Though the holiday season has passed, the Ohio University Women’s Club is still feeling the kindhearted spirit.
Alumni and friends are welcome to join the OU Women’s Club, a club for women who are new, established or retired faculty/administrators, or wives/domestic partners of OU faculty/administrators and Board of Trustees, in making earrings to donate to Ears to You. Ears to You is an organization that donates handmade earrings to women undergoing chemotherapy. It began at the Cleveland Clinic and later became a national philanthropy.
“Did I expect it to go national? I guess in the beginning I was hoping that I could find enough earrings through donations to be able to support the Cleveland Clinic,” said Ruth Crane, the founder of Ears to You and a cancer survivor in an email. “I quickly realized that yes, we could find support and that we could slowly expand to more hospitals and cancer centers as our supply of earrings grew and our base of support expanded.”
This organization is designed to help lift spirits and show how truly beautiful and strong women undergoing chemotherapy are. With that purpose and a personal connection, the OU Women’s Club was drawn in.
“One of our members had breast cancer,” said Yolanda Sutyak, the president of the club who is currently battling breast cancer. “She lost her hair and while she was in treatment, she was offered a pair of earrings through the organization Ears to You. It was then we decided that as a service project we would make the earrings and then donate them to Ears to You.”
Making these homemade earrings can be time consuming, but Sutyak said time flies when you’re having fun
“Last year we made over 40 pairs in one night,” Sutyak said. “Everyone who was there made two or three pairs and we had a good time. We sit and chat to one another why we make the earrings. It absolutely is a wonderful time”
This will be the third year that the OU Women’s Club has donated earrings to Ears to You.
“I never thought that I would be directing a nonprofit that I created, let alone created out of such a negative experience,” said Crane in an email. “It started simply because I wanted other women with cancer to feel a moment of joy when she was getting her chemo treatment. It was a way to pay it forward at a time when my life seemed in major upheaval…That was a blessing then, and it is a blessing now, five and a half years out.”
The OU Women’s Club will be making more earrings Monday at Sutyak’s home.
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