A small business owner from Atlantic County is doing her part to make sure that medical workers are comfortable during their long shifts.
Galloway Township native Ryann Jones has made hundreds of headbands with buttons on them to help make wearing medical masks a bit more comfortable.
“Who would’ve thought that this would make such a difference in their day,” Jones says.
Jones was supposed to get married on March 27. But the coronavirus pandemic delayed the wedding. Instead, she spent the day attaching buttons to headbands that she sells through her business, Ry-Bandz.
“My friend Kira from Cape Regional – she had reached out and says, ‘Ryann, the backs of my ears are so raw. You gotta make me something,’” Jones says.
The buttons allow those working on the front line to ease some of that discomfort.
“I thought that weekend when we made close to 500 and we donated them – I thought, how can I stop now? 500 doesn’t even begin to cover the amount of health care workers that need them right now,” says Jones.
Photos: The Heroes of the Coronavirus Pandemic
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Jones says that she and her team got to work and made more than 1,000 more headbands. All of them were donated to hospitals across the area.
“We started at Cape Regional in [Cape May] Courthouse. When we went to Shore Memorial. I think we’ve sent over 100 to Cooper University, Penn Presbyterian. There’s a hospital in Staten Island I sent some to,” she says.
Jones says that her inbox is now flooded with requests for more headbands. She says that she hopes to honor all the requests on a first come, first served basis. She says that it is her way of saying thank you.
“It is a feeling like no other. I’m getting messages all day long from these workers and just being able to help them in such a small way for what they’re doing for us is unimaginable,” says Jones.
Jones says that one of her retailers – Bowfish Kids in Ocean City – is attaching buttons to their stock of Ry-Bandz and is giving people a chance to send them to a health care worker in their life.