After a series of health crises, a local leader could use help from the community

It takes more than lumber, nails and paint to make a house a home.

Community is what makes us feel at home — neighbors who become friends over the back fence and look out for each other.

My friend Reggie Thomas is one of those community builders. He has been doing that for decades as a kind and humble human, an active volunteer, and as a banker who literally helps build communities.

He did all that in central Ohio with Huntington National Bank, where he worked for nearly 30 years, leaving there in 2022 as vice president for corporate community development relationships to join First Commonwealth Bank as a vice president in Columbus.

And now this man who has helped so many others is finding strength in community as he battles a health crisis.

Reggie and I grew up as neighbors in our hometown of Orrville, a small city of about 8,500 residents clustered around the Smucker’s headquarters 25 miles southwest of Akron.

He was in my younger sister’s class, the Orrville High School Class of 1983, and he married the sister of one of my good friends from high school. We all went off to college and started families, and I hadn’t seen him for many years until we ran into each other in Downtown Columbus during a Pelotonia event a few years ago.

Reggie battled prostate cancer in recent years. At 59, he is now a survivor who has been riding to raise money to support cancer-fighting research.

He also served on The Dispatch Reader Advisory Board a few years ago, when we had the opportunity to catch up on the latest about his four children and my three daughters.

Reggie sent me a note recently under the heading of “health update,” and a mention that I wouldn’t see him on a bicycle again after his 11 years of riding and fundraising for Pelotonia.

I couldn’t have imagined the news I was about to receive.

My heart sank as I read about the injury he sustained near the end of his Pelotonia ride in 2019. Someone riding ahead of him stopped abruptly, and Reggie crashed, scraping and cutting his right leg. Infection took hold and sent him spiraling into one major medical issue after another during the past few years.

His friend David Demers described Reggie’s situation this way when he created a GoFundMe page to help Reggie and his family with the mounting health-care bills and rehabilitation:

“In early October 2023, Reggie's health condition deteriorated,” Demers wrote. “He was hospitalized at Mt. Carmel East and diagnosed with sepsis. He spent six long weeks in ICU, resulting in the amputation of his right leg above the knee and three other major surgeries.”

After more complications and a return to the hospital, he is now back in a rehabilitation center in Gahanna, where I visited him last weekend. He was weak but upbeat. The IVs filled with antibiotics are gone, and he’s hoping to begin physical rehabilitation soon so that he can regain his strength enough to go home — and his most immediate goal of attending his daughter’s wedding in Florida this year.

He is now on long-term disability and has a long road to recovery. As Demers wrote, it could be months before Reggie can return to his home, and even longer before he can work again.

“Reggie is a proud man who would not ask for help,” Demers wrote. “So, this is why I am asking his friends, family, colleagues, and community to assist Reggie with his mounting medical bills and daily living expenses.”

Now I’m asking, too. The man who helped build communities throughout his life and in his work could use some love from his community right now.

To contribute to the GoFundMe account for Reggie Thomas,go to https://gofund.me/de9c078a

Alan D. Miller is a former Dispatch editor who teaches journalism at Denison University and writes about old house repair and historic preservation based on personal experiences and questions from readers.

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