Nine-year-old GiGi Ruderman helps with the mask project.
                                 Submitted photo

Nine-year-old GiGi Ruderman helps with the mask project.

Submitted photo

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<p>Henry Rosen, wearing the hat, works on packaging for the masks while his brother Max irons and cousins Finn Ruderman and Libby Callahan work on the material.</p>
                                 <p>Submitted photo</p>

Henry Rosen, wearing the hat, works on packaging for the masks while his brother Max irons and cousins Finn Ruderman and Libby Callahan work on the material.

Submitted photo

<p>A makeshift clothesline on Katie Callahan’s porch is where some people who have requested face masks come to pick them up.</p>
                                 <p>Submitted photo</p>

A makeshift clothesline on Katie Callahan’s porch is where some people who have requested face masks come to pick them up.

Submitted photo

<p>This is what the masks look like. You can find instructions for making masks online.</p>
                                 <p>Submitted photo</p>

This is what the masks look like. You can find instructions for making masks online.

Submitted photo

<p>Submitted photo</p>

Submitted photo

<p>Max Rosen cuts some material for the family mask-making project. A newly licensed driver, he’s also happy to run delivery errands.</p>
                                 <p>Submitted photo</p>

Max Rosen cuts some material for the family mask-making project. A newly licensed driver, he’s also happy to run delivery errands.

Submitted photo

<p>Eileen Rosen, wearing a homemade face mask, strikes a pose on the porch.</p>
                                 <p>Submitted photo</p>

Eileen Rosen, wearing a homemade face mask, strikes a pose on the porch.

Submitted photo

<p>Grateful mask recipients have left presents, including a gift of toilet paper.</p>
                                 <p>Submitted photo</p>

Grateful mask recipients have left presents, including a gift of toilet paper.

Submitted photo

<p>Katie Callahan’s family of mask makers includes, standing: Finn Ruderman, Jake Ruderman, Max Rosen, Eileen Rosen, Libby Callahan. Seated are Gigi Ruderman and Katie Callahan with young Cooper standing at right in the foreground.</p>
                                 <p>Submitted photo</p>

Katie Callahan’s family of mask makers includes, standing: Finn Ruderman, Jake Ruderman, Max Rosen, Eileen Rosen, Libby Callahan. Seated are Gigi Ruderman and Katie Callahan with young Cooper standing at right in the foreground.

Submitted photo

If you see a house in West Pittston with a clothesline full of intriguing little bags on the porch, that’s one way Katie Callahan is distributing home-made face masks to people who have requested them.

“It’s a makeshift clothesline, and we’ve put the people’s names on them,” Callahan said earlier this week in a telephone interview. “For people who can’t get out to pick them up, we’re packing them up and sending them through the post office.”

Her teen-age nephew, Max Rosen, who recently got his driver’s license, has been delighted to run some delivery errands.

And he’s just one of a team of helpers who have pitched in with Callahan’s project, eager to put masks on the faces of people who need them during this time of the coronavirus pandemic.

It all started a few weeks ago when a friend who knew that Callahan likes to sew asked if she would make some masks for the friend’s granddaughters, who are nurses in the Philadelphia area.

Callahan, an experienced crafter who has made many costumes for children at Wyoming Seminary Lower School, where she teaches preschool, immediately said yes.

She and her niece, who is studying nursing at the University of Scranton, quickly made a few dozen masks and shipped them out.

Soon Callahan noticed other people’s requests for masks on Facebook. She posted an offer to make some, and “within just hours we had requests for over 100 masks. It was incredible!”

Within a few days after she’d transformed two rooms of her home into a sewing station, 150 masks were ready. She has material for hundreds more, Callahan noted.

She also has plenty of help, not only from her niece Libby Callahan, 22, but from her two teen-age sons, Jake and Finn Ruderman, her 9-year-old daughter, Gigi Ruderman; her sister, Eileen Rosen, and two teen-age nephews, Henry and Max Rosen.

Her sister and nephews live next door, Callahan said, and the relatives interact as one household, especially because she and Libby have been caring for Callahan’s elderly mother.

“We are not charging anyone for these,” Callahan said of the masks, which she pledges to continue making “for anyone who asks as long as we have the material to do so.”

The workers exhausted their elastic supply at one point but improvised with ribbons, hair ties and “believe it or not, the elastic from inside bungee cords.”

Callahn also learned of a way to cut yoga pants into strips to use for the elastic that goes around the ears of the person who wears the mask. “It works like a charm!” she reported.

Not everyone on Callahan’s little team is a sewer. Some iron or cut material or pack the finished products.

“There are many other people in the community doing the same thing,” Callahan said, adding it feels “fantastic to be helping people.”

”Some people are petrified,” she said. “Maybe this will give them a little comfort so they’re not frightened about going to the grocery store.”

“We’ve made some for family, people in our neighborhood, teachers and their families at Sem and other area schools, friends of ours from high school, college and previous jobs and even complete strangers who saw our Facebook post,” Callahan said.

While Libby Callahan, the nursing student, is happy to be helping with her aunt’s project, she’s eager to take a more active role in fighting the epidemic — as soon as she graduates and passes her nursing exam.

“I feel very confident in my choice (of career),” she said. “I can’t wait to get out there on the front lines.”

The family has gratefully accepted donations of cotton, elastic and financial contributions for more materials. While they are not charging for the masks, they have been touched to see that some grateful mask recipients have repaid their kindness with gifts ranging from a bottle of homemade wine to a large package of a commodity that is sometimes in short supply — toilet paper.