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He and Mike Smaby were childhood friends in La Crosse. They went through tech school together. On weekends, they raced cars. Mark did the paint and body work. Greg, a forklift mechanic who could fix about anything, did the engines.
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When Greg moved to Holmen in 1983, Mark thought he might as well be going to Alaska. Later, Mark bought some land from his friend and built his own house next door. They had identical shops where they worked on their cars.
Then Greg got sick.
In October 2006, at age 47, Greg was diagnosed with lymphoma. He went through three rounds of chemotherapy at Mayo Clinic before doctors thought they had it under control.
Greg’s wife, Laurie, traveled to Rochester, Minn., every weekend during that time. They had insurance, but bills still were piling up. So Mark and Tamaime Nimmo, a longtime friend of Laurie’s, decided to organize a benefit for them.
One weekend in the hospital, Tamaime told Greg about the plans.
“He was on top of the world,” Laurie said. “He thought he had the best friends in the world.”
In June, as doctors prepared Greg for a stem cell transplant, they discovered he had leukemia. That meant another 50 days in the hospital for more heavy chemo treatments.
The last one was brutal. “It took him down for the count,” Laurie said. “I’ve never seen somebody go to the basement like he did.”
It’s kicking my ass, Greg told Mark when his friend came to see him in Rochester. The man who friends called a gentle giant had dropped 50 pounds from his 6-foot-4 frame. He was still 200 pounds, but “that was skinny for him,” Laurie said.
Mark tried to visit Greg every Saturday while he was in the hospital. He was there Aug. 4 when doctors told Greg he was in remission. It was time for him to go home, get some strength back for a bone marrow transplant.
I get to go home, Greg told his friend. I get to go home.
“Every time he said ‘home,’ he cried,” Laurie said.
Over the summer, Mark and Tamaime organized about 20 of Greg’s friends into committees to plan the benefit, scheduled for Sept. 16. They got businesses to donate things they could raffle off.
There would be food, and bands, and Greg’s beloved Green Bay Packers would be on TV. Meanwhile, Greg went back to Mayo for another round of chemo.
“That’s where everything went wrong,” Laurie said. The treatment wiped out his immune system, leaving him vulnerable to infections.
The Thursday before the benefit, Greg spiked at a 105 fever, and Laurie brought him to the hospital in La Crosse. He was having some trouble breathing, but they gave him oxygen and by Friday morning had him settled in a room. His doctors decided to transfer Greg to Mayo.
Laurie and Greg’s mother, Joan, drove separately to Rochester. On the way, they got a call to come back. Greg’s heart had stopped. He was on a ventilator.
“They met us with a doctor and a priest,” Laurie said.
Greg hung on for a day and died Sunday morning.
As they left the hospital, Laurie asked Joan where she wanted to go. Do you want to go to the benefit? That’s where all his friends are, she said.
“I had to go there to be with those guys,” Laurie said. “I wouldn’t have been anywhere else.”
Country hearts
One October weekend in 2002, Chuck Sonnek bought a couple of bushels of apples and plugged in the old refrigerator in the basement of his La Crescent, Minn., home to store them.
Then he and wife Kandy headed to the Twin Cities to see a concert.
While they were gone, some leaf watchers driving down Apple Blossom Drive saw smoke coming from the home. Before firefighters could put it out, the blaze burned through the kitchen floor and sent the appliances crashing into the basement.
Insurance covered some of their loss, but the couple hadn’t increased their coverage for recent modifications made to accommodate Kandy, who has multiple sclerosis. Or the $18,000 electric wheelchair they had just bought.
“We had insurance,” said Chuck, a forklift mechanic in La Crosse. “We just didn’t have enough.”
The Sonneks rebuilt, making their new home completely wheelchair accessible. But their mortgage is four times what it was.
Chuck, who is 53, said he’ll have it paid off when he is 86.
A dozen neighbors — everyone for nearly a mile in either direction — got together and organized a benefit for the Sonneks.
They had food, live music, raffles and auctions, raising enough money to buy Kandy a new wheelchair.
Chuck called their support “immeasurable.”
The couple moved to La Crescent in 1985 after falling in love with the bluff country.
“To me, neighbors are kind of like your adopted family,” Chuck said.
Chuck recalled growing up on a farm in Waseca, Minn. When his father got sick, neighbors came every morning for two weeks to milk the cows.
Seeing that same giving spirit from his neighbors in
La Crescent reassured him he had moved to the right place.
“To find that same Midwest culture — or whatever you want to call it, country hearts,” he said. “It was a reassuring feeling that we moved to the right part.”
Learning to accept a hand
Terry McGinnis wasn’t one to take handouts.
The 32-year-old Cashton, Wis., man is an old-fashioned guy, a truck driver who believes in providing for his family so wife Jennifer could stay home with their four kids.
But when tragedy struck twice, he learned to accept the kindness of strangers.
In 2004, his youngest daughter, Kaylee, was diagnosed with liver disease. For months, Jennifer and Terry shuttled the 7-month-old girl to Madison while they prepared for her transplant. Terry missed work looking after the other three kids, age 2, 4 and 5.
So Lori Dickman did what she usually does when someone in the community needs help: She organized a benefit.
Terry was embarrassed. “I just wanted to climb into a cave and hide,” he said.
Jennifer was blown away. She was pretty new to Cashton and didn’t meet Dickman until the day before the benefit.
“Words cannot describe how I felt,” she said. “I just could not believe that somebody would do that for someone else. … I’ve heard of family and friends helping out. Not strangers.”
Kaylee got her second liver transplant in December and was doing better. Then, on Feb. 1, fire destroyed the McGinnis home.
“We thought it couldn’t get worse, and then this happened,” Terry said.
So the Cashton area rallied again.
Even before the fire trucks were back at the station, donations were coming in, Dickman said.
McGinnis said his mother finally told him to just shut up and accept the help.
“We still don’t know how we paid for some of our bills,” Terry said. “They got paid.”
Now, Terry said, when he hears about a fundraiser for someone, he tries to help instead of judging.
“I’ve realized that you can’t do it all yourself,” he said. “That was a point in time where no matter how much I did, there was no way we were going to make it through that without somebody’s help.”
Chris Hubbuch can be reached at chris.hubbuch@lee.net or (608) 791-8217.
