FOCUS ON POSITIVE
SANTA JOINS OHIO GIRL TO DELIVER GIFT OF PRAYER
Santa was about halfway AKRON — through his shift at Akron’s Holiday Tree Festival last month when he lifted a curly-haired girl onto his knee.
The third-grader asked him to bring her Razor Jetts, $22 wheeled attachments that convert shoes into a sort of skateboard that shoots sparks.
It was a modest request. Santa agreed and the girl started to slide off his lap before stopping to rest her back against his knee.
“Santa,” the girl asked, “would you also pray for my friend at school?”
The girl told Santa she went to St. Joseph Parish School in Cuyahoga Falls and another girl there, Ally, was really sick in the hospital because her brain was bleeding.
Santa didn’t say anything, but he immediately remembered being a boy when an aneurysm nearly took the life of his own father — another Santa who had hoisted thousands of children onto his own lap to hear their hopes and dreams.
How could he refuse this child? Santa told the girl he would pray for her friend. The girl, her mission accomplished, began walking away, but changed her mind.
“Could we pray now?” the girl asked Santa as the next children in line at the Knight Center stepped forward for their turn.
The girl’s sincerity and determination were so pure, the memory of his father’s aneurysm so clear, Santa began to tremble as he and the girl bowed their heads, put their hands together and prayed.
When they finished, Santa reached onto his belt, plucked a sleigh bell and handed it to the girl.
“I save this bell for the person who asks me for the most amazing thing,” Santa told her. “It’s only the day before Thanksgiving, but I don’t think that anyone this year will ask for anything bigger or better than this.”
Medical emergency
Ally Obney was camped out in front of a television at her family’s Silver Lake home on a Saturday laughing and watching Shallow Hal when all of a sudden her head hurt. Then, the 13-year-old threw up.
Ally’s older sisters fetched their mom, who found Ally sprawled in her own vomit.
“This is disgusting, Ally, get up,” Lorri Obney told her daughter.
“I can’t,” Ally said, not opening her eyes.
Ally, eyes still closed, told her mom that her legs and back had gone numb.
Lorri screamed for her husband, Brian, who scooped up their helpless daughter. She was dead weight, slipping in and out of consciousness, and he couldn’t carry her to the car.
The Obneys called 911 and paramedics rushed Ally and her mom to Akron Children’s Hospital in an ambulance. Brian followed in a car.
Attending physicians saw Ally arrive and whisked her away for a CT scan before anyone asked Lorri to fill out any forms.
Ally was a healthy child who never got sick. Lorri suspected a nasty stomach bug had left her daughter dehydrated.
But it was far more serious. The CT scan revealed Ally had a substantial bleed on her brain and needed immediate surgery.
Lori didn’t know it then, but doctors feared Ally wouldn’t survive until Halloween, which was three days later.
Special sleigh bells
Tears ran down Santa’s face and stuck in his real white whiskers.
The next family in line at the Tree Festival overheard Santa talking to the curly haired girl and asked if they had prayed for a student at St. Joe’s. Santa nodded.
“Oh my,” the mother told Santa, “we’ve heard she’s not going to make it.”
Santa disagreed.
“I’m telling you right now, that girl is going to make it,” Santa said.
“You think Santa can save her?” the mother asked.
“No,” Santa said, “I believe that little girl’s prayers can.”
That night at home in Fairlawn, Santa — who for most of the year goes by Santa Dan, or Dan Sutter, the longtime manager of Loyal Oak Golf Course — told his wife what happened.
“In this screwed-up world we’re living in, the school, the parents are doing something right for this girl to ask Santa for a pure prayer,” he said. “I gave her a bell.”
Santa Dan’s wife knew her husband couldn’t let go of what happened. He had given away sleigh bells only a couple of times before.
One went to a girl who asked Santa Dan to get her parents back together.
Santa Dan couldn’t deliver the whole gift. But, after talking separately to the girl’s mom and dad, and making sure domestic violence wasn’t an issue, he did get them to spend an hour on Christmas together as a family.
Another bell went to a boy with a bruise on his face who asked Santa Dan to keep his father from hitting him again.
Santa Dan reported the incident to the boy’s school system, but not before taking the boy’s father aside and threatening to come down his chimney in a painful way if he ever hurt his son again.
Santa Dan told the boy to ring the bell every time he was afraid.
Santa wouldn’t come, he said, but Santa and others would know there was trouble.
Rally for Ally
Surgeons found a tangle of abnormal blood vessels called an arteriovenous malformation (AVM), in the front right lobe of Ally’s brain.
Only about 1 percent of people have AVM and the chances of an AVM bleeding are only 1-3 percent a year, according to the American Stroke Association.
A surgeon told Ally’s family they hadn’t seen the AVM in the brain scan because the bleed was so big. And even after finding it during surgery, they couldn’t fix it because Ally’s condition was too fragile.
About eight hours after falling ill on Oct. 28, Ally was out of surgery and in pediatric intensive care, where she was in a medically induced coma and on a ventilator.
Carrie DePasquale, the principal at St. Joseph, called faculty and staff and started a prayer chain that night.
The next day, DePasquale notified Ally’s eighth-grade class and one of the boys soon came up with the phrase “Rally for Ally,” which would soon become the school’s mantra.
The 196 students who make up pre-kindergarten through eighth grade at St. Joe’s prayed together daily for Ally’s healing.
Ally made it through the first 48 hours — the most critical time.
After seven days on a ventilator, doctors took her out of the coma.
Ally’s words were jumbled and she was too weak to walk. But after a few rough days, she began to improve.
Lorri started planning to add a new silver bell each year to the family Christmas tree to celebrate another year with Ally.
The power of prayer
Santa Dan phoned St. Joseph parish and asked a priest about Ally the Monday after Thanksgiving.
“Are you sitting down,” the priest asked Santa Dan, who braced for bad news.
“You’re not going to believe this,” the priest said, “but Ally came home.”
Doctors initially told Ally’s family she’d likely be hospitalized until Christmas.
But after two weeks in intensive care and six days in a stepdown room, she was sleeping at home and returning to the hospital five days a week for all-day therapy.
As days passed, Santa Dan kept tabs on Ally through mutual acquaintances and found out she was back in class half-days.
On Dec. 18, Santa Dan had a gig at a pediatric dental office in Cuyahoga Falls and decided to swing by St. Joseph.
A suspicious secretary let him as far as the school vestibule. When Santa Dan told her the story of the little girl he prayed with for Ally, the secretary pulled the principal out of the school’s Christmas pageant.
Santa Dan again shared the story of the curly haired girl — he didn’t know her name — and tearfully told of his own father’s aneurysm.
“God bless you for teaching the way you teach at this school,” Santa Dan said.
Principal DePasquale said Santa Dan missed Ally by 15 minutes. But she invited him to tell the story of prayer to the parents, grandparents and students gathered for the pageant.
Santa Dan didn’t recognize the curly haired girl in the crowd. And he never knew her name.
But Kennedy Filipczak, 8, recognized him. She carried the sleigh bell he gave her inside her backpack.
Kennedy’s mom, Deona Chavez, told her prayer was private and said Kennedy shouldn’t brag about the bell at school.
“This is your secret with Santa,” Chavez told her daughter.
Kennedy kept mum even as Santa Dan told the whole school about meeting her at the Tree Festival.
“I don’t know if the child who asked for the prayer is here, but know that your pure prayer made a difference,” Santa Dan told the group. “God is good. Continue to go down that path and do what you know in your heart is right.”
After the pageant, Kennedy confided to a teacher that she was the girl in Santa Dan’s story. The teacher brought Kennedy to the principal and to Santa Dan.
It turned out that Kennedy, who is five years younger than Ally, never met the girl she prayed for.
Santa Dan hugged Kennedy and asked if she told her parents what a special girl she is.
“They know,” Kennedy said matter-of-factly.
Later that night, as Santa Dan drove home, his phone rang. It was Ally’s mom and she wanted to hear the story of the prayer.
When Santa Dan got to the part where he gave Kennedy the bell, Lorri fell silent.
Santa Dan asked her if she was still there.
Yes, Lorri said, explaining it was a weird coincidence because she had planned to mark each year with Ally by hanging a new bell on the family Christmas tree, but hadn’t yet got around to it.
Then Lorri told Santa Dan something he didn’t know.
The tangle of abnormal blood vessels in Ally’s brain, the AVM surgeons expected to repair during a second surgery, had disappeared.
“Is it possible the surgeon got it when she went in to clean out the blood that first night? It’s possible,” Lorri said.
But maybe, Lorri said, it was a medical miracle brought on by the power of prayer.
The following day, Santa Dan met Ally and her mom at Akron Children’s Hospital.
It was six days before Christmas and Ally had just finished her last therapy session.
Her blonde hair had grown in and covered the scar from the brain surgery. She was walking and talking and dreaming of becoming a thoracic surgeon just like she did before the brain bleed.
Ally — whose middle name is Faith — plans to return full time to St. Joseph when classes resume after Christmas break Jan. 3.
Three days later, she will celebrate her 14th birthday on the Epiphany, the day Catholics believe Christ made himself known to the world.
Santa Dan gave Ally a gift — a bell as big as a fist.
He gave Lorri a sleigh bell, just like the one he gave Kennedy after they prayed at the Tree Festival.
And Santa Dan gave the Obney family a Christmas tree ornament — the first bell to celebrate another year with Ally.