Miami Herald (MH) - Sunday, September 15, 1991
John Donnelly; Herald Staff Writer

And when he goes to preschool for medically disabled children this week, his quilt goes, too.

"He doesn't let his blankee stay home for anything," said the boy's foster mother, Eileen Leeson.

It is a gift from an anonymous quilter, one of thousands across the country inspired by a simple and moving idea: Babies born with AIDS, crack dependency or major medical problems need something that's theirs, something that's warm, something to wrap around them.

In three years, the quilters of the country have handed over 21,000 blankets like the one Julio holds tight. In Central Florida alone, more than 1,500 have been distributed in the past year to children through hospitals or the state. And South Florida quilters are just getting started.

"One day early this year, the quilts just miraculously appeared," said Martha Spencer, a state coordinator of medical parenting programs in the Tampa area. "We got a call, and the next thing we knew, we had 35 quilts. Within a few weeks they were gone. So they're resupplying us. There is no shortage of need."

The project started with an article. In 1988, psychologist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, world renowned for her writings on death and dying, estimated in a newsletter that 3,000 HIV-infected babies were abandoned or living in hospitals.

In Northwood, N.H., Ellen Ahlgren read this and something stirred in her.

"I had taken up some quilting," said Ahlgren, a retired mental health counselor. "I had just finished the last of about 20 quilts for my family when the newsletter arrived. And then the thought came to me: Why couldn't the women in this country just get going to make quilts for AIDS babies?"

With a phone call to a Boston hospital, ABC Quilts was born. The hospital would take as many blankets as it could get. Ahlgren's relatives went to work. Friends donated money. Fliers were sent out.

Word spread, friend to friend, nursing home to social club to Bible school, quilter newsletter to major newspaper.

Ahlgren, 72, marvels at where it is now: Quilts are arriving from England, Australia, Japan. Coordinators are in 46 states. Grade-schoolers are making them. Inmates are, too.

"People like to feel that they are doing something worthwhile," she said. "And this gives them a chance to do something."

For Joyce Suarez, 53, of Brandon, east of Tampa, the idea appealed immediately. She comes from a family of quilters. In 1956, she took her great-grandmother's quilt to the University of Florida as a freshman. And recently, she began making quilts for her own grandchildren.

And for AIDS babies.

One day this month, more than 200 quilts were stacked in her guest bedroom -- the labor of dozens of area quilters.

"Excuse the mess," she said, inching past the piles. "There's no place here anymore for anyone to sleep."

Suarez and her husband, Ernest, carry the quilts to area hospitals. They are busy people, and the quilt project fills nearly all their spare time. They love doing it.

"The blessing is as great for us as it is for the children," she said. "That's what we call this: a double blessing. I was sort of suffering from the empty-nest syndrome. My children were gone. I needed something. I had no idea what this would become."

Or is still becoming. "Getting enough of the quilts is so hard," she said. "There are so many babies that need them."

Fellow quilters know the need.

In Longboat Key, 40 miles south of Tampa, Joyce Wiese: "These little children have three strikes against them when they're born. There are very few people who have a personal interest in them. We can do something."

And in Northwood, N.H., founder Ahlgren: "It carries vibes of love and comfort; it helps the children feel better."

The program has few rules. The fabric is cotton or cotton-polyester. Coordinators check for stray pins. Quilters sign their first names and states in a corner of their work.

And the quilters almost never meet the children. They hand over the quilts, and they go home to make new ones.

They never know how these children respond -- as do Julio and Jimmy and Scott, the three foster children of Eileen and Bud Leeson in Tampa.

Julio and Jimmy have tracheotomies: Surgical openings in their neck allow them to breathe. Scott was born crack dependent. All are under 4. All require constant attention. All are never far from their blankees.

In a kitchen cluttered with oxygen tanks and stuffed animals, the three listened to Eileen Leeson read a Sesame Street alphabet book. They were swaddled with quilts of dinosaurs, bears, ducks, sheep and dogs, each making sure that his was under and around him. Leeson said Julio especially needs his. The boy spent his first 20 months in a hospital.

"At the hospital," she said, "he bonded with his baby blanket. Now he has his blankee. He won't go anywhere without it. It's a constant in his life, and he loves it."

The boy looked up at a visitor, holding the quilt to his face. Red nubs of yarn dotted the blankee, all that was left of bows picked and loved off.

If you want to help ABC Quilts, it's easy.

Call Priscilla D'Agostino at 431-3426, weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., or write her at 11740 NW 12th St., Pembroke Pines, Fla. 33026. D'Agostino, ABC Quilts' local coordinator, will send all those interested the guidelines for making quilts and information on the organization. The nonprofit group also accepts donations.

Eight months ago, D'Agostino delivered about 75 quilts made in Sarasota to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami.

"Jackson could take all the quilts I could get them," D'Agostino said. "I could certainly find places for lots of quilts."

CAPTION: PHOTO Joyce Suarez of Brandon, stitches a design for a QUILT that eventually will go to a sick child; photo: Eileen Leeson with three foster kids, one of the hugging a QUILT
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