BY MARK WINEKA
SALISBURY POST

Julie Christensen and Holly Howington have seen hundreds of Delta Airlines seats this summer, and they’ve never left the ground.

The 17-year-olds from Raleigh are trying to earn their Young Womanhood Awards from The Church of the Latter-day Saints by helping to transform old seat covers from Delta planes into sturdy school bags for children of Third World countries.

They are part of roughly 275 Wake County Mormons, ages 14 to 18, who have been attending a youth conference at Salisbury’s Catawba College Friday and today.

Late this morning near the college’s Keppel Auditorium, the youth volunteers will be cutting out school-bag patterns from the Delta seat covers as part of three different service activities.

The students also rotate to areas where they will quilt small blankets or make file folder games. The quilts and games will be included inside the school bags.

Back home during the past several weeks, Christensen and Howington did the advance work in cutting and ripping the thick seams on the seat covers so the fabric will be ready this morning.

The hundreds of school-bag pattern pieces prepared today will be sewn together during a Wake County Latter-day Saints Women’s Day in November. From there, the bags will be shipped to the church’s Humanitarian Service Center in Salt Lake City for distribution to impoverished nations.

Phyllis Bray, one of the organizers of the youth conference in Salisbury, made the arrangements with the Salt Lake center.

Randolyn J. Emerson, who does media relations for the church in the Raleigh-Durham-Greensboro area, says the Tar Heel school bags will replenish the center’s supply. Thousands recently went to children in El Salvador, Peru and India, Emerson says.

Delta’s old seat covers were going into a landfill before Mel Carter, an analyst for the airline, thought that the fabric was too good to waste. He sent a sample to the Mormons’ humanitarian center in Salt Lake, where the idea for the school bags originated.

The center fills the bags with school supplies.

While they don’t have any air miles to show for their work with the Delta seats, the young women proudly sport several hand blisters, which come from the fabric shears needed to cut the covers.

“When it comes down to it, I think it will all be worth it because of the kids it will benefit in the end,” says Christensen, a rising high school senior.

To earn their faith’s Young Womanhood Award, Christensen and Howington have had to do four 20-hour projects. When completed, they will have done projects equivalent to earning an Eagle Scout Award in Boy Scouts. The total program takes six years.

The young women have met at each other houses this summer to work on their seat covers, which Delta delivered in ten huge boxes.

But why did the young Mormons come to Catawba College?

Emerson says it’s good sometimes to get away from the church’s meeting house in Raleigh.

“It’s fun, No. 1,” she adds, “and I think it really improves that feeling of camaraderie because you’re close together.”

The Tar Heel Mormons also found Catawba College accommodating to their needs.

“Hey, this is a great place to hold youth conferences,” Emerson says.

The participating youth represent several different locales within Wake County, from Wake Forest, to Holly Springs, to Zebulon.

Emerson says Mormons “believe that we emulate our Savior’s love when we strive to serve our neighbor, regardless of who or where that neighbor is.”

This morning’s service project, Emerson adds, give the youth a way “to experience the joy of doing something for someone else in need, even though there is no financial reward or tangible recognition, other than the internalized feeling of doing good.”

Contact Mark Wineka at 704-797-4263, or mwineka@salisburypost.com .