LOUISVILLE, Ky. — On any given day you could find Mary Baron, Suzanne Davis, Jane Gildehaus, Carol Loran, Jeannie Park, and Martha Spiece hunting for good deals on kids’ shirts. It could be a shirt with rainbows for a girl in Colorado or one with dinosaurs for a boy on the east coast.
The group of sisters calls themselves the Grand Tees. They are grandmothers and great aunts who started a sewing club to make quilts for their grandchildren.
“These are children who are going through cancer treatment and they have a port,” said Carol Loran.
They have made and shipped more than 400 port access shirts to children in 26 states, free of charge to families.
It started when doctors found a tumor on the brain of a three-year-old close to their heart. “Sweet little boy with blonde hair. Of course, with the chemotherapy treatment he had, he lost his hair. It’s starting to come back in,” said Loran.
The boy is Loran’s superhero-loving grandson and her sisters’ great-nephew Knox.
Knox’s mom, Ashley Shepherd, searched online for port access zippers. She found some that were pricey and would take weeks to arrive.
That’s when the Grand Tees sprung into action to make and get shirts to him in time for his treatment.
Shepherd says Knox’s treatment plan included surgery, 30 rounds of radiation and chemotherapy.
Source: Sisters sew port access zippers on T-shirts for pediatric cancer patients
