Tricia Rosenbeck, the St. Marys High School volleyball coach, got a call from Allison Yeager, now a Seton Hall assistant coach, who relayed “the terrible news.”
Lisa Grunkemeyer, who’s in pharmaceutical sales and lives in Bellbrook, did as she does every Sunday and checked the Facebook pages of her old teammates, whereupon she read “something bad had happened to Dru.”
Right away, she said, “my stomach started flip-flopping.”
Dru is Andrea Voss Vellinga, the beautiful, effervescent girl from Pendleton High in Indiana who came to WSU on a volleyball scholarship in 1999. She was beloved by teammates because of her all-embracing manner, helped lead the 21-7 Raiders to one of their greatest seasons in 2001 and, before graduating, managed to melt the heart of Mike Vellinga, a Canadian-born Dayton Bombers defenseman.
“They met in the training room her senior year,” Gels said. “I remember she was like, ‘There’s this boy ... and I have a crush.’ It was cute. They were smitten.”
After she finished at WSU, Andrea married Mike and traveled the minor league hockey circuit with him to Ontario, Texas, California, South Carolina and back to Texas. But once daughter Lydia was born four years ago, Andrea wanted more stability, so they moved back to Pendleton, and two years ago, Mike retired.
“Andrea loves Lydia to the moon and back,” Grunkemeyer said. “That little girl is the spitting image of her mom. She loves life with the same enthusiasm.”
One way that manifests itself with Andrea is in enjoying live music. And to her the Sugarland show at the state fair in Indianapolis was “the concert she wanted to see all summer,” said Gels. “Jennifer Nettles (Sugarland’s lead singer) is her idol.”
“I looked at her Facebook that day, and she wrote how excited she was to be going,” Grunkemeyer said. “I wrote back, ‘Have fun.’ ”
Guardian angels
Andrea and three of her Indiana friends ended up so close to the stage, they could reach out and touch it. But as they waited for Sugarland to come on, the gusting winds of an approaching storm tore into the stage rigging and caused the heavy overhead framework to come crashing down onto the crowd.
Two of the women with Andrea suffered scrapes, and another was knocked unconscious, but Andrea, who reportedly was hit in the head by a tumbling steel beam, was critically injured.
In all, some 45 people were hurt and seven — including former Wittenberg cheerleader Meagan Toothman, who passed away last week — have died from their injuries.
Andrea may well have perished, too, were it not for two guardian angels who were sitting in the very top of the grandstand.
As they witnessed the collapse, the pair — she’s a surgery resident and her husband’s an EMT — hurried toward the injured. They found Andrea, attended to her and carried her on a board to an ambulance. She was rushed to Methodist Hospital with, among other injuries, severe brain trauma.
As soon as Gels got the news, she drove to Methodist. She and Andrea played on the same Muncie club team as teenagers and were WSU roommates. She was in Andrea’s wedding and Andrea has often visited her in her hometown of St. Henry. In fact, Gels said, she was there just a couple of months ago to celebrate, “my Dirty 30 birthday.”
As you talk to the former WSU players, one thing that comes through is the bond they still have with each other.
“We’ve all moved on and we’re doing our own things with our own families, but it doesn’t matter if it’s been a day, a month or a year since we’ve seen each other,” Grunkemeyer said. “As soon as we’re together it’s like we never left. We have a support system. We’ll always have each other.”
They drew on that as Andrea’s cranial pressure rose and she fought for her life those first days, and then when she was put in a medically induced coma to help ease that issue, and now as she gets through pneumonia and everyone waits for her to become responsive.
Gels has visited Andrea several times — some trips with other teammates — and she said she’s gone through everything from crying and asking “why” to fervently praying.
But the other day, as she sat in the Calico Cafe in Coldwater wearing a pink T-shirt with two pink bracelets and pink nails (hot pink is Andrea’s favorite color, and Mandy said she will wear it until her friend gets better), she wore something more unexpected. She had just returned the night before from Methodist and, though some medical staffers warn it’s going to be a long road to recovery, now she could smile. “It was a good day,” she said with a voice briefly breaking. “Dru opened her eyes and she squeezed my hand. I don’t know if it was her fidgeting or just a reflex, but I went to bed believing that she knew I was there and she knew what she was doing. For the first time since this happened, I slept all night.”
Raising funds
Last Sunday, while Gels and Rosenbeck were at Methodist Hospital, several other former WSU teammates met at Ascension Church in Kettering, where they had a prayer service for Andrea, formulated plans for a fundraiser at WSU and tied ribbons to trees, signs and doors.
Saturday, when the St. Henry and St. Marys volleyball teams met, both teams wore pink ribbons in their hair.
And at Wright State’s annual alumni gathering on Sept. 17, the Raiders will wear pink shirts, there’ll be a silent auction and after the game with Cleveland State there will be a nighttime walk to raise funds for Andrea’s mounting medical bills. Shirts and bracelets honoring Andrea also are being sold and a donation fund has been set up at the First Merchants Bank in Pendleton, Ind.
To keep track of all this, you can go to a website — fortheloveofandrea.com — that Gels designed, another teammate helps keep updated and where Andrea’s older brother Tyler posts a daily blog on his sister’s condition.
“I think each one of us wakes up every morning and as we have our coffee we read Tyler’s blog from the night before,” Grunkemeyer said. “We’re looking for those little signs that she’s fighting and is going to get through this.”
Rosenbeck agreed: “We just want Andrea back.”
About the Author