Charlevoix rallies to support golf team involved in car crash
After a driver intentionally swerved into a van carrying the Charlevoix Rayders’ golf team, the city came together in support of the boys’ recovery.
This the third of a four-part series. Come back to Freep.com for the last part on Sunday. Read Part 1. Read Part 2.
CHARLEVOIX — Charlevoix golf coach Doug Drenth was floating in and out of consciousness − kept alive by a ventilator and amazing trauma surgery.
His son Maxwell Drenth had a broken clavicle and a broken arm, the skin held together with a row of staples.
Joe Gaffney, one of the golfers, was recovering from surgery. His shattered pelvis was pieced back together with 76 screws and plates and a chain that looked like a necklace strung inside his body. And the rest of the Charlevoix golf team was in various stages of recovery − both physical and mental after a deadly crash on April 27 in Benzie County.
At the same time, back home in Charlevoix, something magical was starting to bubble to the surface. Something beautiful and amazing. And it started with a simple question: Why don’t we set up a GoFundMe account for the golf team for unmet medical needs?
“I’ve never done that but let’s all look into it,” Scott Kelly said.
Kelly seemed the perfect person to do it. He is a former star athlete − a baseball player who was elected to the Ferris State Hall of Fame. And he has experience with a nonprofit, as the president of the Charlevoix County Junior Golf Association. In addition, he is close friends with Charlevoix golf coach Doug Drenth, who was driving the van. Drenth is the executive director of junior golf in Charlevoix, and all seven golfers in the van were part of the organization.
“So I set one up, and I tried to hide it,” Kelly said of the GoFundMe account. “At 10 o’clock the next morning, somebody found it and started donating to it, and I’m like, wait a minute.”
Because it wasn’t really ready for the world and Kelly wasn’t ready for what happened next. “It just took off,” said Kelly, who runs Bay Area Substance Education Services, a substance abuse and mental health facility with two therapists that specialize in treating trauma in Charlevoix.
Kelly thought the account would raise $5,000. Maybe, $10,000. But then something magical happened.
“It just blew up,” he said. “It was overwhelming. Unbelievable.”
The fund swelled to more than $285,000 after more than 1,400 donations, which reveals so much about small-town America. About true generosity, kindness and caring.
“Everybody grabbed a hold of it,” Kelly said. “I’m like, holy smokes.’ I felt like I’d grabbed a hold of a tiger by the tail. Oh man, hold on.”
Then again, it was easy to raise money for Drenth and his team. “Doug is just one of those special souls,” Kelly said.
Or maybe, it is the pure innocence of what happened.
“The golf team and the seven players and the coach, they did absolutely nothing wrong,” Kelly said. “It was a really hard thing to understand. I think people took that that energy, and said, ‘Hey, let’s do this.’ And then the community momentum just picked up.”
The busiest day ever
The GoFundMe was just the start. It was the spark that ignited something that should be celebrated.
The first big fundraiser was held May 2 at the Dairy Grille − an old, converted Dairy Queen. It was “Rayder Strong Day” in Charlevoix, and everybody was encouraged to wear maroon − the high school colors − and make signs that popped up around town. Before the Dairy Grille even opened, there was a long line of people waiting to donate.
“It was unbelievable,” said Terry Hayden, whose family has owned this ice cream shop since 1971. “They just kept coming and coming and coming.”
It turned into the busiest day anybody could remember. Hayden estimates they served about 3,000 people − or 653 more than the city population (2,348). They sold more than 600 hamburgers and people were waiting an hour for food.
“They just came out, lowered their tailgates, brought their coolers and played their music in the parking lot,” Hayden said. “The whole place was just packed down the side streets that lead to it. It was something like I’ve never seen and probably will never ever see again.”
Hayden had to shut it down briefly to restock food around 3 p.m. The lines were so long, the vibe so wonderful, people would just stop and hand over cash.
The Dairy Grille is a short walk from the Charlevoix Elementary School and the school emptied out, as hundreds of kids marched to the fundraiser. “It was amazing, because they had bags full of change and single dollar bills,” Hayden said. “The kids donated, on top of getting ice cream cones and stuff. I said, ‘Hey, you know, I’ll cut you guys a deal.’ ”
But they refused. They wanted to pay full price to raise more money for this team, as well as for Drenth, who was once the school’s principal.
It seemed fitting to have the first fundraiser at the Dairy Grille. Because the Drenth family has such a strong connection to it.
“There’s probably been 10 Drenths or family members that have worked either at Dairy Queen or Dairy Grille, three Drenths have worked for me personally,” Hayden said.
Everybody seems connected in this small town. Hayden used to give pitching lessons to Emmett Bergmann, one of the golfers in the crash. “That’s one of the good things of living in a small community, everybody knows everybody,” said Hayden, who grew up in Taylor and played baseball at Detroit Mercy before playing four years of minor league baseball and a couple in independent ball. “Every single one of those kids in the car were fantastic kids. Just top notch, and their families and parents are top notch, too.”
The other cool thing? Hayden’s workers declined to be paid that day.
“I was still going to pay them and they said no way,” Hayden said. “Every dollar that my employees made that day, and tips, too, everything went into the jar and they gave it all to the golf team.”
At the end of the night, they dumped all the money on a desk. “It took us over two hours to count the money,” Hayden said. “Usually, it takes half an hour. It was mind blowing.”
After the fundraiser, Hayden texted the Charlevoix superintendent and principal.
“So what you think our totals were?” he asked.
“They guessed $1,500, maybe $2,000,” he said.
“I took a picture of the check that I wrote to them, and it was a $10,000 check,” he said. “And they were blown away.”
But it didn’t stop there. For days, people would show up and drop off money, raising another $1,000.
But that was just the start. Fundraisers started spreading through Charlevoix. Jim Riehl’s Friendly Ford donated $100 for every car sold in May. The fire department held a car wash. Charlevoix Cinema III donated 50% of concession sales. A pancake breakfast was held at St. Mary Parish. Castle Farms − a wedding venue − held a silent auction and dinner. The Charlevoix Elks Lodge held a bake sale. More fundraisers were held at B.C. Pizza, Villager Pub, Culver’s, Biggby Coffee, The Weathervane Restaurant and Subway.
“There were at least 25 different fundraisers,” Kelly said. “There were some really public ones. But then there were a number of businesses where the corporate office passed the hat to the employees, and then they matched whatever the employees gave.”
Falling into insurance hell
All those fundraisers became vital because this crash forced these families into the murky world of Michigan’s relatively new insurance laws.
“What a nightmare that’s been,” Kelly said. “The three kids that were checking out of the hospital on Monday morning went up to the desk to give them their insurance card. They said, ‘No, we need your auto insurance.’
“And they’re like, what? So that’s when we got a crash course over the next few days on Michigan’s no-fault insurance, and what do you call it? The personal injury protection plans and all of these things.”
The families discovered the school’s insurance doesn’t cover the students, even though they were on a school function in a school vehicle. And that was even a surprise to Aaron Gaffney, who is a superintendent at Ellsworth Community School District. Gaffney always assumed a school’s insurance would cover students in case of an accident. All those bus trips. All those sporting events. But he has learned a harsh reality.
“None of this is covered by the school’s insurance,” he said.
He doesn’t blame the school. He’s just surprised.
“As a superintendent, that was really surprising to me, because I always assumed when we send kids out in a school vehicle on a school function with a school driver that we were doing everything correctly,” he said. “So it was really shocking to me on day one to learn, oh, wait, the school isn’t picking this up or helping out at all with this? So it all falls to your personal no-fault policy, everything.”
And some didn’t have any.
So, the fundraisers have been vital to help these families.
What about leftover money?
Even though the official fundraisers ended, the generosity continued.
“People were just stopping in and dropping off bags of money,” said Kelly, who has an office on a busy intersection in Charlevoix. “It was just incredible. I was getting phone calls from golf teams all over the state. Had some people calling me from all over the country. One fella said, ‘I gotta jump on a plane. I’m in Hawaii, and he calls me back an hour later. And I’m like, OK, you must be island hopping.’
“It was mind-boggling how the word spread, and the response was so overwhelmingly positive and generous.”
In total, when the GoFundMe online account is combined with the other fundraisers, almost $500,000 has been raised. In fact, they raised so much money, so fast, they had to get advice from other schools.
“Some folks gave us some materials from Oxford Schools after that shooting,” Kelly said.
In Charlevoix, an advisory board was set up to oversee the funds.
“It got so big,” Kelly said. “We needed a group of neutral people to help kind of guide this thing and work with the families and see what their individual needs are and all of that kind of stuff. But then the big question is, well, what are you gonna do with the leftover money?”
Yes, that is a lingering question. But it’s hard to answer right now with so much uncertainty. They don’t know what might be left over because some of the golfers are still going through physical therapy and they are still trying to figure out their needs.
“I think the recovery time is going to be years instead of months,” Kelly said. “So we’re kind of geared up to have the committee intact for a couple of years.”
‘Just a happy kiddo’
The importance of those fundraisers cannot be overstated. Because that money is helping these kids recover.
Two weeks after the accident, Joe Gaffney returned home. Donations helped to pay for a ramp in the garage and renovate a bathroom. “They remodeled the shower in our bathroom − we didn’t have a handicap accessible shower,” said Aaron Gaffney, Joe’s father. “The GoFundMe and the people that donated will allow Joe and everybody to get the very best care that they can get.”
Still, it hasn’t been easy.
When Joe returned home, he was in incredible pain and couldn’t get comfortable. They were using all the pillows in the house, wedging them around Joe, trying to ease his pain. He couldn’t do anything without help. Not even lift his leg. “Obviously, there were some low points,” said Karrie Gaffney, his mother. “We’re like, ‘It’s OK to be angry. It’s OK to get mad. It’s OK to cry.’ And whether he did or not, he just didn’t do it in front of us.”
Aaron took a leave from work. Joe started doing physical therapy at home with his dad and traveled to Traverse City twice a week for physical and occupational therapy.
“The first time he came in here, he was in a wheelchair and he had a very flat affect, very pale,” said Lia Polemitis, a physical therapist. “He’s been through hell and I was very careful. I worked with children for many years, and it’s like, you have to meet him where they are.”
At first, he didn’t have the strength or control to lift his leg. “It was just quivering, like trying to get him to activate his muscles,” she said.
But Joe approached his therapy like an athlete, competing against himself, refusing to accept anything less than a full recovery. “Joe is very motivated, and he’s got his goals set, and he’s gonna get there,” Polemitis said. “For the injury that he’s had, he’s got a remarkable recovery. He’s great. I think he’s just a motivating kid. He’s just a happy kiddo, and he just wants to get better. And he’s a really hard worker.”
The Barwis approach
The Gaffneys vow to do everything they can to help Joe recover. “We are going to give him whatever it takes, wherever we got to go, whatever we have to do to allow him the shot to be the person he was before the accident,” Aaron Gaffney said. “I don’t know if that’ll happen or not, but we don’t want to look back and say, ‘well, I wish we’d done something different.’”
They considered taking Joe to Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, a renowned therapy center in Chicago. “Joe really wanted not to be in a hospital, but to be in an athletic facility,” Aaron said.
Finally, they hooked up with Mike Barwis, the former Michigan trainer, who has worked with professional and Olympic athletes. Barwis has a history of helping people recover from accidents, including Brock Mealer, the older brother of former U-M offensive lineman Elliot Mealer. Brock was paralyzed from the waist down in a car crash and Barwis got him to walk again. In fact, Brock walked out of the tunnel and touched the banner at Michigan’s season opening game against Connecticut in 2010.
How Joe hooked up with Barwis is another one of those miracle moments. Barwis happened to be in Traverse City and one person knew another person and Barwis agreed to go to the Gaffney house and look at Joe’s hip. “He came and he looked at the X rays,” Joe said.
Barwis said he was impressed with the surgery. “Mike Barwis, who’s seen tons of X-rays, said he’s seen far less severe pelvic fractures with worse surgical outcomes,” Aaron said. “He said, ‘This surgeon worked a miracle in his hip.’ ”
Barwis invited Joe to train at his facility in Deerfield Beach, Florida, for two months. Joe started on Aug. 4 and will stay until Sept. 26. His parents will be staying with him the entire time, doing alternating shifts in Florida.
Joe knew it would be challenging, and he would have to experience pain and it’s going to be hard. But that doesn’t scare him. He’s an athlete. Determined to get better.
“He definitely said it would be super hard and super frustrating but he seemed super sure of that I could be fine,” Joe said. “He’s just kind of the person you talk to, where he says something and you believe it. So ever since he said that, I haven’t worried about it anymore.”
Huge progress
In the second week of July, Joe Gaffney walked slowly across his driveway, using a cane.
He moved slowly and needed to concentrate not to fall but he was walking. Then, he went into the yard and chipped some golf balls, and that is progress. Incredible, heartwarming progress. It is an incredible sign of hope and a reflection of his determination to get better.
“How has this changed me?” Joe repeated the question. “I don’t know. Talk to me in a year.”
Indeed. The ending has yet to be written but realize this: Joe is filled with gratitude. He’s thankful for his doctors and therapists. Thankful for Charlevoix.
“In my opinion, I don’t feel like I deserve anything,” Joe said. “It’s just kind of crazy to think that there’s that many people that care that much.”
Last one out
Doug Drenth, the Charlevoix golf coach, was the last one out of the hospital. He was discharged on June 13, and it was surreal and wonderful and emotional.
Because there were times he didn’t know if this day would ever come.
After he settled in, he had an overwhelming desire − to get the team back together for a reunion. Because Gaffney was getting ready to go to Florida. Three of the golfers were preparing to go to college. And before long, the summer would end.
So, they started planning, trying to find a date that worked for everybody.
To get the team together one last time.
But it didn’t happen until July.
Click here to read Part 1. Click here to read Part 2. Come back to www.freep.com on Sunday to read about the team’s fascinating reunion.
Contact Jeff Seidel: jseidel@freepress.com. Follow him on X @seideljef
