NORTHFIELD — Merry Kay Shernock knows that Northfield, where she’s lived for 35 years, has a bit of a reputation. It’s the home of Norwich University, a military college, and she knows people see it as kind of a paramilitary place.
So when she decided to try to pull together all the town’s mask-makers into one organized group, she figured they might as well lean into their reputation.
That’s how Northfield’s “Mask Brigade” was formed.
“We stuck our tongues firmly in cheek and made this paramilitary patch, so when you serve in the mask brigade, you get the patch,” she said.
So far, the brigade’s two dozen members have made and distributed more than 3,000 masks. Shernock said the only reason she knows that is that she called all the members of the mask brigade and asked them herself — there’s no organized system for counting or distributing the masks.
Instead, since April, the brigade has given away its masks from five boxes spread out along the 6-mile-long town, at places like the general store and public library. When brigade members finish sewing some masks, they just find a box and throw them in. Then, anybody walking around town who wants or needs an extra mask always has one at their fingertips.
“Have you ever tried to tell Northfield people what to do?” Shernock said. “You cannot. But if you ask them, they’ll do it twice.”
She said some people donate materials to the project, such as elastic or strings. Others sew on ties or cut fabric. Shernock also sends a weekly newsletter to people around town, telling them how the project is going and what needs doing or donating. Then, she said, people always step up to the plate.
“I know a woman who’s made probably 1,000 herself, while the rest of us made the other 2,000,” Shernock said. “This woman is fierce. She would take masks in her car, and if people weren’t wearing masks, she would say, ‘Hi, which mask do you want?’ She had nobody turn her down.”
Shernock said another mask-maker was walking around town earlier this month and saw a few Norwich cadets partying outside. They’d come back to campus as part of Nowich’s staggered reopening. The mask-maker marched right up to the cadets and asked if they would like to wear some masks. “They all took them,” Shernok laughed.
A big part of the project’s success, she said, is Northfield’s dedication to public service. She said her coworkers sometimes joke that Northfield is “a piece of the Northeast Kingdom that broke off and fell down into affluent Washington County” — but, in part because Norwich University emphasizes public service, the people of Northfield are of a very particular bent.
“Public service is part of the fabric of this town,” she said. “You have to step up in this town. What are you doing for public service; how do you help?”
After about four months of putting masks out for the community at large, the brigade is changing pace, and moving the mask boxes to the elementary, middle and high schools and to the town library for kids returning to school next month.
She said the brigade also plans to help hand out some of the 200,000 masks the state plans to distribute.
“But we kind of expect those to be the boring blue paper ones,” Shernock said. “We think kids are going to want the Power Rangers and Paw Patrol and superheroes and Norwich colors.”
Shernock said that, all in all, the mask project has been the best thing that’s happened to her since the pandemic started. She thinks a lot of people in the brigade feel the same way.
“Probably the best part of my year was being part of this,” she said. “It’s kind of an unusual story, this little miracle in Norwich.”
