Remembering Olivia Bondy: Ski club donates to area fire safety program

By BEcky Brooks

Man­ag­ing Editor

bvunews@civitasmedia.com

ATTICA — Mem­bers of one fam­ily who lost a daugh­ter in a Reed Town­ship fire on Nov. 27, 2012 are work­ing with friends to make a dif­fer­ence in the lives of chil­dren in the Seneca East Local Schools.

On Nov. 27 last year, Olivia Ryan Bondy, age 11, died in a house fire with her mother, step-father and two younger broth­ers. Holly and Joseph Hamil­ton and their boys, Jaxon and Linkin Hamil­ton all died in the fire, which received regional news coverage.The Hamil­ton fam­ily lived in the Seneca East Local School District.

The fam­ily was remem­bered in Belle­vue with a can­dle­light vigil in Robert Peters Park after the fire as the fam­ily had lived and worked in the Belle­vue community.

Olivia’s father, Ryan Bondy, and her step­mother, Bil­lie, of Nor­walk, were at the Attica-Venice-Reed Vol­un­teer Fire Depart­ment Thurs­day after­noon where friends from the San­dusky Ski Club pre­sented $1,000 to the AVR and Repub­lic vol­un­teer fire depart­ments to use to help pro­tect chil­dren and area res­i­dents from house fires.

Kim Mohr, a mem­ber of the ski club, said the group had raised funds and donated half to the women’s shel­ter in San­dusky and chose to donated $500 to the fire depart­ments in mem­ory of Olivia.

The Bondy fam­ily had been mem­bers of the ski club, includ­ing Olivia.

Mohr also said the $500 raised was matched by an anony­mous dona­tion make the gift to the fire depart­ment $1,000.

The money will go into a fund for smoke alarms.

“We reached all the Seneca East stu­dents this year,” AVR Fire Chief Brent Mey­ers explained. He said the two fire depart­ments worked with Seneca East Local School ele­men­tary prin­ci­pal Brad Powers.

Pow­ers, who also was at the AVR fire depart­ment Thurs­day, said that 575 smoke alarms were sent home with students.

“Through the school, every fam­ily was able to receive,” the prin­ci­pal reported.

Mey­ers said addi­tional fire alarms were also handed out besides those given out through the school and more than 600 had been put into the com­mu­nity since the death of Olivia Bondy and the Hamil­tons. In the future, more smoke alarms will be given to fam­i­lies who move into the dis­trict and fam­i­lies who still may not have them.

Ryan Bondy shared that his daugh­ter had only been ski­ing for a cou­ple years, but she started young.

“At Mans­field, she went down the big one,” he said, not­ing she had exceeded the bunny hill in skill.

“I think it’s a won­der­ful dona­tion by a group of great peo­ple,” he said about the check pre­sen­ta­tion Thursday.

“It’s a first step on a com­mit­ment on behalf of our inner cir­cle,” he added. Bondy, whose wife and father, Russ, were there for the dona­tion pre­sen­ta­tion, said his fam­ily intends to see that the loss of Olivia makes a dif­fer­ence. He added they are look­ing at spon­sor­ing a 5K run and other activities.

“We plan on doing things in the future,” Bondy added.

Posted by Becky Brooks on Jan 26 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.