Anonymous 88-year-old Woman Knits Wool Hats, Hangs Them On Fence in ZipLoc Bags For Needy Kids During Winter

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While good news seems to be rare enough these days, what’s even more special is when good Samaritans do good things without taking credit. One such do-gooder lives in Plymouth, Massachusetts: an 88-year-old woman who’s mostly homebound spent months knitting 75 warm hats for the cold months, which her daughter then hung on a park fence for anyone in need of a warm cap.

But beyond just the act itself was the fact that she chose to remain anonymous. Her motivation for the knitting and choosing to remain out of the cameras was simple. “I just like to stay in the background,” she said in an interview with WFXT, where her voice could be heard, but her face wasn’t in the frame. “Just because it makes me feel good that I can do something for someone, but take no credit for it.”

The woman first got the idea as a way of staying active and engaged, despite some issues with mobility, as she depends on a walker. There are also health benefits for her, as she sees it. “I like doing them. I think it’s fun,” she explained. “It keeps my hands going, but it doesn’t kill them.”

Jokingly calling herself “The Mad Hatter,” she doesn’t just make the hats in a casual way. Given that each one takes a day to make, she had to knit for many hours in the summer and fall to have them ready for the cold season. When she’s done, her daughter takes the hats, puts them inside Ziploc plastic bags to protect them from the elements, and hangs them on a fence in the local park for people in need.

“They go quickly,” the woman assures. It took only a couple of days to go from 75 to 4 hats still hanging. While she wishes she could keep all of Plymouth’s kids warm in the winter, she’s happy to have started with 75. “These little things would mean so much to someone who doesn’t have anything,” she explains.

While the woman craves no TV or social media attention, she would be very happy to spot someone wearing one of them around town and to know that she’s making a difference. “If I ever see anybody in [local grocery store] Market Basket or something wearing one of the hats, I’d be thrilled to pieces,” she said.

The “Mad Hatter” of Massachusetts isn’t the only woman her age helping people get ready for winter. A 90-year-old grandmother in Ohio has knitted over 2,200 hats in the past 10 years for a special group of kids: newborns in the Hillcrest hospital across from her senior home.

Given that she works with smaller size hats, the Ohio knitter is even faster than her Massachusetts counterpart, making a hat in just 4 hours. She takes considerable pride in her creation. “I buy strictly ‘baby yarn,’ which is a finer, nicer yarn,” the woman explained to ABC News. “And I have a signature flower that I put on there.”

Much like her fellow knitter in Plymouth, though, she has maintained the helpful habit in part because of how much it does for her body and soul. “It’s my therapy,” she said to ABC. “When you’re 90, you’ve got aches and pains. You don’t want to think about it. Well, you’re not thinking about it if you’re concentrating on what you’re doing.”

Though she once had a career and family, knitting has given her a new lease on life. “When you’re on this earth, you only have a limited time and you want to leave something behind when you leave,” she said.