Just the FACS: Local Teachers Share Passion

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Margaret Kuenzel returned to her home Wednesday afternoon after spending her morning at the food pantry where she has worked for the past year. 

“It’s a drive-thru these days,” she explains in this age of essential employees in the era of social distancing. She is one of six at St. Clement’s on Lake Avenue – where Marianne McGhan coordinates the outreach program – bagging produce and canned foods, laundry detergent and toothpaste and leaving them on a table outside of St. Clement’s Chapel for their customers who need them.

Kuenzel had worked as Family And Consumer Science, or FACS, teacher for 36 years prior to her retirement. And even as her earliest roots date to Hyde Park, NY, the great-granddaughter of legendary trainer “Sunny Jim” Fitzsimmons has lengthy traces to the Spa City. “My mom came to Saratoga every summer, following the horses and it was funny that I ended up here too,” she says. “We started a little racing stable as a hobby and have a few horses that win sometimes. My husband Charlie is a Saratoga native.” 

The couple’s son Matthew grew up in Saratoga Springs and since relocated to North Carolina where he works for a consulting firm. “Matt called me and said he and his coworkers wanted to do something to support the health care workers there in North Carolina.” They heard about a need for masks and Matt and his co-workers set out to create some. “He said to me: ‘ And I’m using the home and career skills  I learned in 8th grade in Maple Avenue in Saratoga Springs.’ That did my heart good to hear that,” Kuenzel says. “I’d been thinking about making masks, so I asked him if he wanted some help.” 

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Historians trace the history of respiratory protection back nearly 2,000 year to Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder, who had used loose animal bladder skins to filter dust from being inhaled while crushing cinnabar. 

“I had been thinking about the masks as a FACS,” Kuenzel says. “The whole idea of being low in Personal Protective Equipment was astonishing to me.” She enlisted the assistance of three colleagues – two retired FACS teachers and one current teacher at Saratoga Springs High School – to help with the effort.

The group consists of retired Saratoga teachers Kuenzel, Shari Keller, and Dale Walton, as well as Kristin Harrod – a current FACS teacher at Saratoga Springs High School. “So, she is going through all of the Internet classrooms and lesson planning with students, and helping us on the side,” Kuenzel says. 

In addition to working on masks tabbed for North Carolina health workers, Walton is also sewing masks for city workers in Saratoga Springs as well as for Saratoga Hospital. “So, across two states, and with little tentacles that go everywhere,” Kuenzel says. 

“It takes us about a half-hour to make a mask and we try to make between eight and ten masks a day. I just shipped a box of 50 masks yesterday. When we go out I do see a variety of homemade masks and most look very similar to the ones we are producing: a rectangle of fabric, pleated with elastic that will go over the ears and situate in place.” All the fabrics have been washed with hot water and dried on high heat. 

How long will she do it? “Charlotte is a little behind where New York is with the virus. My son was been hearing that they should peak in the next two to three weeks so we – the women I’m working with – we just sent 50 down and I think the four of us can make another 100 masks.”