Remembering Reese: A mother's creations honor her son's memory
Oct. 23—HIGH POINT — When Michelle Loggins initially created the concept of Reese's LairWear, it was just something she did for Reese, her 10-year-old son.
Reese spent a lot of time in hospitals as he battled acute myeloid leukemia, an aggressive cancer of the bone marrow and blood, so Loggins began making flannel loungewear pants for her son to wear during his hospitalization. Designed for maximum comfort — loose-fitting with an elastic waistband — they often featured the loud, colorful designs you might expect to be worn by a 10-year-old boy with a wide-open personality.
Reese loved them, and his mother — a seamstress who owns M Studio Dressmaker on N. Main Street — loved making them for him. She even transformed leftover fabric scraps into stylish face masks and "G-tube huggers" — soft covers for Reese's feeding tube. She called her creations Reese's LairWear in honor of Reese's Lair, the whimsical sign he came up with to hang on his hospital room door at Brenner Children's Hospital.
Last summer, though — June 10, 2020 — Reese died following an unsuccessful bone marrow transplant, and Loggins figured that would be the end of Reese's LairWear.
"I thought I was done," she says. "No more lounge pants. No more masks. No more G-tube huggers. My little Reese traded it all in for wings. I was without him and a reason to keep making these things for him."
With the passing of a couple of months, however, Loggins realized she was wrong. How could she just stop making those pants? In the midst of hardship, they had given her such a sense of purpose and given her son such joy.
So Reese's LairWear continued, with Loggins making pants, masks, knitted caps and G-tube huggers not for Reese but for other children at Brenner, in Reese's memory. Every few months, she finishes a new batch of pants — she just completed a batch of Halloween-themed pants — and she believes they'll be a big hit with other child patients at Brenner.
The problem, however, is that because of the health system's COVID-19 pandemic, the hospital is currently not accepting any homemade donations.
No problem, Loggins says. She plans to continue making Reese's LairWear and will donate it to Brenner once donations are allowed again, doing so in memory of Reese.
The lounge pants, in particular, are patterned just the way Reese liked them, with a 1-inch cuff at the hem, two side seam pockets and an elastic waistband. On the left side, Loggins embroiders the Reese's LairWear logo just below the pocket, and the word "Reese" in the logo is an actual digitized replica of his signature. Inside the right pocket, she embroiders a bright green Lego — bright green because that was Reese's favorite color, and a Lego because of his love for building with the plastic bricks.
"I make the pants as if I'm making them for Reese," Loggins says. "It makes me feel a little better thinking how much he would love this fabric or love this color. I think, somehow, it's helping me heal a little bit."
She looks forward to hearing anecdotes about how much the other kids at Brenner love getting the pants, too.
"I imagine in my mind that maybe for a minute, they'll smile and forget where they are," she says. "I hope they'll put a big smile on their faces."
Come to think of it, Reese would love that, too.
jtomlin@hpenews.com — 336-888-3579
