KD5ZSX Dan... HERE’S a post EVERYONE needs to read. Thank you Dan.

[K7HN]

Hello everyone,

If there’s one thing on this forum I hope you see it’s this posting.

Dan, KD5ZSX saw a very hard and heartfelt plea I sent out over QTH asking for somebody help me because I had just painfully had to sell the only ham radio I had.

Ham radio to me is probably different than it is for much of you. I take care of a very sick family and “going on the air“ is my way of handling the stress of my life. for a short time I get to step away from all of it try and do some TX work and talk to people from all over the world. To me, ham radio is still magical.

About four months ago, my family started getting sick. I take care of a mentally disabled brother who’s fighting stage four cancer. The bills for his care started skyrocketing unexpectedly. Then my wife who’s always been very healthy, came down with bacterial bronchitis. She’d never been sick like that before in her life.

It took me weeks begging her to stop working so she could take care of herself until finally her doctor literally told her that if she didn’t stop working she was on the edge of pneumonia and would be hospitalized.

It took me weeks begging her to stop working so she could take care of herself until finally her doctor literally told her that if she didn’t stop working she was on the edge of pneumonia and would be hospitalized.

We always try to give my brother a very special Christmas. Here my wife was very sick before Christmas and we are trying to spoil my brother because we never know if it’s his last Christmas with us.

We have two dogs, one you’ll see on my QRZ page named Jasper, and one named Miley. Miley started coughing. I was of course concerned and took her to the veterinarian with little money to spend. She needed to go there twice and the bills were unreal for the tests that had to be performed. Unfortunately Miley has heart disease now. She needs to be on medication the rest of her life.

That led me to take our other dog Jasper “Radio dog” because he’s always in the shack with me when I’m on the air. More vet bills and medication.

Our mortgage payments got out of control. My wife couldn’t work, I’m permanently disabled due to a back that can’t be fixed and there’s no extra money coming in.

First, I sold my amplifier, an Ameritron 811H. Then, the most painful step of all. I had to sell my rig. A 4 month old Yaesu FTDX 3000. I LOVED that radio. Jasper had the “puppy dog eyes” of sadness as he watched me package it back up in the boxes.

It was “the radio I swore I’d never sell.”

But having no other choice, I sold it.

That night, I sat in my empty radio shack and started at the empty space where my radio once sat. I go on the air at night often because I can’t sleep due to stress and back pain.

My wife knew my hurt. She suggested I write a letter to all of you to ask for help. That maybe someone had an extra radio sitting around they could sell me on payments.

That was the second hardest thing I’ve ever had to write publicly. The hardest one? The request and go fund me for people to help us with the last $2000 needed so we can get our mortgage back on its feet.

Little did I know what was to come...

I’ll literal outpouring of support from ham’s all over our country. Then came a miracle.

I woke up the morning of February 19 to find an email from Dan, KD5ZSX saying “I’ve just contacted ham radio outlet in Atlanta and they are sending you a brand new Yaesu 450D. Pay me back when you can and if you can’t, please consider it a gift.“

I couldn’t believe. What my eyes were seeing. Then came to more emails from HRO Atlanta saying that the radio was purchased by Dan and would be delivered to me.

My friends, I never expected this. I expected someone who may have an older radio sitting around that they weren’t using that they could part with and wouldn’t mind taking payments for it. This was a complete miracle. But that’s not the end of the story…

Dan contacts me again.

This email essentially read “ Larry, you had a FTDX 3000 right?” I’ve just contacted HRO Atlanta and changed the order so you would have a new Yaesu FTDX 3000 shipped to your home.”

I tried to contact Deann to tell him not to do something so expensive but he would have nothing of it. He said it was “his way of giving back.“ He told me “I’m not a rich man, but I feel that you need help and I have the ability to do something that you can’t right now and that you need it more than I do.“

Talk about being humbled and grateful to the core. I mean I NEVER expected this. I can’t put into words the thankfulness and gratefulness I have for Dan KD5ZSX. And I’ll make sure he gets paid back once we’re back on our feet.

I’m writing all of this to show that human kindness way beyond our wildest dreams exist in this world still today by the Grace of God and by incredibly kind people like Dan KD5ZSX.

I’ll close this by Sharing with you a short story; I know this is already a very long post.

My wife suggested a place that I add on QTH asking for help. I had a hard time doing that because I guess “we just try to handle things ourselves.“ Then she told me something that I tried to have a comeback for and I couldn’t she said “Larry, you spent your life putting other people before yourself and taking care of others. Why do you have such a hard time asking for help for yourself?”

She was right. I had struggled with that.

She was the one that would come into the ham shack at 3 AM on a night I couldn’t sleep because of terrible back pain because I was screaming that I just received a QSO from Tasmania. Magical. As I said before, that’s what ham radio means to me. To have it back with such incredible selflessness and generosity is something I never thought could happen to me.

Thank you Dan KD5ZSX. I’ll pay you back every penny. I just can’t thank you enough for giving me the chance to go back into my ham shack and relieve the stress of life and enjoy the magic that can happen when you key a microphone.

Gods blessings,

Larry
K7HN