MASON RANKIN, 56, IS DEAD;
FOUNDED AIDS GROUP IN UTAH
Friends said the cause was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a lung disorder.
Mr. Rankin, a lifelong Salt Lake City resident, passed up college to help support his divorced mother and became a successful real estate broker and promoter. He was a hard-driving, hard-drinking businessman whose ventures included assembling the real estate parcel for the Salt Palace convention center.
But for all his business success, it was not until after he had stopped drinking, developed AIDS and been forced to give up his profession that Mr. Rankin discovered his true mission in life: making people with AIDS—and those who helped them—feel good about themselves through the unlikely medium of knitted yarn.
Kindly Gifts, the decidedly offbeat charity Mr. Rankin founded eight years ago, would seem a curious way to help people with AIDS and H.I.V.: Even though many AIDS patients develop circulation problems, making them susceptible to chills, warm clothing is not in short supply in Utah. However, providing protection against the cold was never the point of Kindly Gifts, as became apparent when those who received Mr. Rankin’s offerings responded with effusive expressions of gratitude far out of proportion to the utilitarian value of the scarves or hats they had received.
As Mr. Rankin saw it, the recipients recognized what had been obvious to him from the beginning, that the handmade woolens turned out by a growing corps of dedicated volunteers had been touched by love.
And so, as his friends came to see it, had everyone who came in contact with Mr. Rankin, a man of such enthusiasm that once his charity got rolling, it attracted a widening circle of unlikely volunteer knitters, from harried young Mormon mothers to business and professional people, some so determined to take part that they had to be taught to knit.
Mr. Rankin had learned the rudiments of knitting from his mother, but his early efforts were limited to cotton dishcloths until friends who received them as gifts taught him more elaborate techniques.
Kindly Gifts originated when Mr. Rankin and a few friends gathered at his apartment for evenings that were like modern-day quilting bees.
Initially, to pay for the yarn, the group sold the items, giving the profits to various AIDS charities, but once word of their enterprise got around, selling proved unnecessary. Kindly Gifts was inundated with so many gifts of cash and donated yarn that Mr. Rankin’s spare bedroom came to resemble a warehouse.
Although a core group continued to gather at his apartment for weekly knitting sessions, the effort attracted many other knitters who worked at home.
To some of his friends, one of the more appealing benefits of the charity was that it attracted a number of elderly volunteers for whom the familiar act of knitting or crocheting became a way to relate to a baffling world beyond their experience.
When one of the most dedicated volunteers, a woman in her 90’s, was asked by a puzzled friend why she was working for people with AIDS, she had a ready reply: “Because they need me. AIDS is a disease, just like polio, that happened to come along.”
Partly because of such attitudes, the charity has grown to 135 volunteers. Members of the group said that last year they turned out 200 afghans,100 sweaters and hundreds of smaller items—enough to meet the needs of Utahans with AIDS or H.I.V. as well as to begin assisting young cancer patients at Ronald McDonald House and those with other diseases.
Although some of its knitted goods are sent outside the state, the bulk of Kindly Gifts’donations are distributed within Utah, many of them around Christmas, which may help explain why Mr. Rankin, who began growing a beard this year, took to calling himself Santa Claus.
Mr. Rankin leaves no immediate relatives, but his friends said Kindly Gifts would continue for the same reason Mr. Rankin started it—because, as he put it, “it gives people the warm fuzzies.”
September 29, 1997