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HOOKED ON A HOBBY
For 50 years she’s been ...
By JoAnn Jones
YOUNGSTOWN
Joanie Cochran of Tod Lane has never been a quitter.
Born with a heart defect that affected her mobility, she crochets life-sized dolls and hats while she’s also been taking care of her 101-year-old mother for the last 10 years.
She’s even written and illustrated a book that she’s been trying for a long time to get published.
“My heart condition gave me drawbacks,” Cochran said. “It just takes me a little longer to do things.”
The two life-sized dolls she’s created — whom she named “Cher” and “Abigail Adams” when she was finished with them — took about a year each to complete.
“I put Cher on an old hat stand,” she said. “I didn’t have a plan in mind. I just started making it. It took me about a year, if not longer, to finish her.” The crocheted doll, which stands over 6 feet tall and has long, black yarn as her hair, resembles singing sensation Cher.
Abigail Adams is crocheted in all red, white and blue and sits in a chair.
“I went to Goodwill and got a chair,” Cochran said. “I crocheted her to the chair and added lumber in the back to keep her head up. I used a patriotic theme in honor of our war heroes. People are overwhelmed by my dolls.”
Cochran said she began to crochet at age 10 —about 50 years ago.
“I taught myself,” she said. “I got the idea from a school friend. I have a passion for it and have made oodles of things.”
Cochran, who lives with her mother in a large stone house filled with antiques near Crandall Park, grew up in Youngstown but spent part of her education at boarding schools in Rhode Island and Canada.
“My mother wanted me to experience school in different places,” she said. “But now I guess I’m just a homebody.”
Her mother, she said, did not like to crochet or draw, as she does. Her mother was a journalist.
Cochran said many of the home’s antiques came from her grandparents and great-grandparents who liked to buy things in New York.
“That oval portrait,” she said, pointing to a painting near the stairway, “my grandmother bought because she thought it looked like my grandfather. She bought an 18th-century Spinet piano in New York. She took a lot of trips to New York.”
The home also has a solid mahogany Steinway piano on which numerous photographs, including one of her grandfather as a child, are displayed.
Amid the antiques and family photos are many of Cochran’s own creations, including afghans and ponchos she’s made.
However, she admits some of her creations have been a little unusual, including two she no longer has: a 7-foot giraffe and a 3-foot buffalo.
“I took the giraffe to the Jewish Community Center art show,” Cochran said. “Some grandparents wanted it for their grandchild, so I gave it to them. My mother was so glad to get it out of the house.”
“I made the buffalo for my nephew, who was going to Marshall University at the time,” she added. Marshall’s nickname is the “Thundering Herd.”
“I also took my book, ‘The Witches in the Forest,’ to the art show,” she added. “I tried to get it published. I’m still trying. I’m not a quitter, and I won’t give up.”
Her sister, Cindy Thompson of Washington, D.C., who had come to Youngstown to celebrate their mother’s 101st birthday, agreed.
“You’re right, Joanie,” said Thompson, one of her four siblings. “You never quit.”
Nevertheless, it seems as if everything Cochran does is for someone else.
“I don’t sell these things,” Cochran said. “I give them to charities, family and friends. I’m a person who’s slightly handicapped, so I do everything as a charitable act.”
Much of her charity has gone to the Park Vista Retirement Community, a nursing home not far from where she lives.
“I volunteered for Park Vista, teaching crocheting,” she said. “I also crocheted them an apple as the mascot for their Applefest. I was even named Volunteer of the Month. But that was a long time ago.”
In addition to other crocheted items she’s given away, she has made more than 1,000 hats. One style she makes with a particularly fuzzy yarn she calls her “shaggy dog” hats. They take much longer to make than a regular hat, she said.
“All these hats are in demand,” Cochran said. “In the old days, we could always get hats with ties. Everywhere I go, people want them. The hats have been a really big success. Little did I know, the whole world would want them.”
“It’s like a lifetime of work,” Cochran said. “I’ve been a very fortunate person. Not everyone has been fortunate, so I believe in doing charitable things.”