This post is about making a difference during COVID-19 and it involves two of my favorite people: my sister Lucy, and my husband, Sam.

Lucy is a fantastic photographer who normally lives in Italy working for a study abroad program. She’s home in North Carolina at the moment due to Coronavirius.

Sam is a TV writer who was a journalism major 10-years ago when we met at Emerson College.

My sister has been working on a massive project with her friend Mercedes and I asked my husband to interview them for the blog. I don’t want to give too much away, so please read on and enjoy!!

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Wisdom, Courage, and Face Masks

by Sam Clarke

Two weeks ago, I found myself racking my brain to remember the words to Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Serenity Prayer” because, after a month of marinating in 24-hour news coverage of our current global pandemic, a little part of me felt like that message might apply. 

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Yep. Reinhold Niebuhr for the win. And do you wanna know how I put this timeless golden wisdom into practice? 

I stopped watching the news. Completely. No news for two weeks straight because there are a million bad things happening out there and I’m stuck in my apartment so why bother proactively making myself upset over a sick world that I can’t do squat to change?

And then my wife Stella got a call from her sister, Lucy. 

Lucy has lived and worked in Italy for the last nine years and, when Italy announced measures to close their borders, she had to catch a same-day flight on literally the last plane out of Florence. She self-quarantined for two weeks in North Carolina. She was calling to say hi. To ask how Stella, and I, and Colby (our now five-month old baby) were holding up. 

“Great,” I said. “I’m not watching the news as a means to maintain my sanity and keep living my best life in this crisis. How about you?”

“I’m making masks,” Lucy said. 

Lucy, along with her friend Mercedes, are the masterminds behind “Better Than a Bandana,” a homegrown, homemade face mask operation, sewing, sanitizing, and shipping face masks free of charge to anyone who asks for them, all in the name of doing their part to help stop the spread of COVID-19. 

Obviously, I could stand to learn some things about courage and wisdom from these two, so I decided to call them again later to learn more. 

By the time “later” rolled around, Better Than a Bandana had been featured in Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch. Within 48 hours, Lucy and Mercedes received new orders for over 300 masks. They were shipping them to at least 22 states, Italy, and Quebec, fulfilling requests from homeless shelters, county jails, veterans’ homes, and a long list of other health service providers, individuals, and families. 

How were they keeping up with these orders? One mask at a time. After all, they only have two sewing machines between them. Not only that, literally one month ago, neither of them even knew how to sew. At all. 

“It took a lot of tutorials and a lot of screwing up,” Lucy said. Their first masks had staples. The next versions had tape. There may have been hot glue and bunny-ear knots involved…

“Then we started to get better,” Mercedes said. They took everything they learned from all the prototypes they made and, a whole lot of practice later, they emerged with a solid, serviceable face mask (complete with removable filter) and the sewing skills to ‘mass’ produce them. 

And so the real work began. Fueled by coffee, podcasts, and Netflix, the two would wake up at 8 a.m., review whatever orders came in through their Instagram the night before, and then spend the rest of the day (sometimes into the night) sewing, packing and shipping. 

Now, I’m not the only one to think this (I know, because an Internet troll on Market Watch said the same thing)…it all sounded like they’d set themselves up to run their own little two-person sweat shop. 

“Don’t worry,” Lucy said. “We have mandatory union breaks that we’ve made for ourselves.”

Cynical jokes aside, I was really curious about what was driving Mercedes and Lucy to commit themselves, day in and day out, to full time, unpaid manual labor. And why, when sewing had been so far out of their skill set and comfort zone, had they chosen to make face masks in the first place? 

“I had heard from my sister who is a surgeon in Michigan,” Mercedes said. “They were only allowing her one mask per week because of a shortage. I got very upset so I tried to figure out how to make masks.” Mercedes went on to learn that the alternatives to professional-grade masks her sister’s team were being encouraged to use were bandanas and scarves. 

“I was like, ‘Man I’ve been trying to make this perfect mask when it just has to be better than a bandana.”

The two friends sent Mercedes’ sister and her team a large order of masks, but they didn’t feel like they could stop there. Over the last few weeks, at least six people Lucy and Mercedes know have contracted coronavirus. 

“It’s terrifying,” Mercedes said. “And I feel like, “Maybe if I’d just gotten a mask to them, or if everyone had started wearing masks sooner… So all I can think is, ‘How can we possibly help this instead of sitting at home and worrying?’ Making these masks keeps our minds off those things.”

Additionally, Lucy, whose life and career, friends and boyfriend are all back in Italy, just wants to go home. 

“The only way we can think of to go home is to flatten the curve,” Lucy said. 

As inspiring as their work has been to others, Lucy and Mercedes have also been inspired by the outpouring of support and donations they’ve received. They don’t need to cook meals because family and friends drop meals off on their porch for them. Lucy’s aunt has been pre-cutting fabric in Michigan and sending it to them in North Carolina. And, so far, their supplies and material needs have been provided for by members of the local community and even strangers from thousands of miles away. 

“We really couldn’t do it without all the people who are helping us,” Lucy said. 

“All the people who are helping us.” To me, that points to a bigger magic of what Lucy and Mercedes have done and continue to do with Better Than a Bandana. Through hard work, discipline, and more burns from an iron than Mercedes is willing to admit, they’ve created a space in a time of crisis for people to help; to give of their time and their talents, their gifts and their guidance, their wisdom and their courage to change things that maybe they didn’t realize they could change. 

That sure as hell is better than a bandana. 

Sam Clarke is a TV writer who dusted off a decade-old journalism degree to write this feature in the hope that, by spreading awareness of extraordinary people doing extraordinary things, he will help change the things he can. 

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To learn more about It’s Better Than a Bandana, order a mask, or make a donation so they can send more masks to the front lines — send Lucy and Mercedes a direct message on Instagram.

You can also view their photography work via their personal websites (Mercedes Jelinek, Lucy Plato Clark).