Bevin Palmateer is a face still familiar to television viewers in London and Southwestern Ontario.
The former host of this station’s morning program - and an employee for more than 20 years, Bevin and his family are now facing a significant struggle.
For him, it’s a pending multiple bypass heart operation, just months after suffering a stroke at home.
“I plugged in my kids iPod, and my hands would not work. The next thing I knew, I was on a stretcher,” he says.
The stroke occurred at about the same time Bevin’s wife, Renata, also a former employee of CTV London, learned devastating news.
She has breast cancer. “They say it's incurable, but for now it's livable,” Bevin tells CTV News.
Friends at his current workplace, Westgate Honda, wanted to help the Palmateer family.
So they set up a GoFundMe page, which already, by noon Thursday, had exceeded $10,000.
The money is need as Bevin has been off work, only returning part-time recently. And with bypass surgery pending, he’ll be off for another extended period.
Meanwhile, Renata is also off. Both have no benefits in their current professions.
Bevin says it’s humbling to accept the help offered by his friends at Westgate.
That effort exploded Wednesday, after another former CTV London colleague, John Davidson, posted an impassioned plea on Facebook.
Davidson is best known for his work with Jesse’s Journey, an organization he created to help his late son, and other boys with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.
Bevin gave up a year of work, in the late 1990s, to go with Davidson on his cross-country fundraising walk.
For that reason, Davidson wrote on Facebook.
“(Bevin & Renata) are two caring people who have given so much to others. Let’s do everything we can when it comes to doing the right thing.”
Bevin’s reaction? “It's just been this overflow of support, that’s just been mind boggling, mind boggling."
