While stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Langley, B.C. senior is making and selling face masks and donating the proceeds to charity.
After her quilting group was put on pause due to the pandemic, 92-year-old Norma Floyd put her sewing skills to use by making facemasks at home and selling them as a fundraiser for the Langley hospice, where she has worked as a volunteer for 19 years.
Floyd’s plan initially hit a snag — how to deliver the masks to clients while keeping a safe distance.
Like any good entrepreneur, she figured out a solution. She tied strips of fabric together and attached them to a basket that she lowers from her balcony to waiting customers.
“Everybody laughs over the basket thing and thinks it’s a great idea,” she said. “It was just a whim.”
Shannon Todd Booth with the Langley Hospice Society said she’s not surprised at Floyd’s work ethic and ingenuity.
“Norma is a firecracker,” she said.
“We know Norma well, and we knew she would find a way hell or high water to be able to keep busy and to be able to contribute in some way.”
Norma, who was born eight years after the end of the Spanish Flu pandemic and a year before the Great Depression, knows a thing or two about resiliency and offers this advice for people during the COVID-19 crisis.
“I don’t like negativity, I like to be positive,” she said.
“Don’t look at it like we might be in this for two years, let’s just look at this as how are we going get through this week?
“And if you can do something to help somebody else, why not?”
— With files from John Hua