Roger’s Wish granted with angelic mission

ELIZABETHTOWN – From the very heinous to a legacy that is continued to thrive and grow in Bladen County comes the story of Roger Grunder.

Grunder passed Aug. 30, 2013 in an automobile crash that has more questions than answers and more pain than any family would like to live through.

“It was wicked,” Mariea Bryant, Grunder’s sister said. “He had just to baptized on Wednesday and that Friday morning is when the North Carolina State Troopers knocked on my door and told me he was dead.”

Bryant and Grunder had been on the phone until 2 a.m. that morning talking, trying to help her with some computer problems as she called him her “go-to technical person.”

“The accident happened apparently not too long after we’d hung up,” she said. “We got notice that morning. It was a single-car accident and we’re still to this day, not sure what happened. The car was found flipped over in the (Elizabethtown) industrial park. We don’t know if maybe he swerved to miss a deer – but whatever it was, it caused the car to flip and roll, he hit the fire hydrant and even though he was wearing his seat belt, he was thrown out of the car and they said he was thrown about 100 feet away.”

Grunder was a very religious man and very conscious of those who were in need around him and spent his entire life trying to make everyone else more comfortable.

“He’s always told us that when he goes into heaven, he was going to go sliding in like a baseball player sliding into home base,” she said. “And that’s exactly the way we found him. The way he was lying there under the trees – it was just like he was sliding into home base.”

Home. A concept that Grunder didn’t always accept here on earth and mentioned many times that “Jesus didn’t have a place to lay his head.” But on that day, Grunder went home. And it inspired and prompted a legacy to take flight as if it were sent directly from his heart.

His dream of helping the destitute and homeless in the Elizabethtown area was always hovering around him and from that day and from a distance, his dreams started to become true.

“He was very humble. He didn’t like a lot of notoriety,” she recalled. “He gave more, I guess, than what he got.” The distribution of blankets and sleeping bags for Roger’s Wish community donations was held from October – November in the gallery of the Bladen County Public Library.

More than 140 pieces went out to the community, ranging from sleeping bags and blankets to socks, gloves, toboggans, hats, jackets, socks, scarves and many other items to keep warm in a North Carolina winter.

“People need to know it helps,” said Bryant, 57, a substitute teacher in the Bladen County Schools district. “We are so grateful for what we get. We know what it’s like to be cold.”

The community project helps the homeless in memory of Roger Lee Theodore Grunder and his sister along with coordinator Jeffrey Bryan and Grunder’s father, Roger Lee Grunder were there on the final day of donations and distribution.

Grunder, who was raised with three older sisters, was a fixture in Elizabethtown and homeless by choice for the final 19 years of his life. It was in the summer of 2013 that he talked of a blanket and sleeping bag drive to benefit the area homeless and needy.

“At the library today, anyone who walks in and wants a blanket, gets a blanket,” Bryant said. “We do not question you if you are needy or homeless. We know the hurt and sometimes the embarrassment of being in need.”

In past years, Roger’s Wish has provided an opportunity for church groups, youth groups, school groups, company groups, etc., to participate in a monthlong challenge to collect blankets and sleeping bags.

“We do have homeless in Elizabethtown,” Bryant said. “We do have several needy individuals and families throughout Bladen County.”

She described her brother as a free spirit and an eternal jokester who loved to travel.

“We went through the hardships of alcohol and drug addictions with him, and he got over it,” she said. “He battled those demons. He loved my children to death. He would come and have a meal with us. Shower, do the laundry. Spend time with the children and take off. He would go to his squat, as he called it. I know of four squats he would utilize.”

Grunder’s father, Roger was notified that same morning by his daughter that his only son was gone.

“It was very bad,” he said. “I have three daughters and only the one son; my only name carrier. He loved helping other people. Many times, he would give up something he had to be able to help someone else who didn’t have anything. Just to help them. And he would go without. This donation opportunity that has been set up makes me feel good – and makes my heart feel good that we are still able to help people that he used to help. This is his tradition and it’s an honor to walk in that.”

The challenge is always to put your own life on hold to help others and to be the arms to give when the original arms are gone and to get up and walk a walk when the original legs are in a place in another realm.

“This is our 12^th year and although it may not be the biggest year of donations, it is bigger than in recent years,” Bryan said.

“These past few weeks, with teaching and everything else, it’s been a challenge,” Bryant said. “One of the good things is we have his best friend, Jeffrey who helps coordinate and get the advertising out. Together we kind of teamed up and it’s exciting to see it come together, but still sorrowful. He himself said that he didn’t want anyone to be cold in the winter.”

For a man who voluntarily endured that kind of pain to understand what others were going through and to be the one who went through it with them is something that at times, the human mind can’t wrap itself around.

Suffice to say the warm legacy continues from the heart in the distance and delivered through the earthly hands that remain.