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By Linda Mowery-Denning
Last Updated: April 02, 2008
Brian Woodmansee of Geneseo helps with Dalton’s Heart Walk because he knows it’s a good cause — and because he also knows his family is luckier than others.
In 2007 and again this year, Woodmansee, who has operated a disc jockey service for the past 20 years, will be responsible for the sound system and background music.
With him Saturday in Kanopolis City Park will be his son, Brady, who turns 10 later this year. Shortly before Brady was born, Brian and Gina Woodmansee discovered his heart rate was especially slow. After being delivered by a cesarean section, Brady was taken to Kansas City, where doctors found his heart was positioned just the opposite of what it should have been.
Physicians installed a pacemaker to correct the problem.
“His heart has adjusted,” Brian Woodmansee said. “He gets along pretty good. He played football on the Gladiators team. It’s just that every five years he has to get his battery changed and he doesn’t look forward to that.”
The heart walk was first organized three years ago by Kendra Ploutz, a fourth grade teacher at Ellsworth Elementary School. The walk is named in memory of Ploutz’s son, Dalton, who was 3 years old when he died May 12, 2005, of a congenital heart defect.
The first two walks raised almost $20,000 for the research through the American Heart Association.
Ploutz said one in 100 children will be born with a defect.
“It would be great to raise $10,000 this year, but if we raise $500, that’s $500 we didn’t have before,” she said.
The two-mile walk begins at 2 p.m.
“Rain or shine, we’re going to walk,” Ploutz said. “It’s just part of the fun and fellowship of the walk.”
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