Diocesan staffer donates hair

By JoANN AMMANN, Globe intern
August 27, 2006

Locks of Love is an organization that relies heavily on children, them being 80 percent of their hair donors. Recently, an adult member of the diocese, Linda Ebel, donated over 10 inches of hair to this organization.

Locks of Love was first started with a for-profit wig making company and in 1997, the organization obtained its own certification to develop further. The idea surfaced from Madonna Coffman, who lost her hair in her twenties after developing alopecia and eventually recovered. Her daughter also developed alopecia and lost her hair. After this, Coffman took Locks of Love on fulltime. Locks of Love is targeted to help every financially disadvantaged child suffering from long-term hair loss. Over 2,000 hair donations are received through the mail each week. Locks of Love has recipients in every state and also Canada.

Ebel, director of curriculum and instructional services for the Sioux City Diocese, explained that as an adult, people are often not aware that they can still do this type of donating to help needy children benefit. It was about four years ago that Ebel decided to grow out her hair and donate to the organization.

"I think fewer adults do it because I don't think they are aware that they can. To be really honest, when you get to be my age, it doesn't really look good to have that long of hair," said Ebel. "But on the other hand, its only hair. It only took me about four years to get it grown out. I guess hair has never been a big thing with me. So you just let it grow and pull it back and that's it."

She also explained that it was because of a former student that she also decided to grow her hair out and also follow through with her donation.

"I guess it was always just in the back of my mind that once I decided to let my hair grow out that's what I was going to do," Ebel said. "When I was principal at St. Catherine/St. Mary's in Remsen, I had a student who had done Locks of Love. It's a really nice way to help people whose lives have been horribly touched by illness and it's something that even at my age, I could do."

With Locks of Love, there are many places that can take care of the donating process for you. However, some people also choose to mail in their donations by themselves. When she had her haircut done they took care of it for her, after braiding it and cutting it.

"It really was a no-brainer as far as letting your hair grow out and keeping it trimmed and going to get it cut and someone or some bodies is going to be able to benefit from that," said Ebel.

The process itself is fairly simple. In order to donate you need to follow a few simple rules. Locks of Love does not accept bleached or chemically treated hair, but does accept permed or colored hair. Also, Locks of Love would like each donation to be 10 inches in length because most recipients are girls; many which would like long hair. Two inches of every hair donation is lost in the wig-making process.

The donation experience is something that impacts both the recipient of the new hairpiece as well as the donor. Recipients are allowed to receive five hairpieces throughout their ages of six to 18.

"I guess, the thing I think of is, while it's out there and there are a lot of young kids that do this there are lot of us who are older who can do it too," said Ebel. "It's not a hard thing to do, letting your hair grow."

With the experience complete, Ebel found that the entire thing had been very rewarding for her and took little to no effort.

"I think it's really rewarding. Human hair wigs are extremely, extremely expensive. They put these wigs together by hand and then these are given free to those people with the diseases. It's just kind of like it took so little effort on my part to do something that means so much to one of these young people," Ebel said. "To me it was a very worthwhile, rewarding thing to do that really took no cost and no effort on my part."