DALLAS TWP. — Adele Reilly’s husband calls her “Hummingbird” because she’s always busy, even after a car accident created mobility issues for her.
The Dallas Township resident’s positive personality and creative spirit empowered her to turn a negative situation into a positive by developing an interest in jewelry making that led to a small business called Just Enjoy.
The simple business name explains what Adele has set out to do.
“I want people to enjoy my jewelry,” she said.
Delicate silver earrings, beaded bracelets and necklaces give the 61-year-old an opportunity to spread joy and keep her creativity flowing.
Her path to entrepreneurism started with a head-on car collision in May 1997.
Adele and her husband Kevin were driving on Route 487 in their Chevy Malibu when an older man on oxygen driving a Buick Roadmaster station wagon entered their lane of traffic.
“I never had a broken bone or been in a hospital in all my life until then,” Adele said. “I was 41.”
She describes the fleeting moments immediately following the cars’ impact as “crazy.”
“I guess it was shock. I remember I came to and I looked and saw my hands, and I looked over at Kevin,” she said. “His head was down. I said ‘Kevin, ’ and then his head went up.
“I thank God for shock because I didn’t feel any pain.”
An ambulance rushed Adele and Kevin to Geisinger Medical Center in Danville.
Kevin was treated for a slight fracture of his collar bone and stayed at the nearby Ronald McDonald House while Adele remained in the hospital.
She had one knee shattered, multiple fractures of the tibia and fibula, blood loss to the talus, a bone in the ankle that helps with movement, and a crushed heel.
“I had one leg in a cast for four months and the other in a metal Ilizarov for four months,” she said.
An Ilizarov is a metal device fixed to the exterior of a limb to aid in reshaping bone and soft tissue following orthopedic surgery.
After six weeks at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville and three months at Birchwood Rehabilitation & Nursing Center in Nanticoke, Adele finally went home on Columbus Day 1997.
“When I first came home, I was crocheting because I needed something to do because I am not one to just sit and I had to sit,” she said. “I had to learn to walk all over again.”
The following Christmas, she received a kit, “Learn How to bead,” she said.
“It was a little kit that came with a book, little screwdrivers,” Reilly said. “I think there was a little crimping tool in there. It was very basic.
“I fooled around with that.”
She sold items she crocheted such as scarves and then began selling some of her bead work.
“Then I made the plunge into sterling silver,” she said.
Adele she took one class to learn “how to do the wire routes to make earrings,” but other than that, she is self-taught.
She sells her jewelry at a variety of craft shows in the region, but her silversmithing skills and beaded jewelry can also be found at Ye Old Clock Shoppe in Dallas and Art on Main in Pittston.
She operates Just Enjoy on a part-time basis due to mobility and pain issues from injuries caused by the car accident, but is still living up to her husband’s nickname, Hummingbird.
“I am all over the place,” she said, noting she likes to garden and feed the birds in her backyard, visit with neighbors and friends as well as make jewelry and prepare for craft shows.
