Violet’s Volunteers makes colorful gowns for hospice
Doris Violet Waugh was a warm, fun loving young woman who loved people. She was the mother of four children and the grandmother of eight. She lived most of her life on farms in Hoffman and Barrett. One of her many talents was gardening, both vegetables and flowers. Her flower arrangements adorned her church for Sundays and for weddings, as well as the Senior Center in Elbow Lake. Her family and friends were her life and she did many acts of kindness for anyone in need of a little cheering up. Waugh and her husband, Stan, spent 19 years of retirement wintering in Arizona, and summers on their farm near Barrett. In 1996, she began showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease which she battled for 12 years, the last two of which she received services from Douglas County Hospice. Waugh lost her battle with Alzheimer’s disease in 2007.

Thus began Cyndi Nelson, her daughter’s, dream to provide respectable gowns for Hospice patients. The gowns that were being used were donated, second-hand, patched and ragged. Cyndi started thinking about a volunteer group that could sew and donate nice gowns for hospice patients even before her mother passed away. But her own health has been challenged by pulmonary fibrosis and Parkinson’s disease, so others have taken up the cause.

In 2010, Violet’s Volunteers began the “Mission Project” of supplying Hospice of Douglas County with enough gowns for all loved ones and friends who are in Hospice, and the end stage of their lives. This is a way of sending families, friends, and strangers, a more positive and loving message of their importance to us. And it is a way for churches and communities to show their love, by providing gowns in sunny colors and prints for women; burgundy, navy and camouflage for men.

Cyndi believes nice gowns will help Hospice patients to look and feel better about themselves, while helping them maintain their dignity and connection to life, as well as preparing for death. The ultimate goal for this mission project is to challenge other church missions and/or community groups to help plant the “mustard seed” in every community, so that soon every county in the State of Minnesota will have enough gowns for all the loved ones in the Hospice programs, and no one will have to die in ragged gowns.

Cyndi hopes that the word of this mission will spread from state to state. There is no dream too impossible!

Currently, Violet’s Volunteers are well on the way to reaching their goal of making 150 gowns for Hospice. According to Sue Quist, Hospice and Palliative Care Coordinator for Hospice of Douglas County, “Our patients are continuing to enjoy wearing the beautiful gowns.”

If you would like to know more about volunteering to sew gowns, or if you are interested in starting your own Violet’s Volunteer group, please contact Mary Jane Reif at 320-763-7089.

“We are perfectly willing to share the knowledge we have gained and help the concept of Violet’s Volunteers to grow,” Reif said. “Cyndi would like nothing better then to have churches service the Hospice in their area with these gowns. It is a worthwhile project.”

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