense of feel,” he said. “I tell people I’m going to live until I die, and they say, ‘well everybody does.’ No, I want to be doing something. Either making pottery or cooking or dancing or until the end. I don’t want to sit in a wheelchair waiting to die. I’ve got a lot of living.”

A lot of living still left that, luckily, Grace Irene saw. A tenant in the casita Bellomo has, they met at the perfect time. Both artists and creatives, she knew she had to help him.

“Nobody knew what I was doing for 45 years making pottery,” said Bellomo. “She saw a treasure that should be discovered by other people.”

She wanted people to know his work, so they got to work, getting his website up and running, filing his business license and more to help him reach his final dream of having his own business, eventually a factory.

“I have these dreams that seem to be coming true,” he said. “And I’m sure the business is going to come true, I don’t know how, but it will.”

Philip taught at PCC for more than two decades.

https://www.kold.com/2021/12/03/92-year-old-legally-blind-tucson-man-opens-ceramic-tile-business/

“Content should move your soul.”

Group makes nearly 10,000 masks since March

Tucson’s dancing man on the north side spreads smiles

92-year-old, legally blind Tucson man opens ceramic tile business