Martha's story in Gazette

Column: Mother knits hats in memory of daughter killed by boyfriend; Proceeds will be used to help stop relationship violence

By Linda S. Mah | Kalamazoo Gazette

October 21, 2009, 7:33AM

Maggie Wardle

This is the story of a hat.

The hat is a charming little knit cloche. At the bottom is a band of trinity stitches, in the center are loops representing people holding hands, and at the top is a butterfly stitch.

Those three things — symbolizing faith, community and bugs — represent a life: Maggie Wardle’s. Wardle was a 19-year-old Kalamazoo College sophomore when she was murdered on Oct. 18, 1999, on the college campus by her former boyfriend, who then killed himself.

The hat represents something else: a family’s attempt to make sense of a senseless act and to help save other young women from acts of relationship violence.

Martha Omilian, Maggie Wardle’s mother, who lives in Plainwell, said she no longer cries every day. But the pain and loss are never far from her heart.

“There aren’t many times during the day when I don’t think of Maggie,” she said. “I realize that’s just how it’s going to be.”

Three years ago she took up knitting, and last year she asked the owners of Handweavers Inspiring Yarn Shop, in Kalamazoo, if they could help her design a hat in Maggie’s memory. Marjan Marsman and her daughter Jamie Marsman, the store’s co-owners, created the pattern to reflect Maggie’s personality and interests, such as butterflies.

Maggie liked to collect bugs. When she was little, she began setting up a lawn chair in the back yard at night. She would cover it with a white sheet to attract bugs, which she would mount for her collection.

“She was an interesting kid because she had so many interests,” Omilian fondly recalled of her daughter, who played the French horn and played golf for K-College.

But for Omilian, the most important part of the hat is the center section, the interconnecting loops.

“It’s people holding hands,” she said. “That just shows that people need to help each other out. I think it’s really important for kids in college and high school to know that if your friend tells you, ‘My boyfriend doesn’t let me do certain things or he wants to know where I am all the time,’ that it’s important for you to tell someone. Keeping that kind of secret doesn’t show what a good friend you are.”

IF YOU WANT TO HELP

For more information on Maggie Wardle and the Maggie’s Hat project click here. Martha Omilian is looking for volunteers to help knit hats. To contact her, send e-mail to momilian@charter.net. Or go to Maggie's Hat link on the Remembering Maggie website

Since getting the pattern for the hat, Omilian has knit about 30 of the hats. Knitters at the store, who can join Maggie’s hat-knitting sessions on the fourth Saturday of the month, have made about 40 hats.

Sales of the hats, which costs $25, are being used to help start a foundation that will be dedicated to educating high-school- and college-age young people about relationship violence and how to stop it.

Omilian said she wants to reach out to young women in particular in hopes that she can stop the cycle of domestic violence before it has a chance to get started.

If she can reach even one girl, help one other college student recognize the danger signs of a potential abuser, then perhaps there is some meaning to Maggie’s death, she said.

One person told Omilian, “Wearing this hat makes me feel safe.”

If enough of Maggie’s hats are sold, there is the possibility that even more women will be made to feel safer. So Omilian keeps knitting, the rows of knit and purl helping her to remember, giving her purpose and, one hopes, helping her heart to mend.

Linda S. Mah, whose opinion column runs on Wednesdays, can be reached at (269) 388-8546 or lmah@kalamazoogazette.com.