Butler County honors those lost to addiction with vigil
The Butler County Opioid Coalition paid solemn tribute to 44 lives that were lost last year to the scourge of opioid overdose, and many more over the preceding years, in observance of International Overdose Awareness Day on Sunday, Aug. 31, with a vigil at the Grace Community Wellness Center in Butler.
For Kayla Roy, who lost her best friend Ralene Michael to addiction in 2006, Sunday night’s event brought a chance to pay tribute.
“She was a wonderful person. She enjoyed helping people with disabilities, and she was a cheerleading coach,” Roy said. “The pain gets lower at times, but on the anniversary it really takes a toll on me.”
A ceremony inside the community center paying tribute to the 44 lives lost in 2024 was followed by a “remembrance walk” down Main Street, with participants holding candles.
During the ceremony, the first two rows of seats in the community center were reserved for 44 purple balloons representing those who lost their lives to addiction in Butler County last year.
As they walked into the community center, all who attended the event were handed a card with a heart-shaped seed paper. On the back of the card was the “Serenity Prayer,” which starts with, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.”
During the remembrance ceremony, Kay Huemme rung a bell for each of the 44 who passed.
The ceremony was punctuated by two guest speakers, both of whom lost loved ones to overdose last year. The first was Sonya Kremer, whose brother Nathan Huber died on May 21.
“At the age of 16, he first became involved in drugs,” Nathan said. “It was just a small step, but none of us would have imagined the fight he had. If you've lost someone from addiction, I'm going to ask you right now to say their name out loud.”
In addition to Kremer, several attendees came to the podium during the “open mic” portion of the ceremony to share their own stories of loss.
The first, Sarah Ritchie, spoke of her own struggles with addiction, and paid tribute to her friend Elaine Wood, whom she met in a sober living house.
“This October the 30th will be five years since she lost her fight to this disease,” Ritchie said. “If it wasn't for her, I probably wouldn't be standing here today. She taught me about honesty with how freely she was honest with the people around her about what was going wrong. I had never seen anybody really do that before.
“She was my friend, and she was someone in recovery who people could look up to.”
Another, Debbie Finucan, came to mourn the loss of her sister, Dayna, who died in June 2021.
“When she wasn’t affected by this disease, she loved life,” Debbie said. “She really, really tried to get sober for years. She had gone to some recovery night meetings on Saturday. But the stuff that’s out there right now is so deadly that one moment of weakness, unfortunately, was her last one.”
After the memorial walk, the attendees returned to the fountain on Main Street to dedicate a plaque with the names of all 44 who were lost to addiction in 2024.
According to Tracey Hendrix from the Butler County Drug and Alcohol Program, the plaque will soon become part of a porch swing at the “Center on Center,” a recovery community center on Center Avenue in Butler.
