TRIP TO CALCUTTA TRANSLATES INTO LIFE'S WORK

"All the choices in my life have been based on that experience. What I am, how I live, what I believe," said Roelke, now a writer, educator, mother, and business entrepreneur.

Take her business; Kip Sacs. Roelke, 43, who taught locally at St. Michael School in Pawcatuck and Pine Point School in Stonington during the late 1980s, would leave for Michigan with her husband Ron after the couple spent nearly six years in the cottage they rented on Quonnie Pond - the very same cottage he and his family had rented for countless summers.

In Michigan, she would teach, give birth to two children and tutor at-risk children. Always an educator at heart, she saw herself working with the disadvantaged as an opportunity to "help." And it was around this time that her idea for a business was born out of her need to give. Roelke had been sewing colorful, soft knapsacks for her nieces and nephews - scores of them - as gifts. She saw the potential of the family gift-giving project as a way to make money to help send young people out into the world to volunteer. Just as she had done years before.

"From the time I came back home from Calcutta, that feeling of wanting to do more was always there," she says. "I needed to figure out a way to give. That never left me. With this business, that was the driving force."

After moving from Michigan to Maine about four years ago, Roelke had already really begun to make things happen with her idea of fleece knapsacks for children that would be accompanied by a storybook - of her own creation - A Pouch for Kip - that would engage kids, keep them warm, tell a story about giving through a little kangaroo and maybe, one day, Roelke hopes, enough money might be made that would enable her to set up a fund that would help to young people into service around the world.

Now the colorful, soft fleece Kip Sacs - complete with a pillow and miniature Kip Sacs for a small plush or stuffed pal - are available in Westerly and surrounding communities at The Wise Owl toy store and the Dension Pequotsepos Nature Center in Mystic, for starters.

Over a period of four years and as she was tutoring and raising her young children, Stuart and Kate, she'd begun in earnest to produce the Kip Sacs idea on larger scale. She also began the task, an enjoyable one she said but nonetheless formidable, of writing and illustrating the accompanying book that she produced, with the help of her engineer and designer husband, brochures and a savvy marketing package. And she met with manufacturers who encouraged her to give it a go. Kip Sacs - and her company Whistling Chimneys was born and began to grow.

"This has been a real learning experience for me," Roelke said. With orders locally and regionally, Roelke's Kip Sacs are also included in the holiday offerings of the famous 20-year strong HearthSong toy, book and craft catalogue. She's also a featured writer and illustrator with the Borders' bookstore chain and will be doing a signing in Maine there later this month.

At Wise Owl, owner Beth Metcalf, whose store has grown itself right out of its longtime High Street storefront and into its new digs on Main Street, said that the Kip Sacs caught her eye as unique.

"I loved the idea," Metcalf said.

Roelke described the Sacs she's created as "giant pillowcases that children climb in and the warmth is kept inside."

"I hope we do well because this is really all about doing something you believe in and then making it happen," Roelke said. "When you find what's right in your heart, then you follow that."

Roelke hopes to be able to make good on her idea to fund a Peace Corps-like endeavor that would have young people do much the same as she did when he lived two months in Calcutta living and working with the poor.

"You preservere," she said. "You work hard, you follow your dreams wherever they take you and you give and help along the way."

Reproduced with the permission of The Westerly Sun Copyright © 2003 The Westerly Sun