Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from medical mutual, providing more than one point four million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at Medda Mutual dotcom slash Ohio by the law offices of PorterWright Morris and Arthur LLP.

Now with eight locations across the country, PorterWright is a legal partner with a new perspective to the business community, Morad PorterWright Dotcom and from the Ohio Education Association, representing 100 24000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online.

At O H E A dot org, one vaccinated Ohio and becomes a millionaire and another wins a fully paid college education in the state's first Qaderi and a remembrance of just some of the nearly 20000 Ohioans who have died of covid all this week in the state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of Ohio, I'm Karen Kasler to like Ohioans are about to be big and I do mean huge winners because finally the wait is over.

A history making moment on live TV Wednesday is one Ohio and won a million dollars and another the cost of an education at a public college or university in Ohio.

Just forgetting the covid vaccine, the first vaccin million winner.

Twenty two year old Abigail Buttinsky of Silverton, near Cincinnati, spoke to reporters via Zoom the day after the drawing.

My parents live in Cleveland, Shaker Heights and specific, and I was on my way from Cincinnati to Cleveland when I got the call, which I thought was a prank call initially, and it was a Wednesday night that I'm never going to forget.

Eighth grader Joseph Castelo from Englewood, near Dayton, won the dollar amount of a full ride scholarship to an Ohio public college or university.

Governor Mike DeWine tweeted out that he dropped by to congratulate him and his family in person.

The two point seven million Ohioans have already entered for the million dollar prize and the more than one hundred and four thousand kids, age 12 through 17, who've signed up for the scholarship and those who will do so after they get their shots are eligible for the former weekly drawings for both prizes.

Joseph Castelo is a constituent of Representative Phil Plummer.

One of the twenty nine Republicans signed on to co-sponsor a bill that would ban any future vaccin million drawings.

Its lead sponsor is Gina Powell of Arcanum, just northwest of Dayton, who introduced the bill on Tuesday, the day after the two names were privately drawn.

So the Ohio Department of Health could vet the winners vaccination and residency status.

We've been actually working on this piece of legislation since the day that the governor came out with the vaccine lottery program.

As everyone knows, it takes a little bit of time to write a good piece of legislation.

So we do have it finalized and that's why we're moving forward on it.

Ohioans want their money to be spent wisely in the vaccine.

Lottery does not do that.

Is it a moot point, though, that it can't pass and be signed or a veto override can't happen before the first draw?

You know, this is a five week program, so it's five million dollars of hard earned taxpayer dollars that is going to waste an additional.

On top of that, we are also looking at the future in the bill as well.

In our draft, it does not allow any futuristic vaccine lotteries to take place.

So, you know, it's never to do it's never too late to do what's right for Ohioans.

Now, other states, as we found out later, are doing something similar in New York, Maryland, Oregon.

Vaccination rates are actually going up to after being they were cratering for a while in Ohio.

So isn't using what is to the state a relatively small amount of money to help people and avoid loss of life?

And also huge medical bills, especially since Medicaid rolls have been expanding during this pandemic.

So you would expect some of those medical bills for people who got covid to be paid for by the state?

Know correlation is not always causation when it comes to the increase in vaccines in our state.

There's been a lot of reasons why we've seen an increase in our state, such as more readily available larger age groups.

And there's more talk around the United States about the vaccine.

People have had the ability to go talk to their health care provider.

So I think that's something that we would push back on.

But are you concerned at all that this is really just kind of a tiny bit of money compared to the budget, for instance?

I mean, this is five million dollars and this is money that was appropriated to the state to use for promotion of vaccine.

Isn't that what this is being used for?

You know, at the end of the day, there's a lot of frivolous spending in the state, which is why I'm one of the most conservative members of the General Assembly.

I voted against the initial form of the budget because of frivolous spending.

And you're right, although this is a small amount compared to all the other frivolous spending that's happening in the state, it is my job as a representative to best use taxpayer dollars in the best possible manner.

And this is just not a fiscally conservative good program for the state.

So when I see something like that, it is my job to speak forth and be a voice for the people of my district.

You and many other state lawmakers identify as pro-life.

The vaccine has been shown to save lives.

So isn't that a goal?

Isn't that a good goal to get as many people vaccinated as possible to save lives?

You know, again, I'd repeat that my opposition to the vaccine lottery is not in opposition to the vaccine in and of itself.

It's an opposition to a frivolous use of taxpayer dollars.

If individuals want to work with their health care provider and whether or not the vaccine is great for them, that is their personal choice.

Are you opposed to the vaccine yourself?

You know, I don't have opposition to the covid-19 vaccine, as always, I tell people to please work with their health care provider and see what's best for them and their health.

That's the beauty of personal choice in our state and in the United States.

And I know that you've been saying the vaccination is a choice.

Are you in favor of choice for all vaccination?

I am on board within and I love to see it passed here in our state.

But is that a concern there?

Because you're talking about vaccines for things that we've had vaccines for for a long time.

Measles, mumps, rubella, all these things that schools require before kids can come into those schools.

Are you concerned about mass outbreaks of things like measles and things that we've kind of cured over time?

You know, hospital two forty eight is a freedom bill.

I think that's what the sponsor always says.

It's all about freedom.

It's freedom for individuals to work with their health care provider to make the best decisions for themselves and their families.

And that's what I support in that piece of legislation, though, OTOH says vaccinations climb by twenty six percent in the two weeks between the announcement of the contest and the drawing.

Demand for vaccines is declining in Ohio, and so mass vaccination clinics are winding down.

Ohio State University will move its clinic from the Schottenstein Center to other sites.

U.S. Health has moved its drivethrough clinic to a different site indoors.

The Wollaston Center in Cleveland closes its mass vaccination clinic on Monday, June 7th, and mass vaccination clinics and Alan Mercer and some counties are also shutting down.

Those shots are still available through other providers.

Ohio is averaged around seven hundred and fifty new confirmed cases a day for the month, which is about where things were last June.

There have been around five hundred deaths and all of May by comparison, the day before Thanksgiving last year, there were one hundred and forty one deaths reported in that day in just the last three days of twenty.

Twenty three hundred and twenty one deaths were reported.

Granda reporting standards for covid deaths have changed, but it's clear things have dramatically improved.

But still, nearly 20000 Ohioans have died of covered in the last 14 months.

As we go into Memorial Day, we wanted to revisit this remembrance of those husbands and wives, parents and grandparents, siblings and loved ones with the words of those who knew them best.

As told to my statehouse news bureau colleague Jo Ingles, the state's first coronaviruses death was someone a lot of people knew, including Gov.. Mike DeWine, Mark Wagner, senior prominent attorney in Toledo, someone who had been on the board of elections.

Someone had been prominent in the Republican Party.

Nick was very well respected.

Nick's son, Mark, is a former state lawmaker.

He says his dad's interests went far beyond politics.

He went to college at Ohio northern where he played varsity football.

He was a starting running back for Ohio.

Northern ran on their track team, the 100 meter dash, and somehow found his way on to the Ohio northern hockey team as well.

So it's seven grandkids and their number one fan was my dad.

Who was their grandpa?

Who was that?

Everything.

Always checking in with them, always making sure that they had what they needed.

Having fun with Wagner had had pneumonia.

So when he fell ill a few weeks later, covid wasn't suspected.

At first.

He went into the hospital to get treated for what we thought was pneumonia.

And it was the day he went into the hospital was the very day they started implementing all the Kovik protocols.

So it was the very first day where you couldn't go visit in the hospital, right.

Where you had to wear mask wherever you want.

So it was a really surreal experience because typically when your dad's in the hospital, you have a chance to go see him and spend some time with them.

We could just, you know, text each other video chat and things like that.

It was a difficult time for the family because that was really the glue that kept us together.

And it was a tough, tough couple of days.

A bagert of Columbus was sick for months before he lost his battle with covid for an 82 year old, this man literally could do anything like still practiced law up until the day he got sick, was traveling the world.

Had they had a trip, I think, to Prague booked for either like I think in April of last year, like nothing scared him, including the virus, but it eventually caught up with them.

He called me on August twenty first and he said I tested positive for the virus.

And I was like, what?

David said his dad seemed to be weathering it OK. At first it was around day nine that he crashed and his blood pressure plummeted.

David said his dad was in the ICU for three weeks, but that well enough to come home for one day, only to be returned to the ICU less than 24 hours later.

Then in October, Abe's condition worsened.

Everything plummeted.

All his numbers, his oxygen levels dropped substantially.

They took him back to the ICU.

And at that point he was pretty upset that I think he knew he wasn't going to make it.

Abe was put on a ventilator.

He got an infection in his intestines and colon.

He had surgery.

He survived that surgery.

But he which was good, but he never got better.

I just said it's time to keep his hands are turning blue like he's going to suffocate.

David was at his dad's bedside on the 30th of October when it became clear he wasn't going to recover.

Bob Burns was a former volunteer firefighter, a reserve captain for the Stark County Sheriff's Office, and worked as a juvenile corrections officer at Indian River Schools for twenty nine years.

He taught me that good leaders listen first, they talk second, and they always eat last.

He just was very blunt.

He was a very black and white person and he didn't mind telling you what he thought, even though we very rarely ever saw eye to eye.

I can say he was probably one of the most respectful guys I know.

And that was that was down the Sunday after Thanksgiving, he got a positive covid test.

He continued just to get sicker and sicker and.

A week later, he couldn't even stand up by himself.

I called the ambulance and we had to help him onto the from the chair to the cart and.

He couldn't hardly breathe.

I mean, he was just breathing so quickly, and that was the last time I spoke to him.

I'm twenty eight.

I shouldn't be burying my dad as a twenty eight year old.

Steve Sidebottom of Westerville worked in intelligence for the Navy for 23 years, and later he was an I.T.

risk specialist.

His work took him to Saudi Arabia, where he was in the oil industry.

His wife of 32 years, Christina, says he was a smart and kind man who had a great sense of humor.

He told great stories always.

My people love telling stories.

And whenever I couldn't sleep at night, he would just make up stories to tell me till I went to sleep.

There's silly stories that he'd make up, but he would always make everybody laugh.

And he was very kind, gentle person.

He was a talented musician.

And he played the guitar and he sang in a church.

And he also played the dulcimer.

He loved to read.

We traveled all over the world.

He worked out regularly.

He rode a bicycle.

And we had also written a Harley for many, many years.

So it really was just the two of us.

We went everywhere together.

We did everything together.

So it's really.

I just feel like my heart's on November 1st, at age 76, Steve died with Christina Biocide.

Gena Rowlands of Columbus wasn't with Marianne Rollins when she passed away on August 26, but Gina was at the hospital when her mom was diagnosed.

They walked in and they looked at me and said, we have a positive result.

And I just look, I don't I can't I just sitting there thinking like, oh my God, how am I going to tell my sister this?

What's going to happen?

And they're rushing me out the door and they're pushing me out the door, one nurse is saying, aren't you going to tell her goodbye?

I give her a kiss or something and one's rushing me and one's telling me this.

So I went back and I kissed her and I never saw my mom alive again.

Later that day, Gina and her sister took covid tests, but she looked at me and she says, We got it.

I don't know.

We do.

We came back positive immediately.

And our health went down the tubes from there, so she went out on Monday morning, she went in, she went on the ventilator.

That weekend.

And it just seem like things started going down, and at that time, my sister and I, we were in isolation.

The hospital chaplains called us about about six, six thirty, and we got to say our goodbyes over the phone.

And they said a prayer with her and the next call we got was at eight 30, telling us she was God's genius grief guru.

Later that day as her son was diagnosed with covid and went into the hospital, two days later, her sister called with more bad news.

Gina's only child wasn't doing well.

They may have to put him on a ventilator.

And at that point, I lost it, I could barely breathe, I couldn't walk, and for a good 15 minutes with a little breath I had and a little bit that I could walk, I just walked a little circle and I just screamed, Father, no, and please.

I kept thinking, oh, my God, I lost my mom, I can't afford to lose my child.

And I couldn't get to him.

That was the hurt and it hurt that I couldn't get to my mother, but even more so that I couldn't get to my only child.

I couldn't see him.

I couldn't touch him.

I couldn't figure out what in the world is going to happen and my going to be doing a double funeral and a son recovered.

And three weeks later, the family was able to put Marianne to rest.

They were finally able to celebrate the registered nurse who worked for the city of Columbus for 50 years, the Delta Sigma Theta member, the woman who had received a special honor from her alma mater.

She was very proud of her accomplishment because she was I think in the beginning there were 20 blacks that started the nursing program.

And in the end there were only nine.

She was one of those nine.

She is listed at the Ohio State University as a nursing home, alleging legen.

I mean, there's just so much I could say, she opened her arms to anybody and everybody, she loved everybody and everyone loved her.

Diane Doddery was well known in Tiffin, where she and her husband raised their family.

She had.

My sister, 11 months before me, so she had two kids that were not that far apart and stayed home and took care of the family, volunteered at the local community theater.

She was very opinionated for the most part, exercised a lot of discretion.

But when she got in in the company of like minded people, she was not the least bit shy to share her thoughts and opinions and.

That was always kind of entertaining in December, both Diane and Bob, her husband of 63 years, came down with covid.

Bob shook it off, but Diane had several underlying medical conditions.

Covid, I think, just exacerbated that.

She was in the hospital for 12 days, received the death of your course of treatment and was discharged.

And we thought she was fine, she wasn't she celebrated Christmas with the family, but that evening she went back to the emergency room and that was the last time she left her home.

She went to the hospital, then a rehab center.

And when it was clear that her time was short, Gary moved her and his dad into their home in central Ohio.

We had her in a hospital bed out near our living room area and she would sleep a lot and.

Whenever she would wake up, she would ask what time it was or what day it was, and we'd tell her and she just get this look of amazement on her face and she'd say, well.

What is taking so long?

I mean, she was she was ready to go, and I think that made it easier for for us to be able to spend those last few days with her.

So we brought her down here and dad was here.

Dad was here, my wife and I.

Dad was here, my wife and I, in one of my daughters when she took her last breath.

Diane PorterWright died January 31st at the age of 87.

Jim Daniels was a jet mechanic in the U.S. Air Force, later he settled down, worked at Lennix, where he eventually became the supervisor of maintenance.

He enjoyed woodworking and volunteered with Habitat for Humanity.

He was a father, a grandfather.

The guy was just so with it.

I mean, he was.

We would have conversations about things and, you know, he he we talk about things that had happened in the past and we couldn't recall.

Middle of the night or early the next morning, I get a call, he'd say the word that we'd forgotten and hang up, that would be it.

He had a great sense of humor.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's I just I'm still just crushed.

He found out on a Tuesday.

He died on Friday.

And even when he made the decision.

To quit the extraordinary treatment that he was receiving.

He was with it, you know, and the nurse said to him, do you understand what an extraordinary gift you're giving to your family because.

We didn't have to make the decision then and he said, well, I love them and I know they do the same for, you know, for me.

So he was very matter of fact, but also.

He fought as long as he could.

He said this is not living.

It was like watching someone drown, Daniel says two of his sisters could not be with his father when he passed because they had covered and the one I was with who had not tested positive yet, did.

The next morning, after our father's passing as a pastor, Daniel says he's seen members of his congregation fighting for their lives.

One 37 year old man in his church has been in the hospital for five months now.

We had a couple in our congregation whose 19 year old granddaughter died from it at the very beginning.

We have a couple now whose nine month old grandchild has it.

The sad thing about it is that we seem to be coming into this stretch drive.

We seem to be coming near the end of and I lose my dad and we've been so careful with him through this whole thing.

Canal Winchester resident David Ciphered lost his battle with covid on December 17th, 20-20, his wife of 32 years, says he was an accomplished engineer who also served his community, Blum Township, as its fiscal officer for more than a decade.

He was just very gentle, very gentle.

Our friends would say Dave and I were a true story of opposites attract.

He put the general and gentleman, there was not a soul on this earth.

That didn't like Dave.

My husband was athletic, very fit, ran three miles every day, even through the first few days of covid, his exercise was very important to him.

He was slender.

He ate very nutritiously.

And on December 8th, I got a call asking me how quickly I could get to the hospital.

They were getting ready to put him on a ventilator.

So what does the hospital.

And they had all these people trying to work on him and keep them from being off of it so that I had time to get their.

And I kept it together emotionally at that time because something inside me told me he's going to be OK. And I'm standing outside the glass window and they had the phone up to them and I went, fight, fight, fight.

It gave me a thumbs up.

And then I said, I love you, and he took his hand.

And that was the last communication we had, and that is it for this week for my colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Radio and Television.

Thanks for watching.

Please check out our website at statenews.org and you can follow us and the show on Facebook and Twitter.

And please join us again next time for the state of Ohio.

Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from medical mutual, providing more than one point four million Ohioans.

Peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at med mutual dot com slash Ohio by the law offices of PorterWright Morris and Arthur LLP.

Now with eight locations across the country, PorterWright is a legal partner with a new perspective to the business community, Morad PorterWright dot com and from the Ohio Education Association, representing 100 24000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at O H E A dot org.