Warm, fuzzy Thanksgiving

In a world of sewing machines, Newport Harbor High School’s Student Political Action Committee spent Monday making quilts the old-fashioned way: with scissors, fingers and a deadline.

A few weeks earlier, the action committee had held its annual silent auction fundraiser, netting more than $4,000. With a portion of the proceeds, the students opted to help a group in the community rarely seen at silent auctions — disadvantaged children. On Sunday, Newport Harbor’s young activists bought cotton fleece for $600 from Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Store, and spent the following day in school and at home weaving them into holiday gifts.

The day before Thanksgiving, committee Co-President Dailey Wiese dropped the quilts off at the Orangewood Children’s Foundation in Santa Ana. It was the latest philanthropic project for the action committee, which held a blood drive in October and has held safety campaigns and town hall meetings in the past.

“The kids at Orangewood don’t really have much at all, so a blanket means so much to them,” said Dailey, 17, a senior.

The action committee, which former teacher Phil D’Agostino founded seven years ago to immerse students in the community, sought to provide quilts for boys and girls of all ages. In choosing fabrics, they looked for patterns that could appeal to the two genders: camouflage, pink, basketballs and more.

On Monday, more than 60 club members gathered in a classroom with advisor Tony Zeddies to begin their handiwork. To make a quilt, the students tied two sheets together by cutting the edges into strips and tying them together. With around seven people working on each blanket, the work passed in about an hour and a half.

David Kurtz, the program manager for the Orange County Social Services Agency, said the 21 quilts donated by Newport Harbor were a pleasant surprise.

“We get all kinds of donations from the community, especially this time of year, Operation Santa Claus and so on, but this was especially nice coming from a student group,” Kurtz said. “It’s always nice to see young people being civic-minded and thinking about the community. You don’t always see that in this day and age.”

The blankets, he added, would go to children who were leaving Orangewood to stay with relatives or other guardians. Orangewood, run by the Social Services Agency, opened 25 years ago to shelter children who are victims of abuse or neglect.

Co-President Luke Brunda said the group’s next project would be assembling care packages for U.S. soldiers in Iraq — for humanitarian reasons, not political ones.

“We’re not partisan,” said Luke, 17. “We don’t have any political views. We just want to stir action in the community.”