ZANESVILLE, Ohio — Ohio University Zanesville is collecting blankets through Nov. 30 to help local residents stay warm as cold weather settles in, the Zanesville Times Recorder reported. The annual Good Samaritan Blanket Drive is organized with the campus Student Nurse Association, according to a community announcement cited by the Times Recorder.
Donations may be dropped off in Elson Hall and Herrold Hall on the Ohio University Zanesville campus, the Times Recorder reported. Blankets collected through the drive will be donated to Eastside Community Ministries, which will distribute them to residents in need.
The drive has a long memory. It began with the Good Samaritan nursing school class of 1960, and since then it has collected more than 7,000 blankets and raised money to help with residents’ heating bills, according to the announcement cited by the Times Recorder. Teresa Polen, a Student Nurse Association adviser and faculty member, has led the campus effort for many years, the Times Recorder reported.
The timing is the point. The drive runs through the end of November, ahead of the coldest stretch of the year in Muskingum County, and it puts the blankets in the hands of a local ministry that already knows the families who need them — no application, no waitlist, just a warm layer handed over before winter deepens.
For the nursing students involved, the drive is also part of the job they are training for. The Student Nurse Association’s role ties the collection to the campus’s health programs: the same students learning to care for patients in clinical settings are gathering the basics that keep people healthy at home, starting with staying warm.
The scale tells its own story about consistency. More than 7,000 blankets collected since the drive began with the class of 1960 works out to well over a hundred blankets a year, every year, for more than six decades — through changes in the campus, the nursing program and the city around it. The heating-bill help the drive has raised alongside the blankets addresses the other half of the same problem: a blanket stretches warmth, but a paid utility bill keeps the furnace on.
What happens next: donations are accepted in Elson Hall and Herrold Hall through Nov. 30, after which the collected blankets go to Eastside Community Ministries for distribution to Muskingum County residents, according to the Times Recorder.
Photo: Paul Sableman, CC BY