The Friday Finish - Compassionate Giving - Volunteerism Strong - Dukamo Sets Record - DeWall Family Cheers McCoy's - The Good You Do Stays
November 6, 2026
Lead with Love Kicks Off with Compassionate Giving
To no one’s surprise, Red Bird Mission supporters jumped into compassionate giving at the launch of the Lead with Love campaign for Giving Tuesday 2026. Donations totaling $16,226 have been received during the first week. The Home Delivered Meals matching funds of $12,000 pledged thus far have been exhausted bringing the total raised to $28,226 in the first week!
The Lead with Love campaign is two-fold – 1) Love by Feeding: Raise support to continue Home Delivered Meals funding through the winter months for 48 people in need, and 2) Strengthen Leadership: Providing opportunities for students to learn leadership and service at Red Bird Christian School. The goal set for the campaign is $50,000 so there’s plenty of room for additional donations in the coming weeks. Matching funds for Strengthen Leadership are still available.
You can join in the compassionate giving with an online gift using the link below, or mail your gift payable to Red Bird Mission, 70 Queendale Ctr, Beverly, KY 40913-9607 marked “GT26”. You can designate “HDM” to extend Home Delivered Meals through the winter, or designate “Leaders” and double your gift to the School while matching funds are still available.
Volunteerism Strong at Community Outreach
Work Camp season may be officially over for 2026, but there were a number of Long Term Volunteers making an impact in Community Outreach this week. Six volunteers from two North Carolina churches, Newland United Methodist and Jonas Ridge United Methodist pitched in to do needed tasks in the Food Pantry, Christmas Room and Baby Pantry as well as riding along to assist with Home Delivered Meals.
Another volunteer from North Carolina, Virginia Young, brought along her daughter, Synthia Hughes, to help this week in Community Outreach. They also helped in the food and baby pantries but they took on the task of sorting out the hundreds of hats, gloves and scarves in the Christmas Room that will be used to fill in shoebox gifts and fruit basket gifts for the elderly. Shoeboxes will be checked and baskets will assembled over the next few weeks for Christmas Distribution that has reached upwards of 2,000 people in previous years.
Our Red Bird Christian School Dormitory students joined in the volunteerism by helping to unload a trailer load of food arriving late Thursday afternoon. Ralph and Nadine Aller were back with several thousand dollars’ worth of food, bedding and personal hygiene products.
Dukamo Sets Record at State
Abenezer Dukamo shattered his personal record (PR) competing in the 2026 Kentucky High School Athletic Association Cross Country State Meet at the Kentucky Horse Park on Saturday, October 31st. Dukamo led the Red Bird Christian School (RBCS) Boys Cross Country team throughout the season that held promise of qualifying for state championships as a team. Unfortunately, injuries for a couple of runners impacted their team qualification negatively at region championships, but Abenezer qualified for state as an individual.
“Benny”, as he’s known at RBCS, trained hard at the end of the season and the week leading up to the state meet, and the weather was better than usual for running last Saturday. Benny closed out his high school cross country career with a time of 18:52.97, a full minute faster than his previous PR set at region, and moved up from his pre-state meet ranking of 134 to finish 101st out of 261 competing on Saturday.
DeWall Family Cheers on the McCoy’s
Without question, the DeWall Senior Center group from Red Bird Mission attending the Hatfield & McCoy Dinner Feud in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee should be cheering on the McCoy Family. After all, Kentuckians take up for Kentuckians, but there was nothing but laughter and happiness exchanged on the ride home Thursday night. Several of the DeWall Center participants have worked throughout the past year to make quilts, hand towels, aprons and other craft items to sell to fund Thursday’s trip to Pigeon Forge.
The DeWall “family” gathered for brunch before loading up to caravan 3 ½ hours south into Tennessee to a couple of planned destinations. Hammer’s Dry Goods stores, located mostly in Tennessee, have a reputation for carrying quality items at reasonable prices. Everybody piled out to look for something special in their store in Sevierville, but the vehicles loaded up quickly when word came that the group of 19 could be seated early for dinner!
Excitement was high as the group gathered outside, but nobody would’ve guessed that Bob Smith’s Kentucky map shirt would lead to meeting someone now living in Florida that has deep Clay County family roots! There was plenty food served in family style buckets to each table of four as happy conversation continued up until show time.
It wasn’t a historical presentation, but everybody joined in with competitive cheering for a storyline adapted to east Tennessee locations and the fall season. The DeWall family cheered and shouted with gusto and strength for the McCoy Family as rivalries were laid aside by the end when the families united with an older couple and younger couple marrying to end the feudin’.
Jovial conversation kept the van ride home light with ribbing around matchmaking in the group as only the DeWall family could do. Back at the Center, as the van unloaded for folks to head to their separate houses, one said it best,
“We just have fun together!”
The Good You Do Stays: Dr. Jagger Returns to Red Bird
Around here, we remember the people who were good to our families. We remember who helped us when we were scared, who took care of our children, and who was there when we didn’t know where else to turn. Years may pass, but that kind of gratitude stays with you.
When Dr. Michael Jagger recently returned to Red Bird Mission, some of that gratitude came right back to meet him. Former patients and family members had the chance to reconnect with the doctor whose work had changed their lives. For some, it was an opportunity to say a thank-you they had carried in their hearts for nearly fifty years.
Karen Nantz was one of them.
“I finally got to meet my life saver again today after exactly 48 years,” Karen shared.
“It was an awesome time catching up and he actually remembered me.”
That last part gets me. All those years later, he remembered her.
Karen was just eleven years old when she became terribly sick. She remembers struggling with stomach problems and being in and out of hospitals before her family finally found the help she needed at Red Bird.
One evening, Karen lay sick on the couch while her mama, Betty, was fixing supper. Betty felt the Lord telling her to take her little girl to Red Bird Hospital. She stopped cooking, told Karen’s daddy they needed to go, and they loaded her up.
As a mama myself, I keep thinking about Betty standing there in that kitchen. Supper on the stove, her child lying nearby, and that feeling that something was terribly wrong. When it’s your baby, you keep looking for help. You keep listening to that little voice telling you not to give up.
At Red Bird, Dr. Jagger examined Karen and discovered that her appendix had ruptured. According to the family, the infection was severe, and part of her intestines had developed gangrene and had to be removed during surgery. Dr. Jagger and Dr. Schaefer helped care for the little girl whose condition had become so serious.
Of everything Karen remembers, one detail says more than I ever could: when she woke up after surgery, her daddy was standing at the foot of her bed, crying.
There are some things a child never forgets.
Karen spent about a week recovering at Red Bird, and that little girl pulled through. Forty-eight years later, she was able to see Dr. Jagger again and tell him what his care had meant to her.Karen’s reunion also helped bring another family’s story back to Red Bird.
Her cousin, Freda Napier, saw a post about Karen getting to meet Dr. Jagger again. She recognized his name immediately. He was the same doctor who had cared for her first baby, Amy, when she was just six months old in 1979.
Freda had never dreamed she would get to see him again.
She remembers Amy running a high fever and becoming frighteningly weak. There was a big snow, and the roads were awful, but George Nantz managed to get Freda and her baby to Red Bird.
Freda recalls that Dr. Jagger suspected meningitis, which was confirmed with a spinal tap. Amy was desperately sick. For two weeks at Red Bird, Dr. Jagger worked to help her while her mama stayed close, sleeping beside her baby or in a chair.
When Amy needed further care, Dr. Jagger wanted her flown to the University of Kentucky hospital. Bad weather kept the helicopter from flying. Freda remembers making the trip with Ronnie in an old blue Ford truck, traveling over snow- and ice-covered roads to get Amy where she needed to be.
That picture will stay with you: a sick baby, a frightened family, and an old two-wheel-drive truck making its way through the snow.
Amy spent another two weeks at UK receiving antibiotics and fluids. Freda stayed with her, sleeping on the floor beneath her baby’s bed with two blankets and a pillow she had bought along the way.
A mama will make her place wherever her child needs her. Even if that place is a hospital floor.
Today, Freda looks back on those days with a heart full of faith and gratitude. She credits the grace of God and the care her daughter received with bringing Amy through. During Dr. Jagger’s visit, she finally got to hug him and thank him in person for helping save her baby.
Nearly half a century had passed. To that mama, it still mattered just as much.
Other memories of Dr. Jagger brought a lighter side to the homecoming, too. Tim Helton remembered watching him play basketball in a game between Mission staff and school faculty in the late 1970s.
“He was also a very good basketball player,” Tim shared.
I love that memory alongside these others. It reminds us how people become part of a place. Folks remember the work you did, but they remember seeing you out in the community, too. Sometimes they remember you on a basketball court when they were just a kid in school.
Dr. Michael Jagger spent three years at Red Bird. When you think about the lives touched during that time, and the families still telling these stories decades later, three years takes on a whole different meaning.
For Karen, his care helped give a little girl the chance to grow up. For Freda, it helped give a mama more years with her baby. And for Red Bird, these memories are part of our history, carried by the very people who lived them. For Dr. Michael Jagger, he realized that rather than him serving God through his work, God was working through him.
Dr. Michael Jagger, we are grateful you came back to visit. Grateful these families got the chance to see you, to share their stories, and to say what had been on their hearts all these years.
The good you did here stayed long after you left. These families have never forgotten.
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