91-Year-Old Hospice Patient Continues to Knit Hats for the Homeless

Morrie Boogart may be bedridden, but that hasn’t stopped him from making a difference in other people’s lives. The 91-year-old Michigan man, who is in hospice care with skin cancer and a mass on one of his kidneys, spends his waking days knitting hats for local shelters, one stitch at a time.

“Why do I do it? It just makes me feel good,” said Boogart. He’s been knitting for some 15 years, but said he stopped counting the numbers of hats he’d completed after 8,000.

“This has been the best thing that’s happened to me because I just stay in my room,” he said. “I’m a bed patient for everything.”

Though nearly 60% of hospice patients receive care at home, Boogart is a resident at Cambridge Manor in Grandville, an assisted living community just 10 miles outside of Grand Rapids.

Most of his completed hats are donated to homeless shelters in Grand Rapids.

“The hats have a rim around the edge to cover their ears and keep them nice and warm,” he explained.

Despite his declining health, Boogart is currently working on a new batch of hats to be sent out in October, though he admits his time has slowed down with age. “I do it awfully slow, it maybe takes me two days to make a hat.”

To the left of his bed rests a picture of his wife, Donna Mae, who has since passed. To his right rests his trusty supply of yarn. “The only time I’m not doing it is if I fall asleep,” Boogart said.

Through it all, he remains extremely humble about his work and the unrelenting service he provides to the community. As he told the local news station that interviewed him: “It’s not so much of a story, but it means a lot to me.”