Grandma overwhelmed by $41K in donations from readers touched by family in crisis after murder

Oh, Central Florida, I could just wrap you in my arms and give you a big fat smooch.

About the time it seems the community is going to explode over its differences, people drop the bickering and reach into their wallets — to the tune of $41,319 — to save a family that needs help. You are nothing short of amazing.

In this case, the family in need was the Wheelers — mother and son — and two elementary-age children who lost both parents when, authorities say, their father fatally shot their mom after an argument over money.

Dezra Wheeler, 58, along with her son Billy Wheeler, 34, began raising the kids while still wrestling their own grief for the children’s mother Bobbi Wheeler, who was Dezra’s daughter and Billy’s sister. Bobbi’s longtime partner Virgil Hyde admitted killing her in June 2016, telling Dezra that Bobbi was “hurt” and lying in the laundry room where she’d been loading dirty clothes into a washer, according to authorities. Hyde first shot Bobbi with a 9mm pistol, then grabbed his two AR-15 rifles and shot her again, an arrest report said.

At the time, Harmony, now 8, and Kaden, 10, along with their Uncle Billy, were racing on four-wheelers around the 50 acres south of Groveland where the children lived in one house with their mom and dad, and Dezra and Billy lived in a mobile home a couple hundred feet away on the property. They were just messing around, waiting for the pizza delivery guy to show up with dinner. It seems shocking, almost impossible, that such a horrible life-changing event could collide so violently with the mundane bits of life, leaving a family in tatters. And yet, it could happen to any of us.

Both the kids had some trouble in school after their mother’s death and their father’s arrest and they moved into the mobile home. (Their father said no to them living in the house. He is still being held in the Lake County Jail awaiting trial in May.)

The children were just getting back to normal when the family learned that a neighbor had sued their father — the sole owner of the property where they live — demanding that Dezra and Billy’s mobile home be moved. Somehow, Hyde had managed to obtain permits from Lake County to move the 2,000-square-foot home onto the property even though the deed contains a restriction banning mobiles.

A Lake judge has ordered the home moved by March 30. Dezra Wheeler — who suffers from a bent spine, a disease called lupus in which the body attacks its own tissues and a blood clotting disorder — knew nothing of the suit and heard about the order only six weeks before the deadline. The news sent a family that already struggles emotionally and financially into chaos all over again. It seemed that fate was determined to break them into pieces.

But you, Central Florida, put a stop to that. After reading about their plight two weeks ago, residents from Titusville to Lady Lake to Winter Park to Orlando contributed $41,319 and have made it possible for Dezra to get the home moved and install a septic tank, a water well and electric service.

Well done!

Dezra stared last week at a cardboard box containing hundreds of checks, many with sweet notes of encouragement, and covered her mouth with her hand, drawing back in disbelief.

“Oh, God. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you,” she said, choking up in astonishment at the full box. “I don’t know what to do. Oh, my Lord.”

Dezra vowed to write each contributor but asked that her grateful thanks be passed along while she and Billy, who is adopting the children, pack their belongings and get ready to move.

A former Groveland mayor and the pastor of the 80-member Inspired Life Ministries church have begun to help Dezra and Billy, a handyman, make arrangements to move the mobile and get everything from land surveys to bureaucratic permits under control. They’re getting discount bids on the septic tank and well.

“She’s been through enough,” said Brandon Coppage, pastor of the 80-member church. “That’s our main thing — demonstrating the love of God by helping in the community even if they don’t come to our church. We simply want to help people where we can.”

Amen, my friend.

Again and again, Dezra let her fingers run through the pile of envelopes in the box containing checks and cash ranging from $5 to $1,000, some anonymous, some with letters to the family. She talked about what the contributions mean for their future while her granddaughter Harmony watched quietly, her face blank.

The child didn’t seem to understand that the little brown box means she can keep living with her grandma, uncle and brother in the home she’s come to know as her own over the past two years, with her bunnies and yowling kitties and an aging cockatiel named Tommy who packs a mean screech when strangers arrive.

Let’s hope that the only part of this she ever comes to understand is that people who don’t know her have reached out in love to care for her and her grandma — that there’s a swelling of kindness at the core of this community to lift up its own and hold them steady against this world’s tide of hurt and pain.

Lritchie@orlandosentinel.com