Twenty central Ohio families who don’t have beds for their children will be able to have that need filled thanks to work done last month by parishioners of West Jefferson Sts. Simon & Jude Church.
About 60 people took part at the church on Saturday, April 13 in a morning and afternoon of building child-sized bunk beds, sponsored by Knights of Columbus Council 11224 and the parish youth group. The beds were built using instructions from Sleep in Heavenly Peace (SHP), a national organization that specializes in such work and has chapters in Marysville and Hilliard.
Mike Myers, who was in charge of the activity, said response to his request to help build beds was overwhelming.
“If there’s anything I want to emphasize about this day, it’s the way it brought people from all segments of the parish together,” he said. “Besides the Knights and the youth group, lots of volunteers affiliated with neither organization came to help. Our pastor, Father Dwayne McNew, was enthusiastic about this from the beginning and came in the morning to bless us.
“So many people came that we were able to divide the day into two shifts – 9 a.m. to noon and noon to about 2:30 p.m. – so no one felt overwhelmed.
“Brad Kitzler of Marysville Our Lady of Lourdes Church, who’s in charge of the Marysville chapter, offered to bring some of his people in to help, but the response was so great this wasn’t necessary.”
Myers said lumber for the beds was donated by Sutherland’s and The Home Depot “and that saved us a couple of thousand dollars.” Parishioners donated mattresses and bedding.
The beds were not built with specific individuals or groups in mind. They’re now in storage and will be made available to anyone who contacts Kitzler at the Sleep in Heavenly Peace site, www.SHPbeds.org and establishes a need for a bed.
Myers said he got the idea for the bed build through conversations at Knights events about a year ago with Kitzler, who is deputy grand knight of Knights Council 5534 in Marysville. Plans for the event began shaping up in the fall of 2023 and it began to be publicized in the church bulletin and elsewhere near the end of the year.
“We don’t know whether we’ll attempt another build next year or not,” Myers said. “A lot depends on demand for the beds. If there’s a place found for most of the beds we built, we’ll be glad to do it again.”
Kitzler said he has led about a half-dozen bed building events in the three or four years since he learned about SHP.
His involvement began when his wife, Brittney, talked to him about a child in the Marysville area in need of a bed. “A few days after that, me and my boss at Penske Truck Leasing, where I was working at the time, were talking about ways the company could give back to the community and he mentioned something he had seen on TV about Sleep in Heavenly Peace,” a national organization based in Twin Falls, Idaho.
“I think those two conversations within a week of each other were a sign that I needed to do something,” he said, “so I got in touch with the group in Idaho, learned that they had no central Ohio chapters and traveled to Twin Falls for a day of training. The first build I was involved with was for an individual family and others have been through builders and real estate agents.”
Kitzler said SHP, a nondenominational organization, is founded on Christian values but doesn’t stress that aspect because it doesn’t want volunteers or bed recipients to feel that only Christians can be involved in the organization.
The organization’s website says it has about 200 chapters in the United States and Canada and has built more than 100,000 beds. It was founded in Twin Falls by Luke and Heidi Mickelson, who continue to be its leaders.
It started when Mickelson, a church youth pastor, and his youth group built beds for a family in the church at Christmastime. The Mickelsons then decided to build another bed and offer it on Facebook, and the response to the offer and the community support it received were so overwhelming it ultimately led Mickelson to form SHP as a full-time ministry.
“I grew up in a middle-class family and the thought of not having a bed never crossed my mind,” Kitzler said. “When the opportunity came to help those who need a bed, especially kids who have no control over their situation, I couldn’t turn it down. I knew I had to step up.
“If the same situation ever came to my family, I would hope people would help me. It’s all about taking care of each other. As the SHP motto says, ‘No kid sleeps on the floor in our town!’”
For information on obtaining a bed or donating to the organization, go to https://shpbeds.org/chapter/oh-marysville.
