I may never retire. But that would be OK too. Why leave something you love?
One of the highlights of the new year is searching through 365 days of stories and selecting my 10 Most Intriguing People of the Year.
My original list included 23 people and the story measured 334 inches. My editor budgeted 50 inches. So I started cutting.
So here are my 10 Most Intriguing People, in alphabetical order:
‘She is a blessing to me’
I will never stare again. I made that promise after meeting Grace Back, who stands 39 inches tall.
In honor of National Dwarfism Month, I interviewed Grace and her mother, Cassie Back, in their Middletown home. When the Backs go out to dinner or shopping, they said, some childish adults have even taken out cell phones and photographed Grace, like she’s a caged zoo animal.
“They are ignorant,” Cassie Back said. “It’s difficult, really, to be strong. I look at them and say, ‘What are you looking at?’ ”
What does Grace think of the unwanted attention?
“They laugh at me and that hurts me feelings,” the 8-year-old said.
People with achondroplasia have short stature with an average adult height of 52 inches for males and 48 inches for females. The disorder is caused by a change in the gene for fibroblast growth factor receptor 3, which causes an abnormality of cartilage formation.
Some have asked Cassie if she wished her daughter was born without the disorder. She wouldn’t change a thing. No child is perfect.
“She is a blessing to me,” her mother said. “I absolutely love her to death.”
‘He deserves the best’
It’s easy to see why the Middletown community fell in love with Elmo Booth and were disgusted with the violent acts committed against him.
Booth, 82, of Middletown, was beaten with a brick and robbed Oct. 6 by three men during a home invasion in the 3200 block of Finley Street. The thieves are accused of stealing a 24-inch television, $10 worth of change and Booth’s hearing aids that were sitting on a table next to him. Middletown police said the thieves sold the TV for heroin.
After the robbery, friends and neighbors delivered food, fixed his window and put bars on it, repaired some plumbing and moved his washer and dryer from the basement to the main floor of his house.
Then Booth, who was driven by neighbor Terina King-Smeal from Middletown to West Chester, had his hearing tested and hearing aids fitted at Avada Audiology & Hearing Care on Tylersville Road. Catie Coyle, a hearing aid specialist, said the hearing aids retail for about $8,000 and are “top of the line.”
Then she added: “He deserves the best.”
‘Change one life every day’
Students like Tayler Bryant should get more ink.
But, unfortunately, in this business, stories like hers don’t sell newspapers. But if you’re looking for a rising star, the next great Middie, Bryant would be one of my first picks.
Bryant, a senior at Middletown High School who carries a 4.0 GPA while participating in numerous extra-curricular activities and volunteer work, was presented one of the two $20,000 Louie F. Cox Memorial AK Steel African-American Scholarships from the Middletown Community Foundation.
Even before she applied for the scholarship, she realized her grandfather, James T. Bryant, worked at the Middletown steel company, then called ARMCO, for more than 30 years. She also asked her father about Cox and learned the contributions he made to the Middletown community.
She said it was “more special” to win a scholarship named in Cox’s memory because he “worked very hard and he was such a positive role model; he was a leader.”
Bryant, a daughter of Donald and Malissa Bryant, plans to attend Northern Kentucky University as a pre-med student with the goal of becoming an obstetrician/gynecologist or pediatrician.
One day she hopes to share some of her wealth with her parents, and take mission trips to provide medical care to the less fortunate.
“It’s my duty to give back in some way,” she said. “I want to help people and change one life every day.”
‘He’s using Carter to be an inspiration’
As journalists we are told to leave our emotions and opinions at the door.
Then you are introduced to a kid like Carter Caddell and you fall in love.
I interviewed Carter, who has cancer, and his family twice last year — when he threw out the ceremonial first pitch on April 6 before Middletown Christian hosted Xenia Christian and on Nov. 3 when he returned to Middletown Christian School for the first time this school year.
His mother, April Caddell, doesn’t question why her son has cancer.
“We just trust that everything happens because it’s part of God’s plan,” she said. “We believed that before, and we certainly believe that now. He’s using Carter to be an inspiration, to show others strength and courage.”
Our friendship has grown beyond the walls of the newsroom. I’m the founder of the McCrabb Open, a charity golf tournament that grants wishes for kids and their families who are impacted by cancer. Kids like Carter are the reason we raise money. For his eighth birthday, we gave Carter an autographed framed picture of Brandon Phillips, his favorite Cincinnati Reds player, and next spring, we will arrange for Carter to meet Phillips before a Reds game.
We also will provide the Caddell family, his parents and three brothers, a weekend respite in Cincinnati.
‘He will always be my brother’
This was one of those stories, as a writer, you just try to stay out of the way.
The Rev. Wes Duff, pastor at Breiel Boulevard Church of God in Middletown, was united with a step-brother he didn’t know existed. It was the perfect Christmas story.
After years of wanting to connect with his lost family, Jamie Jamison researched his father’s obituary, and found that Duff was one of his three step-brothers and one step-sister.
Their biological father, Boyd Edwin Duff, of Middletown, died on May 6, 2007. He was 52. The two men have different mothers who live in the area.
Duff and Jamison submitted to a DNA test that returned 98.1 accurate, though Duff said he didn’t need the results to treat Jamison as a brother.
“It’s just great to have another person to share God’s love,” Duff said. “He will always be my brother. I’m looking to share our lives together, the good and the bad.”
‘God has been good to me’
Dwayne “D.J.” Hunter showed that a person can overcome mistakes, especially those made early in life. When Hunter was a senior at Middletown High School, he made headlines for all the wrong reasons.
In the spring of 2009, Hunter, a four-star football recruit and rated by Rivals.com as the No. 17 cornerback in the country, was set to sign a scholarship offer from University of Tennessee. But a couple of weeks before signing day, Hunter was charged with felonious assault and Lane Kiffin, then coach at UT, pulled the scholarship offer.
Then he left the Middletown area and disappeared.
Actually, he was growing up. This winter he graduated from Marshall University with bachelor’s degree in business management while carrying a 3.0 GPA. He also was a standout defensive back on the football team that beat Northern Illinois University in the Boca Raton Bowl in Boca Raton, Fla.
Hunter, 24, may return to Marshall and earn another degree, or take the next step in his football journey and enter the National Football League draft.
“That will be the happiest day of my life,” he said days before graduating from college. “This means more to me, graduating college, than when I became an all-American because I know they can take football away from me, but they can’t take my degree. God has been good to me.”
‘I couldn’t make myself go away’
I could almost feel Barbara Howe in Monroe Detective Gregg Myers’ office that was cramped with cardboard boxes, files and binders, all stuffed with information about Howe’s murder. And in the corner of his office hung a poster thumb tacked to the wall. It was one of the $10,000 reward posters that featured a color photo of Barbara Howe and her red Cadillac.
For more than two years, from late October 2012 to December 2014, Myers dedicated his professional and personal life to tracking down the person allegedly responsible for killing Howe, 87, a resident at Mount Pleasant Retirement Home.
Throughout the investigation that led to murder charges against Howe’s accused killer, Daniel French, 56, of Berea, Ky., Myers was so afraid he may miss one clue, one phone call, one piece of evidence, that he cashed in three-fourths of his vacation days the last two years. He gained weight, lost sleep.
He spent more than 50 percent of the last 26 months thinking of nobody but Barbara Howe.
He was 48 then, 50 today, but feels much older.
“It didn’t matter if I was here, if I was in the parking lot, in the middle of the night or during the 30 minutes in the shower,” he said during a one-hour interview in his office. “I ate, slept and breathed this case. I couldn’t make it stop. I couldn’t make myself go away. There was no switch. I wanted to have this case solved the first night. You take it personally when you don’t.”
‘He was honest’
William Ratliff, 35, of Monroe, who served in the U.S. Army from 1997 to 2003, is on permanent disability from post-traumatic stress disorder. His wife of 13 years, Dodati, recently lost her $28-an-hour job as a respiratory therapist. What the couple had saved in the bank was gone in just a few weeks, he said.
So two days before Thanksgiving, Ratliff, who didn’t have enough money to put gas in his car, got a ride to Middletown Family Service where he received a cart full of groceries just in time for the holidays.
“I don’t have to imagine what it’s like to be in this situation,” Ratliff said. “I’m living it.”
Maurice Maxwell, executive director, told Ratliff the agency also could provide support before Christmas, but Ratliff told him by then, they’d cash out his wife’s 401K account, leaving them in “pretty good” financial shape.
That impressed Maxwell. “He could have taken our help, but he was honest.”
‘He was a great example’
This was one of those deaths that made no sense.
Here was a 17-year-old kid who was turning his life around, working at Sonic Drive-In and going to Marshall High School, a Middletown charter school.
Then William “Brandon” Sheek II made a deadly mistake. While walking to his early-morning shift at Sonic, he stepped onto Ohio 122 and was struck and killed by a motorist. His death sent shock waves through the Middletown community, Sonic, Marshall and Middletown High School, where he once attended.
Chuck Hall, Marshall’s principal, called Sheek’s death “a shocker.” He said Sheek stopped in his office every day and gave him academic updates.
“He was determined to do the right thing,” Hall said. “He knew he had the opportunity to be on the right path and he was a great example.”
The Middletown community helped pay for Sheek’s funeral expenses, and Hall said students will wear sweatshirts with the words: “Finish What You Started,” in memory of Sheek. Hall also hopes to get signs placed along Ohio 122 notifying motorists of the school zone and possibly get a crosswalk on the road.
‘They have a wonderful beginning’
My co-workers knew I’d love this assignment. We rotate weekends shifts here, and my Saturday to work also was National Adoption Day hosted by Butler County Children Services.
That day I was overwhelmed by the love shown inside and outside Butler County Probate Judge Randy Rogers’ courtroom. None more than the commitment made by Brian and Katie Woodruff, of West Chester Twp. They adopted 13-year-old twins Kiyanna and Tiyanna. The Woodruffs already have five children, who range from 8 to 24 years old.
The girls’ attorney and guardian, Tracy Washington, who has overseen their foster care since they were 1 year old, said when they lived in Hamilton it wasn’t a “safe and stable home.”
Then Washington added: “This is a good day. They’re in a stable, positive family the rest of their lives. They have a wonderful beginning.”
Kiyanna, an eighth-grader at Liberty Junior School, said even before she and her sister signed the adoption papers, they felt part of the Woodruff family.
“This is where we belong,” she said. “We are loved.”
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