Loved ones of drug addicts gather at Kepple Hill vigil
Bill Scott, a husband and father from Apollo, started taking opiates when one of his eyes was burned in an industrial accident.
He became an addict, but was able to go into recovery for 13 years starting in 2003, said his wife, Marsha Scott. For some reason, he stopped treatment and started using drugs again in May 2016. He died on Sept. 30 at age 53.
“After 29 years of marriage I have no idea why,” Marsha Scott said Thursday night on the lawn of the House of Hope Worship Center in Kepple Hill, Parks Township, to observe International Overdose Awareness Day.
Nearby, 29 crosses and empty T-shirts represented Armstrong County's 2017 drugs deaths as of Thursday.
“The county started the day with 28 dead. Then the coroner called me,” said Apollo Mayor Jeff Held, who is a founder of RAID (Residents Against Illicit Drugs), which seeks to help addicts their families and people in recovery.
Scott and Held were among the 30 people who gathered for a candlelight vigil and sky lantern release.
“If there is one word I want you to remember tonight, it's hope,” said the congregation's leader, the Rev. Scott Kifer.
The congregation has special “There's A Hope” meetings on the second and fourth Tuesdays for the parents and families of people who are addicted or recovery addicts. Kifer is RAID's vice president.
The pastor said he was addicted to cocaine and alcohol in his late teens in Youngstown, Ohio. He's long been clean, a pastor for 27 years.
“You need to hear that there is hope,” he said, before the crowd lit wicks on about 20 large white lanterns that floated with prayers into the moonlit sky.
Jaclyn Dykes of Vandergrift lit a lantern.
“I've known a handful of people who have died on drugs and I'm in recovery,” she said. “I'm here for a 24-year-old friend from Ohio who I met in drug treatment in Florida. He started to use again. It's a daily challenge.”
Thursday was the one-year anniversary of the death of Cody Stitt, 31, of Ford City.
His sister, Kasey Aries, now a YMCA counselor in Boston, launched a lantern with step-sister Jena Gispanski and step-brother Josh Gispanski, both of Ford City.
Aries led a walk in Boston in her brother's memory.
“Drugs are horrible,” she said.
If Armstrong County's drug death rate continues at its current pace, at least 46 people will die from drugs this year in Armstrong County, said County Coroner Brian Myers.
There were 41 deaths in the county last year.
Overdose Awareness Day was also observed in numerous places in the region, including a special display in the City-County Building in Pittsburgh and at Lost Dreams Awakening Recovery Center in New Kensington.
In Pittsburgh, Jenna Fisher, whose daughter, Marley, died from drugs inside a Point State Park restroom in April, said about 250 stopped to see the displays of photos, stories and poems about Allegheny County's drug deaths.
At least 100 people crowded into the Lost Dreams center. Some pulled up chairs outside the open doors to listen to an award-winning Freeport Area High School anti-drug video.
They also heard from the parents of Kyle Sundo, who died from addiction. The nonprofit counseling center was founded by the Sundo famiily and counselors VonZell Wade and his wife Laurie Johnson-Wade.
Chuck Biedka is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 724-226-4711, cbiedka@tribweb.com or via Twitter @Chuck_Biedka.
