Jeannie Waltz says she grew up poor in rural Pennsylvania. Even though her family didn’t have much, she says, they were always willing to share with others less fortunate. It is a way of life that clearly hasn’t changed over her 88 years of life. Garvin Thomas reports.
Even on the most beautiful of Bay Area days, life on the streets can be a cold experience.
Warmth, of any kind, is something to be treasured.
It is a good thing, then, that warmth is 88-year-old Jeannie Waltz's specialty.
For the past two years, Waltz, a resident of Bridgepoint at Los Altos, has been knitting scarves that she donates to Cityteam Ministries so they can give them to homeless people.
"I feel like if someone's cold, even if they don't like the color, they will wear the scarf," Waltz said.
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What is truly remarkable, though, isn't just that Waltz knits the scarves, it is the relentless consistency she has shown in doing so.
Waltz knits one scarf every single day. "Sometimes one and a half," Waltz added.
So far in 2018 Waltz has knitted well over 200 scarves in addition to the 230 scarves she knitted in 2017.
Waltz regularly sits in a chair in her studio apartment in the senior living community and knits for 8 hours a day. "Sometimes they have bingo and I play and I lose an hour of knitting then I have to try and make up for that," Waltz said.
Waltz credits her copious charitable output to two factors. First, there was her upbringing in rural Pennsylvania. Even though her family was poor, Waltz said they never hesitated to share what they did have with those less fortunate.
Second, she's got the time.
"When I came here and I didn't have a house to keep and all of that, I had nothing but time to knit and so that's where that started," Waltz said.
Waltz says she doesn't have the means, or the physical ability, to do some of the level of charitable work she has done in the past. She is however, a firm believer in doing whatever one can to help others. So, as long as she has time on her hands, there will be knitting needles in them.
"I've gone and fed the people. I've cooked food for people. I've helped just as much as I could all my life and I am limited here to what I can do and yet there's still something I can do."
