(scissor tips removed for airport security)

As an artist (BFA Tyler ’69), and former art teacher, I think this is a wonderful idea that will engage both travelers to our area and life long residents departing to adventures beyond our city limits.

In my own family’s history, work in the “needle trade” was passed through three generations. My maternal grandmother and her sisters worked in sewing factories in the Philadelphia and New York City, after arriving from Russia in 1904, as a small child.

After WWII, my father returned from the South Pacific and worked for, and then opened his own factory for making drapes and slip covers. This long history related to sewing in my family, prevents me from precisely dating these thimbles, but they’ve been in the drawer of my grandmother’s old Singer, the first model to have an electric, exterior-mounted motor. The mint condition instruction booklet from the sewing machine is dated 1929. It was in use till the motor finally quit, so you see why the thimbles are hard to date.