Randy Poffo’s first foray into athletics wasn’t inside a wrestling ring — the stage which would make him a legend and icon for a generation of fans. Grappling was in his blood, as his father Angelo had been famous as a wrestler and even more famous as a world record holder: For years, Angelo held the record for consecutive sit-ups, with 6,033 in a row.
For Randy, however, his first stage was a diamond. He had been signed out of high school by the St. Louis Cardinals organization, and played outfield in Double A for several seasons. Success in the game would prove difficult to come by, particularly when young Poffo suffered an injury to his throwing arm.
His father’s profession came calling. During the offseason, Randy began to perform as a wrestler alongside his father and brother, who performed under his real name, Lanny. Randy’s first character, inspired by his astounding agility and quickness, was “The Spider,” a take-off of Spider-Man — ironic, considering his later appearance in the character’s 2002 feature film. At one point, booker Ole Anderson said to Angelo that his son wrestled “like a savage.” A surname was born.
Randy Savage was the first wrestler I ever saw perform. I was only 10 years old when, one day, my father asked if my brother and I could tape the WWF’s first prime-time show on NBC — “The Main Event.” My father wasn’t even a fan, he was just curious about how the big Andre the Giant vs. Hulk Hogan main event would go. So, we watched as it recorded.
Suddenly, before me on the screen was a man who was the definition of larger than life. Decked out in a robe covered in sequins, with the words “Macho Madness” scrawled across the back, he turned toward the camera and uttered his now-famous catchphrase, “Ooh, yeah!” At his side stood his manager and real-life wife, Elizabeth. Savage began explaining, as only he could, how his opponent, an Elvis impersonator named The Honky Tonk Man, had wronged them both and now it was time for revenge.

This was 1988. Savage had already been a full-time wrestler for nearly 15 years by the time I first laid eyes on him. He had garnered a reputation as one of the greatest talents of his generation, competing for years under the banner of his father’s wrestling promotion. His performances blended elements from across the grappling spectrum. He combined the hard-hitting, physical style popularized in Europe and North America with the high-flying athleticism often seen in Japanese or Mexican promotions. No one had ever seen anything quite like it before.
He was still at his physical peak when Vince McMahon brought him into the then-WWF in the mid-1980’s. His remarkable in-ring style, coupled with his unique and intense character, made him an instant star. He’d started out as a villain but had way too much charisma for that to stick, and he quickly became the No. 2 hero in the company behind Hogan.
As I watched that night, and saw a man I had never heard of doing moves I never thought possible, I became a fan for life, of professional wrestling and of Randy Savage.
It is cliche to say that someone was ahead of their time, but for Savage, it goes beyond even that. He helped create a new era. He was practically the first man to become WWF world champion who wasn’t the huge, bodybuilder type whose feet never left the mat. He showed that smaller guys with enormous talent could be at the top of the card. Guys like Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Rey Mysterio and more walked a path that Savage pioneered.
As the years went by, age and injuries caught up with Savage, as they do for all athletes. He had basically been an outcast from wrestling for the past decade. Rumors abounded for years as to why Savage and Vince McMahon were not on good terms, which led to Savage’s history being all but ignored. But signs of fences mending began to occur — WWE had released a DVD of Savage’s career highlights a few years ago, and Savage’s likeness appeared in a recent WWE video game, which he helped to promote.
But there’ll never be a full-fledged return now. The man who made me a fan — and who I’m betting did the same for a lot of folks my age — will never get a chance to walk that aisle one more time and hear the people express their admiration and gratitude for everything he did.
But if the outpouring of mourning and sadness that fans have expressed over the past few days is any indication, it’s clear that though time and absence may have separated Savage from fans, the memories he left have never faded.
Thank you, Randy.

Email Jeff at PopGoesJeff@gmail.com.

As the saying goes, one man’s golden teeth are another man’s treasure.
At least that will be the case this week when the Treasure Hunters Roadshow arrives at Perrysburg’s Holiday Inn Express on Fremont Pike for a five-day visit beginning May 24.

The golden rule is definitely in effect at the roadshow, according to Matthew Enright, vice president of media relations for the show.
“To be honest, anything gold is hot right now,” he said. “We’ve had people that have literally brought gold teeth into the show, as well as gold coins and jewelry and everything in between. Gold is breaking records every quarter. People are jacked up about bringing in gold stuff.”
The free show is open to the public from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at the hotel, 10621 Fremont Pike. Last year, 510 customers brought in items, taking home $50,000 for their teeth — or less personal valuables.
“The U.S. dollar is really weak right now,” Enright said, explaining that situation opens up the possibility for other valuables to take its place. “Precious metals are up. If you look at recent trends, it seems like when the economy isn’t doing so great, you see different things going up, whether it’s silver or gold or something else.”
Items do not need to be golden teeth to make an impression with the roadshow representatives or the collectors who are willing to pay for the valuables. More mundane items are sought after on the market as well.
“People are bringing in broken chains, necklaces and rings as they take advantage of the market,” Enright said. “Last week one man in South Dakota brought in a handful of old silver dollars and fifty cent pieces. He walked out with more than $2,300 — the guy was blown away.”
The Treasure Hunters Roadshow has been in existence for 15 years, traveling the globe in search of items collectors are willing to pay money for.
They’re willing to pay money for much more than gold.
“We’re looking for items such as Gibson and Fender guitars, war items, paper currency, advertising memorabilia, vintage toys and any coins before 1965,” Enright said.
Vintage and costume jewelry, comic books, musical instruments, fine art, dolls, war memorabilia, advertising memorabilia, swords, knives, trains and toys made prior to 1965 are also in high demand from collectors.
For more information, visit the website www.treasurehuntersroadshow.com or call (217) 523-4225.

An Ottawa Hills garden tour on June 18 will benefit a local preschool.

One of the homes featured on this year’s Ottawa Hills Garden Tour.

Toledo Day Nursery’s 16th annual “In Another Garden” tour will showcase nine gardens in Ottawa Hills. Eight of the gardens are at personal residences and one is at The Woodlands at Sunset House retirement community, said Pat Scheuer, executive director of Toledo Day Nursery.
“They’re really all dig-in-the-dirt gardens,” Scheuer said. “A lot of times people have landscapers do it, but not these.”
Tickets and shuttles will be available at St. Ursula Academy, 4025 Indian Road, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. June 18.
Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 the day of the tour. Advance tickets can be purchased at local garden centers and greenhouses, including Bensell’s Greenhouse, Black Diamond, Creque’s Greenhouse, Emery’s Flowers & Co., Hoen’s Greenhouse, Keith Brooks Florist, Ken’s Flower Shop, Lily’s at Levis, Rhodes Garden Fresh and Schramm’s Flowers.
It typically takes about three hours to complete the tour, but participants can take as little or as much time as they like, Scheuer said. The shuttles run in continuous loops.
Musicians and vocal groups will perform throughout the day.  There will also be boutique vendors at St. Ursula and other points in the tour selling handmade wares, including hand-blown glass, purses, jewelry, bird feeders and more, Scheuer said.
Between 700 and 800 garden enthusiasts participate in the tour each year, Scheuer said. All attendees will be entered into a free raffle for a garden bench.
Last year’s event raised $20,000 for Toledo Day Nursery, which has three locations in Toledo. It is Ohio’s oldest child care program, celebrating its 140th anniversary this year.
To get the first look at the gardens, a preview event is set for 5 p.m. June 16 at Inverness Club, 4601 Dorr St. The event, a thank-you to the gardeners who opened their homes to the tour, will feature cocktails and dinner followed by a tour of the gardens. Cost is $75. For more information, visit www.toledodaynursery.org.

To hear the public pronouncements of  ‘facts’ by Union leadership, you would have thought that the passage of SB5 in Ohio was the equivalent of committing a crime.  If a crime has been committed however, one has to wonder who the victim of it might be.  At least that’s the thought that came to me after some information crossed my path from the Buckeye Institute and an opinion piece by Yael T Abouhalkah.

For the Buckeye Institute’s part, they seem to be quite capably exploding many of the myths about SB5 with some facts of their own.  We’re told that government workers will suffer, in spite of the fact that, “In 83 our of 88 counties, state government workers earn more than their private sector neighbors.  In 68 out of 88 counties, local government workers earn more than their private sector neighbors.”

We’re told that SB5 will create an unsafe environment for safety workers, but “The death and injury rates over the last decade for firefighters and police officers in states that don’t allow government workers to collectively bargain is the same as states like Ohio that allow government workers to collectively bargain.”

We’re likewise told that SB5 will take away the rights of union government workers to collectively bargain.  In fact, workers retain the right to bargain “over wages and other key issues”.  They will no longer be allowed garner contracts which force the city into increasing deficits and higher levels of taxation which in turn lead to a reduction in population that forces even greater burdens on those who remain however.  They will likewise be forced into breaking the vicious parasitic cycle that allows politicians to negotiate lucrative contracts for unionized workers, who in turn see them returned endlessly to office.

From the Kansas City side, we begin to see where all of this can inevitably lead.  The city has reached a point where it has literally been force to appoint a special task force to look at city worker retirement benefits.  KC has seen its pension contributions alone go from $26.5 million to $54.6 million per year in the last decade, and “though it will have deposited $156 million into the plans the last three years, it should have put in $239 million, according to actuarial consultants”.  The burden of these increasing contributions has actually begun to affect the level of city services.

Mr. Abouhalkah then goes on to debunk a couple of myths of his own with regard to safety workers.  He points out how we are often told that the stress of police work is what leads to early retirement and has actually had an effect on the employee’s lifespan.  In fact, current retirees in KC live to an average age of 72, exactly the same as non-safety worker counterparts born during the same period.

We’re told that the higher level of  pension plan is required, since safety workers do not receive Social Security.  However when safety workers retire in their mid-50′s in KC, they receive an average of $49,000 per year; far more than the partial Social Security benefits that their private sector counterparts are not eligible for until age 62.  Even full Social Security benefits received at age 66 (and probably soon not until 70) will be far less than the average of the pensions provided those on the government payroll.

What’s more, government workers need not wait to receive rewards until they retire, at least in Toledo.  Since Mayor Bell, flush with unexpected tax revenues in 2011, rolled back exigent circumstances on the police command officers; the city is once more in the position of picking up not only their own portion of the pension plan, but most if not all of the employee contributions.  Contracts throughout Toledo have the taxpayers paying not only the employers contribution, but the workers as well; allowing employees to take home more of their hard-earned wages.  They take even a higher percentage of their salaries already anyway, since they are not required to have Social Security taxes deducted from their paychecks.

When looking at the facts of this case, there may have been a crime committed; it may be however that SB5 may be the solution to the case rather than the perpetrator.  While Union leadership may want to attempt to assume the mantle of victim in “The Case of SB5”, there seems little evidence to back it up.  If a crime has in fact been committed here with SB5, it may well prove to be a victimless one.

Former University of Toledo men’s basketball coach Stan Joplin will accept a position to be Springfield High School’s next boys coach pending approval on May 25 by the school’s board of education.

Joplin coached the Rockets for 12 seasons posting a 203-155 record. Toledo won four MAC West Division Titles under Joplin and finished in second place or better in the division in eight of his last 10 seasons.

He was fired one year after earning MAC Coach of the Year honors after an 11-19 season in 2007-08 with one year remaining on his contract. Since Joplin’s departure three seasons ago, Toledo has had two head coaches and has finished with a school-worst 4-28 record on two occasions.

“I’m happy for Stan that he will be beginning a new career as the head boys basketball coach at Springfield High School,” Toledo Athletic Director Mike O’Brien said. “I have no doubt Stan will do a great job for the Blue Devils.”

Joplin held a color analyst job for FOX Sports Detroit after leaving UT and made news in 2010 during a broadcast between Eastern Michigan and Western Michigan when he said that for Toledo to get a win during the remainder of the 2010 season, the other team “must not want to play and all the stars, planets and moons must align.” The Rockets were 3-23 at the time (0-12 MAC) and won four games later against Ball State.

The Toledo Police Department will be increasing traffic enforcement for the Memorial Day week.

In a press release distributed on May 23, the police department says it plans a citywide “enforcement blitz” at various time periods between May 27 – June 4. The department plans to enforce all traffic violations with a special emphasis on speeding and seatbelt offenders as part of the “Click It or Ticket” seatbelt campaign.

The department will be paying the overtime work of the officers from a federal grant from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to Toledo. Under this grant since Oct. 2010, officers at special enforcement areas, including school and construction zones as well as major thoroughfares, have issued 954 citations in 1,098 vehicle stops. Of those citations, 640 have been for speeding, which carries a minimum fine of $143.

Cedar Point is now home to the first Pink’s Hot Dogs franchise east of Las Vegas.
The legendary Hollywood eatery — a favorite of celebrities — specializes in made-to-order gourmet hot dogs, chili dogs and onion rings.
Located across from Toft’s Ice Cream Parlor near the front of the park, Pink’s offers steamed, all-beef hot dogs, mild or spicy Polish dogs, Brooklyn pastrami Swiss cheese dogs, coleslaw dogs, burgers and fries.
Cedar Point opened for the season May 14 and will be open every day through Labor Day, Sept. 5.
“We are very excited to officially kick off summer in the Midwest,” said John Hildebrandt, Cedar Point’s vice president and general manager, in a news release.  “It has been a long, cold winter and people are ready to have some fun.  Roller coasters, hot dogs and Snoopy are the perfect solution.”

The 301-foot windseeker is scheduled to open Memorial Day weekend.

The park’s newest ride, WindSeeker, a 301-foot-tall swing ride, was scheduled to open at the start of the season, but the opening was postponed until Memorial Day weekend due to construction delays.
Seated in two-person swings that allow their feet to dangle, up to 64 riders at a time will begin rotating slowly in a circular motion as the swings ascend the tower. At the top, the swings will reach speeds up to 30 mph, flaring out almost 45 degrees from the tower 30 stories above ground, according to the park’s website.
Cedar Point, named the “Best Amusement Park in the World” by industry magazine Amusement Today for the past 13 years, offers 75 rides, including 17 roller coasters, and attracts 3 million visitors annually, according to its website.
The Sandusky venue also features Camp Snoopy, Soak City and Challenge Park and a variety of live musical entertainment.
Here’s what else is happening at Cedar Point this summer:
Through Father’s Day (June 19), enter the Take Home a Thrill contest to win a new XUV 825i John Deere Gator, valued at more than $11,000. Entry forms available at the park’s guest services desk or Town Hall Museum or by mail.

• May 20-22: Student ID weekend. Students save $15 on a one-day, day-of-purchase admission with ID.
• May 28-30 (Memorial Day Weekend): Free admission for U.S. military personnel with ID and discounted admission for their families.
• June 3-4: Coaster Mania: Exclusive ride times and other events for registered members of roller coaster clubs.
• June 17-19: American Heroes Weekend: Admission discounts for safety service employees (police, firefighters, EMTs), military veterans and their families with ID.
• June 19: Inaugural Cedar Point 5K Challenge. 7 a.m.; $25, which includes race-day parking, T-shirt and $12 off a regular adult admission ticket that day. Portion of proceeds will benefit local high school cross-country teams. Register online by June 12.  No race-day registration.
• July 1-4 (Fourth of July weekend): Featuring special entertainment, food and prizes; fireworks July 3 and July 4; and park hours until 1 a.m. July 3.
• July 24: Coasting For Kids event to benefit Give Kids The World Village.
• Aug. 1-7: “Peanuts Happiness Week” with special activities featuring Snoopy and the “Peanuts” characters.
• Aug 16-18: Wheels of Thunder.

For more information, visit www.cedarpoint.com.

Ohio’s law enforcement officers make great sacrifices to keep our communities safe. Now, it’s time to make sure that America’s public servants have the resources to remain safe from the innumerable threats they encounter while on patrol. A new proposal would quickly alert the public in the event that a police officer is feloniously attacked while on duty.

Sen. Sherrod Brown

This is one modest investment we cannot afford to ignore.
During National Police Week, communities across Ohio and throughout the United States commemorate law enforcement officials who have died while on duty. Their families, of course, live with their loss every day.
According to the most recent FBI data available, 48 law enforcement officials across the United States were killed in the line of duty in 2009. More than 57,000 were assaulted while on the job.
A mother of two young sons, who I recently met in northeast Ohio, is leading an effort to reduce the number of law enforcement officials who make the ultimate sacrifice. Sara Winfield’s husband, Brandy, was shot and killed while on duty as a Marion County Sheriff Deputy.
Sara once wrote that her husband, Deputy Brandy Winfield, knew that he wanted to be a cop when he was a boy.
“He became an explorer with the Sherriff’s office. He started dispatching before he graduated from high school,” Sara wrote in a tribute to her husband.
Surviving spouses like Sara Winfield are transforming grief into action.
As a leader in the group Concerns of Police Survivors (C.O.P.S.), Mrs. Winfield is now helping other families cope with the loss of their partner, parent, child, colleague, spouse, or sibling. And she’s fighting to protect police officers and the American public from the most violent of criminals.
To aid advocates like Sara, I’m cosponsoring legislation to create a nationwide alert system to apprehend people suspected of injuring or killing police officers.
The bipartisan National Blue Alert Act of 2011 – similar to the “Amber Alerts” used to find missing children ­­– would establish a national communications network within the Department of Justice (DOJ) to disseminate information when a law enforcement officer is seriously harmed or killed in the line of duty. This alert would drastically reduce the time necessary to locate and arrest suspected criminals.
Some thirteen other states have a Blue Alert system in place. However, no such alert system exists in any Midwestern state.
Using existing Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program funding from the DOJ, the Blue Alert system would, first, encourage state and local governments to develop additional protocols to help apprehend suspects.
Blue Alerts would be broadcast on local media and messaging signs and would include a detailed description of the suspect, vehicle, and other indentifying information.
In addition to the Concerns of Police Survivors, the Fraternal Order of Police, the National Sherriff’s Association, and other groups support this bipartisan legislation.
We need to act swiftly.
Sara and survivors throughout the United States endure an immense personal loss that can never be repaid.
Here’s what we can do: communities can join advocates for the Blue Alert system in ensuring that the tools are in place to stop the people who harm and kill law enforcement officers. This can serve as a powerful deterrent to a detestable crime.
Let’s work to keep our communities safe.
We can start by equipping law enforcement officials with the tools needed to stop criminals and improve their ability to respond to violence without delay.

For more information visit Senator Sherrod Brown at his congressional website: brown.senate.gov.

The progressives are right about something. There, I admitted it. They are correct, to a certain point, in saying that war is being waged on the middle class.

To the progressives, the middle class, like the rhetorical “hard-working Americans,” consists only of union workers, and the “war on the middle class” is construed to be any real or imagined threat to union power – or, more to the point, the union vote. But in reality, 14,715,000, or 11.9 percent, of all employed wage and salary workers were members of unions last year, and 1,575,000 more were represented by unions. Logically, then, the middle class is far broader than this definition; but the war on the genuine middle class is more real than the overhyped assault on unions, and is, ironically, being waged by the progressives themselves. For all their talk about caring for working people, it is their policies that have been most harmful to us.

One of the major fronts in this war is health care, and Obamacare is an unfunded mandate on the middle class. Through unfunded mandates, the governing force the governed to spend money on programs that are typically unneeded, unwanted and unaffordable, but that give the mandaters warm fuzzy tingles about how much they care about the alleged problem the mandate is meant to solve. But in typical progressive fashion, the mandaters care so much that they’re ordering the expenditure of vast sums of other peoples’ money to prove it; and the expenditure is intended primarily to buy themselves more power.

A mandatee who dares refuse to fulfill these mandates is subjected to fines and penalties to the full extent of the mandaters’ zeal to punish disobedience to their sovereign will. If a state, city or what have you doesn’t have the funds to comply, then they must seize it from their taxpayers. If taxpayers can’t afford it, then they’re dragged off to court.

This is trickle-down tyranny. The rulers decree from on high that the ruled must spend their scarce money, not as the ruled see fit in liberty, but as the rulers see fit in subjugation. The federal government does it to the states, thereby rendering the whole concept of state sovereignty moot, and states do it to local governments. With the passage of Obamacare, the trickle has become a torrent; what Washington does to the states, it now does directly to the citizens.

Obamacare mandates that you must buy the health insurance that the federal government decides you want. But not all workers have the means to pay for the law’s demands, and the standards it sets will punish sizable numbers of workers in certain age and income brackets – all middle class, thank you. Hard-working Americans are forced out of low-cost private plans into far more expensive coverage mandated by people who couldn’t care less about their circumstances. Employment benefit plans are being altered or destroyed, to the detriment of employees. Moreover, the sheer unworkability of Obamacare is forcing health care costs and health insurance premiums sharply higher.

It bears noting that Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur justified her vote for Obamacare in part because premiums would increase without it, and promised, “Without this bill, family premiums are projected to increase an average of $1,800 per year. With this bill, no American family will have to declare bankruptcy just because a family member got sick.” So now they are forced into bankruptcy because of exploding mandated costs, denial or unavailability of care, and loss of benefits if not of jobs themselves – not to mention the fines levied for non-compliance.

The progressives consider Obamacare a great victory for the working class. I suppose that, by their equating of “working class” with “union member,” it is. After all, over half of the people who have been exempted from Obamacare’s destruction of private health insurance plans are union members, despite the small percentage of unionized workers. 204 more waivers were issued in April 2011, including 38 for entertainment venues and hotels in former Speaker Nancy “We have to pass it to see what’s in it” Pelosi’s district. Evidently, once her monied constituents saw what what their Congresswoman had been hiding, they wanted no part of it.

Maine, New Hampshire and Nevada have been granted state-wide exemptions from Obamacare. A grass-roots movement is underway to exempt Ohio as well, by amending the state Constitution through popular vote this November. If you’re perfectly happy with the federal government ordering you to buy what you can’t afford and then denying care because you’re no longer “economically viable,” then ignore this effort. If you want to regain the freedom to make your own health care decisions, then sign and vote accordingly.

Thomas Berry, for the Children of Liberty, www.meetup.com/The-children-of-liberty.

The Josh Project will host the inaugural Water Safety Day May 28 as Wanda Butts continues to promote water safety following her son John-Joshua Butts’ drowning in August 2006 at the age of 16.
“My son lives on,” Wanda said. “He lives on in all these other people and in my heart because these children get the opportunity he didn’t get so they won’t drown. Their parents know how important it is their children know how to swim. Nobody told me. If they told me, maybe he wouldn’t have been in the lake on a raft without a life jacket. Since nobody told me, I’m going to tell everybody I can everywhere I go. This means the world to me. This helps me to live. It’s like Josh lives through me through this program. We’re doing something because of Josh’s death, so he didn’t die in vain.”
Wanda started The Josh Project in June 2007 with her daughter Tankeeya Butts. The program aims to educate and empower youth by offering opportunities in the area of water safety.

From left, Wanda Butts and her daughter Tankeeya Butts of the Josh Project.

“It really helps with the loss of my brother,” Tankeeya said. “I almost feel like he’s here swimming along with the kids learning how. Because he drowned, so many other kids are learning how to swim. It’s opened up opportunities to these children they wouldn’t otherwise have. I’m thankful to God we’re able to do this and that the community has stepped up and supported us in the way it has.”
Wanda credits God for giving her the strength to go on and inspiring the creation of The Josh Project.
“Faith is what kept me when I lost my son,” Wanda said. “My belief is what gave me the vision to do what we’re doing now. It’s something to lose your son. I was devastated. I didn’t want to go on. My faith in God and his grace and mercy is the reason we have The Josh Project.”
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention declared May to be Water Safety Month as part of its initiative to prevent childhood injury. Water Safety Day will feature swimming lessons, scuba diving demonstrations, water safety dummies and a Coast Guard boat to teach boat safety. The event is in partnership with organizations such as the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary and the Toledo Sail and Power Squadron, which both made Wanda an honorary member.
“Part of what we’re trying to do is change attitudes in the minority community about swimming and water safety in general,” Tankeeya said. “It has to deal with participation in water-related activities. They don’t do it growing up.”
According to the USA Swimming website, two-thirds of drowning deaths in the United States are minorities. The project’s goal is to change these statistics, and Wanda has worked to identify the causes locally.
“One problem is accessibility,” she said. “There are no pools in the central city and the ones they have aren’t opening. Another reason is a generational problem. My parents didn’t know how to swim and are afraid of the water, so it was embedded in me to be afraid of the water. There’s a fear factor.”
The fear factor is echoed by Christy Burt, whose 8-year-old daughter Miracle learned to swim through The Josh Project.
“I don’t swim very well, so to have my daughter swim well is important,” Burt said. “She enjoys it. It helps her with her confidence because this is something she excels in.”
Miracle, who said she likes doing the backstroke, is joining a swim team this summer.
The Josh Project also aims to educate parents about water safety.
“Research has shown that many children are drowning even though their parent was watching them,” Tankeeya said. “You have to constantly keep an eye on them.”
Wanda wants children and parents everywhere to learn the importance of water safety through The Josh Project. She has already inspired the opening of additional chapters in Norfolk, Va., and Bloomington Hills, Mich.
The Josh Project has also been an inspiration locally. Toledo Mayor Mike Bell, who was on the swim team at Woodward High School, awarded the organization a proclamation in recognition of “outstanding achievements that reflect on the well-being and growth of the Toledo community and its citizens.”
For more information or to volunteer for Water Safety Day, visit JoshProject.org or call (419) 973-1383. The event runs from 1 to 5 p.m. May 28 in the St. Francis de Sales High School Natatorium, 2323 W. Bancroft St.