By Ida Chipman Correspondent
PLYMOUTH — It was cold and getting colder when the members of the Boys & Girls Club, Plymouth, came inside the building last Thursday.
Many had bare hands, fingers redden by the cold. Some walked with their hands stuffed in their pockets.

They weren’t wearing mittens or gloves. Most of them didn’t have any.  Some never did. Nine-year-old Jared Sutton said he didn’t have any mittens, but he sure needed them.
“I’m glad to have them now,” he said, picking out a bright green pair.
The Mitten  Lady, 88-year-old Norma Trowbridge Hite, arrived with her husband, Roy, just like Santa Claus, right on time.
For 15 years, Norma has been knitting mittens for the boys and girls in the Plymouth club.
She knits two pair at a time: two fronts and two backs.
“It takes three evenings and a couple of afternoons to finish,” she said.  She uses synthetic yarns of bright and pastel colors.
“I can’t work on black or brown anymore,” she said.
This year she made 120 pairs. She figures that over the years she has kept 2,000 little hands warm, with the better than 1,000 sets of mittens that she’s knitted. She is still going strong.
Boxes emptied, the ping-pong table in the front room was covered with mittens of all colors and sizes.
The children lined up to pick their pair.
“I’ve never seen them get them before,” Norma said.  “It’s a thrill for me.”
And them too. Many came up and thanked her.  A few spontaneously gave her a hug and all were smiling with pleasure.
Billie Treber, director of the B&G Club for the past nine years, said that the gift was always very much appreciated by the children and their parents.
Norma, an Inwood girl, graduated from Bourbon High School with the class of 1939. She taught herself how to knit and over the years has made sweaters and numerous afghans for wedding and graduation presents.
She undoubtedly has talented fingers.
She is also a musician.  As a young woman, she played the organ in a dance trio, the Starlarks, that entertained in the Plymouth area.
Always interested in music, Norma was part of a community group that worked to get string music into the school system.  In a fund raiser, one of her afghans brought in almost $1,000.
“I took a notion that I wanted to play the violin,” she said, and at 79, started lessons with Clara Woolley of Plymouth.  She now plays the violin with the 35-piece Marshall County Church Orchestra, directed by Don Harness.
Widowed, she married Ray Hite in 1966.  They have a blended family of seven children and “lots and lots of grand and great-grandchildren.”
They all have mittens.
“I’m having fun,” she said, “and I am glad that I can do something to help keep these children warm.”