Hilda Green...sewing smiles into every stitch

Noreen Hyslop photo Hilda Green has hand-crafted and donated hundreds of items to children in need in Southeast Missouri. [Click to enlarge]

With the charm of her English accent still evident, she remembers, "My mother always said that if you could make a child smile for five minutes, then whatever you have done to make that happen was worth it."

Hilda has, indeed, brought smiles to the faces of children. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, have benefited from her kindness over the past 13 years.

It all started one day when Hilda read an article in the paper about the need for warm covers to be utilized by policemen at the scene of accidents involving children. She provided her grandson, who was then a Caruthersville policeman, with some and the word spread.

"I went to work and made some little quilts that the children could be covered with to keep them warm," says the high-spirited woman whose energy well disguises her 88 years.

Then sometime she says around 1997, her granddaughter approached her about possibly making some children's quilts for the Stoddard County Children's Home and for children who were in foster care in the county. Two granddaughters worked at social service departments and saw the need to put their grandmother's skills to good use.

Her busy hands went to work once more on her old Singer machine that houses a treadle apparatus "just in case I'm out of electricity."

Soon the business of supplying quilts and covers for children expanded. She began to make detailed Christmas stockings for the foster children in the county as well, and then tiny crocheted stockings to hang on the Christmas tree that annually is decorated for a gathering of the children and their foster families.

Soon Hilda was called upon to stitch items for raffles that would benefit the Children's Home or other children's service organizations. She voluntarily made lap covers for patients at Beverly Nursing facility. Over the years, she has supplied hundreds of homemade items annually to several local agencies, each one going to a child in need.

After being told that children sometimes carry their belongings from home to foster care in a plastic trash bag, Hilda began turning out her own drawstring cloth bags for the youngsters--pink for girls, blue for boys, delighting not only young children, but all of those in the business of dealing with displaced children.

"I never sell anything I make," she claims. "There's always a child who is in need."

Hilda learned her sewing skills at an early age. "I went to work at 14 in a shop in London," she explains.

Those skills have served her well over the years. Although she never worked outside the home, she custom made dresses and suits for years from her home Singer and she baby-sat also to help supplement the income from the farm where she and her husband of 60 years, Ernest Vern Green, lived. There, the two raised three children, two boys and a girl.

Hilda met her husband-to-be in London when he was a G.I. and she was nearing 20.

"My sister and her boyfriend, another American soldier, invited me to play cards with them and I told her that we couldn't play cards with three people. I told her boyfriend to find a GI friend, but I told him to make sure he was tall since I was about five foot, nine inches at the time," she smiles.

Ernest Vern Green from Bloomfield, Mo. showed up for the card game and the rest is history. The two were married in Barnstable, England on May 5, 1944 and a year later, Hilda rode on the maiden voyage of the Argentina to New York City. From there she boarded a train, eventually reaching her destination of Dexter and finally settling into married life on a farm northwest of Bloomfield. She remains there today, five years after the passing of her husband of 60 years. She has never returned to her English homeland. Two sisters, one 93 years old who attends sewing classes herself on a weekly basis, remain in England.

Eighty-eight years have not slowed the spirit of Hilda Green. She sews almost non-stop, with her best friend, a rat terrier named Daisy, often at her side or on her lap.

"I think it's a good thing to keep busy," she says. "When one doesn't, one becomes a bit lazy, I believe."

Her creations are of her own design, with details of buttons, sequins and stars. It's intricate work that is occasionally interrupted by numbness in her fingers, preventing her from completing a project as planned.

"Sometimes I'll stop and run some hot water over them and I'm ready to go again!" she says.

While she never sells her work for monetary gain, she has been known to barter. She once was supplied remnants from Elder's Manufacturing when they were in business in Dexter, but that option left with the plant's closing years ago.

"I told one woman I wouldn't take money, but I would take a half yard of material in exchange for the little crocheted mittens and that worked out well."

Although Hilda Green has never driven a car, she lives independently. Her grown children, still living on or near the family farm, check on her several times daily, making sure she has wood on the stove and groceries in the cupboard.

"It's nice to have family close," she says.

Hilda has become known as "Grandma Green" to many youngsters in the foster program of Stoddard County. With love in every stitch, she continues her work to make children smile.