May 08, 2020 / By mobanmarket
LEXINGTON, KY — Todd Oldfield insists he didn’t do anything special. “I’m just a guy who threw the right bowling ball down Mt. Everest,” Oldfield said of the nearly $114,000 raised so far on a crowdfunding page to erase the debt of an 85-year-old Kentucky McDonald’s worker who is caring for his two disabled adult grandchildren.
“I keep telling people, it’s God, not Todd,” Oldfield said of the campaign that had an original goal of $1,000 and ballooned beyond anything he could have imagined.
Gill’s story will tear your heart to pieces, but the response from people around the world will heal it.
The 56-year-old Oldfield, now a financial adviser in Lexington, met Gill when he was 15 and starting his first job at McDonald’s. They’ve kept in touch over the years and Oldfield stops in the restaurant every few weeks to see how his longtime friend is doing.
“He’s a sweetheart of a guy,” Oldfield told Patch of Gill, who he said has a gentle soul and a strong moral compass, noting, “He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t cuss.”
When he visited Gill a couple of months ago, Oldfield knew something was terribly wrong.
“Well, I lost my wife,” Oldfield recalled Gill telling him, mimicking his friend’s easy Southern drawl. The tragic story came out, between tears.
Della Gill was the only woman Wendall had ever loved or dated, and he says he will miss her for the rest of his life. They grew up on neighboring horse farms and were married for 68 years. On one of his days off in late August, the couple visited the McDonald’s store where Gill worked. Della excused herself to use the restroom, but never returned.
She suffered a stroke and collapsed in the bathroom. She lingered in the hospital but died a few weeks later.
“Sixty-eight years married, and she dies in the bathroom at the place where you work, and you’re going to have to clean it 20 times a day?” Oldfield said. “He has to walk past that table where she sat with her friends.
“He can’t walk past the table without crying — this is a torture that will result in him never being able to heal,” Oldfield continued. “The only time this man gets emotional is when he talks about Della, and he can’t talking about her without crying his eyes out in front of God and everybody.”
That their marriage endured for nearly seven decades is almost unheard of today, Oldfield wrote on a GoFundMe page,
“Della was his swan; his soul,” he wrote. “Wendall is devastated; lost; totally empty now. Nothing is left (but he still has to be strong).”
Hold on to your heart.
Wendall and Della adopted two adult grandsons, a 33-year-old with autism and a 20-year-old who was born with fetal alcohol syndrome and looks to be about 14. They were grandparents, but also Mom and Dad.
The couple found their younger grandson in the foster care system.
“He never does not have a smile, he never shuts up and he has more personality than 10 people put together,” Oldfield said of the 20-year-old. “He can’t step up to curb without help.”
So, this is Gill’s life now. He’s all the two adopted grandsons have in the world. They need him and depend on him.
“He’s 85 years old, and he’s gotta go home and take care of the two boys, pick up the house and cook,” Oldfield said. “It’s just flabbergasting.”
And Wendall is broke, struggling under his meager $9.50 an hour wage to keep it all together. A small insurance policy was barely enough to bury Della, and now that she’s gone, he’s had to scale back on his hours. He brings home about $600 a month.
Do the math. Between his mortgage payment and a couple of car payments, Gill pays out about $1,800 a month just to cover the debt. Both of his adopted grandsons get state assistance, but their situation is precarious.
The story Gill poured out was too much for Oldfield to bear. He turned it over in his mind on a business trip to Cincinnati, Ohio, and made a post on Facebook about the situation.
“I do not remember a worse story,” he wrote. “I am sorry to burden all of you with this, but I don’t know what to do with this knowledge.”
He tossed out the idea of creating the crowdfunding page. What did his friends think? Go for it, they said.
“I am telling you,” he wrote, “I do not know of a poor soul needing more of some human kindness.”
He reached out to reporter Karla Ward at the Lexington Herald-Leader, who had written about the elderly McDonald’s worker a couple of years before. Her recent story about the Gill family’s struggles started that metaphorical bowling ball rolling down Mt. Everest, pushing the donations to the $1,000 goal.
When the story was picked up by multiple national news organizations, the money started pouring in. Oldfield said he couldn’t double the goal fast enough to keep up with the donations.
Finally, he decided he should set it at $27,200 to pay off the van.
He was thrilled when that goal was met. Then there was enough to pay off the Jeep Della had driven.
“I don’t know if it was God talking to me or not, but somewhere I became convinced we could pay off the house,” Oldfield said.
Check that obligation off the list, too.
People gave in other ways, too. A monument maker offered to put a headstone — any one that Wendall wants — on Della’s grave. Someone else offered to sponsor the Gill family’s Christmas. A retired attorney offered to work with banks to see if some of the family’s debt could be forgiven.
Gill is out of debt now. He won’t have to work, and can spend his time with the two grandsons who need him.
Oldfield said he wanted to show Gill how much he was loved in Lexington and how many lives he touched. But he’s not sure who is the greater beneficiary.
“At 56, I’ve become pretty jaded and cynical,” he said. “l’ve lost faith on human nature. But I’ve gotten as much out of this as he’s gotten. I have seen 2,000 people from across the country and other countries contribute to their hard-earned cash to a man they have never met.”
If that’s not faith in action, Oldfield isn’t sure what is.
“Don’t set a limit on God,” Oldfield said. “He’ll do more than you can begin to ask for. That’s been an amazing lesson.”
Watch the video below for more.
Photos, video via GoFundMe. GoFundMe is a Patch promotional partner.
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