Quilting for the Cure
Patti Bench
By Bailey Vega
Patti Bench worked at Taft College for 27 years, and she still finds ways to support the school even during her retirement. In the nearly three decades she spent at TC, she held numerous positions and was the one who initiated some of our school’s very important achievements. She has been a TC counselor, instructor of psychology, and distance learning coordinator; she retired as the Vice President of Instruction in 2013. Bench started the Distance Learning Program at Taft College and continues to teach psychology to TC students online from her home in the mountains of Kernville, California.
Bench says she is “blissfully retired,” and quilting, one of the things she most loves to spend her time doing now, is a way that she still meaningfully impacts Taft College as well as others. She has been using her talent and creativity to make quilts that benefit the Taft College volleyball team’s Breast Cancer Awareness Fundraiser for the past several years. She found the pattern for the quilt she made for this October’s fundraiser a year and a half ago and has been excitedly anticipating her donation of the quilt to be raffled off for the fundraiser ever since.
Patti Bench’s Breast Cancer Awareness Quilt
“This is a cause that’s near to my heart,” she stated affectionately. This is because Bench was actually the very person who started the Breast Cancer Awareness Week and fundraiser at Taft College back in the early 1990s. At that time, she ran a weeklong fundraiser and awareness campaign on campus that was focused on supporting and donating money to the Susan B. Komen Foundation. Bench coordinated the special events and activities for about five years before Kanoe Bandy, the current athletic director and volleyball coach, joined forces with her and eventually took over with the volleyball girls.
Bench is just as passionate about quilting as she is about benefiting others through her creations. “I do things that inspire me,” she said, explaining that she frequently quilts for local charities, fundraisers, and other causes that she feels moved by. For the past five years, she has been making one quilt every month that is donated to be used in hospital Isolettes, incubators that premature babies are laid in. She also makes quilts for local family resource centers in Kernville and Ridgecrest and participates in the Wounded Warrior Quilt Program to which she sends one of her quilts every month to their San Diego branch.
She plans on continuing to make quilts that will benefit the Taft College volleyball team’s Breast Cancer Awareness Fundraiser in the years to come. “I’m already working on next year’s,” she said enthusiastically. “It’s a special program,” she continued with a warm smile, “so you have to do something special for it.”
The volleyball team will be sponsoring Breast Cancer Awareness Week, which runs from Oct. 10-14. The team will have breast cancer information tables set up from 11:00 am-1:00 pm each day at the cafeteria and in front of the SU building where donations can be made and Breast Cancer Awareness paraphernalia will be sold. The volleyball team will also have a home game dedicated to Breast Cancer Awareness on Friday, Oct. 14 at 6:00 pm. Donations are accpected at the door, and all who attend will be given raffle tickets. Patti Bench’s quilt will be raffled off at this event. “Dig for a Cure” T-shirts will be available for purchase at the match as well. The money raised by the volleyball team is donated locally to Taft’s Soroptimist Club which uses the funds to meet the needs of cancer patients in the community.