“Last year in November I had open heart surgery,” she said quietly. “I had high blood pressure and my left side went numb. They put some stents in my groin, but I was dying on the table. That’s when they discovered my aorta had busted.
“I’ve been off work since and being a single mom with four kids — two of them who are disabled – has made it tough,” she said. “Then I was in a car accident on October and my youngest, he just turned five, has had health issues and had a trach put in.”
The 35-year-old mother said she was feeling over-whelmed earlier this month when she gathered her kids together:
“I told them, ‘Mommy’s sorry, but we’re gonna have to celebrate Christmas in January.’ …But now I guess God has had other plans and we’re having Christmas with everybody else.”
Her voice brightened a recent afternoon as she sat at a lunch stand in the Walmart store on Miller Lane and looked down at a shopping cart filled with clothes and toys.
And that’s when you saw her face momentarily quiver and suddenly the tears spilled from beneath her tinted glasses onto her cheeks.
“This is just such a blessing,” she said. “It’s nice to know that with everything that’s going on and with all the things you see when you watch the news, there are still good people out there.”
She was talking about the members of the Dayton Firefighters Local 136 and the harness drivers at Hollywood Dayton Raceway.
For the past 28 years the firefighters’ union has sponsored its “Christmas From the Firehouse” program, said firefighter/paramedic Anita O’Reilly, chairman of the holiday campaign.
“If our people go out on a run and find families that don’t have anything for Christmas or just lost everything, we want them to tell us so we can provide gifts, especially for the children,” she said.
Some of the funds for the effort come straight out of the pockets of the union members. In the past, there have also been donations of a $1,000 or so from some of the area big box stores.
But the past two years those corporate contributions have not materialized, and as a result the fire department had to cut back its efforts and wasn’t able to help as many families as it wanted last season.
Then this year some unexpected Santas showed up in the nick of time.
They, too, wore colorful suits – although rather than just red trimmed in white, their racing silks come in a multitude of color schemes — and instead of a sleigh, they were pulled about in a sulky. And in place of those eight flying reindeer was a snorting, straining harness horse.
While this bunch didn’t have the signature big belly, it did have a big, big heart.
Ten days ago, Hollywood Dayton Raceway put on a Buckeyes vs. Hoosiers driving completion, pitting the top five Ohio drivers in the standings here this season against five of the top Indiana drovers who had just finished the meet at Hoosier Park.
The contest would be decided over six races, with points awarded for finishing places. The winning team would get a $2,000 bonus and the loser $500.
As soon as the event was announced, Kayne Kauffman, the Lebanon driver who was leading the standings in Dayton and would end up the captain of the Buckeye team, approached race secretary Gregg Keidel and said he wanted to donate whatever he won to needy children at Christmas.
“Since the slots have come into effect here in Ohio, things have been better for horsemen,” he explained. “My kids are gonna have a good Christmas this year, and I thought, ‘Why not let some other kids have a good one, too?’”
As he and Keidel tried to decide just how to make this happen, they came upon the perfect opportunity right under their noses.
At each of the 75 nights of racing in Dayton — the meet began Sept 14th and ends December 30th — a Dayton Fire Department medic unit must be present at the track. It’s a safety feature that all drivers appreciate and most have relied upon at some track sometime in their careers.
“Seven or eight years ago, I was on the front end of Scioto (Downs), headed down the backside and my horse just dropped,” remembered Xenia driver Dan Noble, who was part of the Buckeye team. “Five or six of us in the race all went down in a heap, and I broke my shoulder and probably had a concussion, though I didn’t check that. I was supposed to be laid up eight weeks, but I was back in three.”
Of the other Buckeye drivers, Chris Page recalled an ambulance trip after a spill two years ago in Maryland; and Josh Sutton told of a frightening crash in 2011 at Maywood Park outside Chicago that left him hospitalized with a broken clavicle.
And Washington Courthouse driver Jeremy Smith recounted a race at Scioto Downs where the horse in front of him went down, and his horse ran over its bike. He ended up on the track, where he said he “got trampled by five or six horses” and he suffered severe knee damage that sidelined him three months.
The drivers appreciate the paramedics and EMTs and when Kauffman heard about their “Christmas From the Firehouse” campaign, he knew he had his vehicle.
Other drivers jumped on board and pretty soon everybody who competed in the Buckeyes vs. Hoosiers showdown — Ohio managed a close victory — donated his share of the bonus. Since then other drivers have continued to chip in.
The group has bought toys and gift certificates — more than $3,000 worth — and helped fill Santa’s bag with gifts.
“Those guys have been great,” said firefighter/paramedic Gaye Jordan, president of Local 136. “They helped us take care of a lot more people than we ever would have been able to.”
Indiana driver Trace Tetrick, who was the meet champ at Hoosier Park and won a prestigious Breeders Crown race with Freaky Feet Pete at Woodbine in October, said all the drivers were of the same mindset:
“Anybody can get in a bad spot in their life and they can always use a helping hand. The way we saw it, we’re fortunate to be able to help. If the tables were turned, we’d appreciate it if someone gave us a hand.”
A grandmother’s ‘blessing’
Dawn Ogles was on her way to work at 10 Wilmington Place that April day in 2011 when she got a call that she needed to come back home .
“I was told my daughter was gone,” she said quietly. “In my mind I thought she had run away.”
Her 23-year-old daughter Tammy was battling addiction to heroin. Dawn had gotten temporary custody of her five young grandchildren and was raising them while their mom tried to get cleaned up and go to nursing school at the same time.
Life had been a struggle for her daughter, who first got pregnant at 13. But she pressed on, Dawn said:
“She started having children young, but she finished high school on time with a full-time job.”
Tammy’s five children were fathered by two men, the second of whom was an addict. Dawn said. Both of those men are now in prison
On that fateful day, Dawn said an acquaintance of Tammy’s had gotten a cash settlement of some kind and had decided to buy $200 worth of methadone. Her daughter died of an overdose in a Kettering apartment.
“Nothing prepares you for your child’s death,” she said quietly. “Not emotionally, not financially. I was pretty much by myself and had no savings. My ex-husband was able to get a loan, and we found a wonderful burial plot up above the airport in Vandalia. I bought the lot next to it, so I can be buried with her…She won’t be alone.”
Although she already had raised five children of her own — Tammy was the youngest — mostly as a single parent, Dawn didn’t hesitate about keeping her grandkids in her East Dayton home. Today the children are all between the ages of 14 and seven.
“We struggled, but God played a big part in this for us,” she said. “I talked to a lady at the Dollar Store near my home — she was a kitchen supervisor at the University of Dayton — and she helped me get a job there in October.”
Although times were still tight, she was championing the cause of another struggling family when she recently stopped at a Xenia Avenue church to see if they could get another woman some help with Christmas.
In the process, people there learned about Dawn’s dedication and, out of the blue she said she got a call to become a “Christmas From the Firehouse” recipient.
“It’s truly a blessing from God,” she said. “I don’t know what kind of Christmas we would have had otherwise.”
The Firehouse folks give each family$100 per child to shop, which meant Dawn had $500 to spend.
When she returned to the Walmart check-out lane — having not spent her full allotment — she had a cart filled with clothes, pajamas, toys, games and wonderment.
“I just can’t believe this,” she said. “It’s such a blessing.”
A smile for Christmas
“My dad almost died in a fire when he was a child,” said Crystal Wilson, a 35-year-old paramedic at Firehouse 18 on Smithville Road.
She always remembered that story while growing up on Irwin Street on Dayton’s East End. After graduating from Patterson Co-Op, she worked for the Montgomery County Probation Department and then at a dermatology lab before her dad’s story resonated back and gave her new direction.
She decided she wanted to be a firefighter paramedic, went to school for it and began her new career nine years ago.
After working in Moraine, she joined the Dayton Fire Department as a paramedic three years ago.
She’s raising her son Joe, a freshman at Fairmont High School, on her own and said they have a little ritual most mornings:
“Before he goes to school, he kisses me on the head, tells me he loves me and says, ‘Remember, you’re a hero to me.’”
This Christmas season she’s certainly living up to that billing. Besides her paramedic work, she’s active in the Christmas From the Firehouse effort and will becomes its new chairman next year.
“I know Christmas isn’t about what you get or how much you get, but for kids it is about Santa,” she said. “To see the smile they get when there’s a little something under the tree for them means everything. And if there is nothing, they think they were naughty.
“Our goal is for every child to have something at Christmas.”
And that’s just how it worked out for Dawn Ogles, who, like Joe Wilson, saw the firemen and paramedics — and the harness drivers, too — as her heroes.
“They have enabled my children to have just a wonderful Christmas,” she said. “I can’t wait until Christmas morning.”
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