By KAYLA J. MARSH
Staff Writer
EATONTOWN — For local resident Michael Roman, Father’s Day has come early.
The reason is because of hundreds of donations and the generosity of family, friends, coworkers and community members alike who helped raise money so his family could purchase a new, wheelchair-accessible Dodge Grand Caravan to help move his son around.
“My son Damarius was born club-footed and had multiple surgeries to fix that … and about three or four years ago, he was in school and one of the gym teachers noticed he was a little bit different than the other kids,” Roman said in a recent interview. “He wasn’t as fast and just wasn’t really mobile like every other kid.
“We found out he had an aggressive form of muscular dystrophy, which was very devastating.”
Roman said because of the muscular dystrophy, Damarius’ muscles deteriorate more every year, which has caused him to be completely wheelchair-bound.
“It was a hard battle for us,” Roman said. “With us not having a van with access to lift his wheelchair, it was very difficult managing to get to places.”
Roman said as Damarius continued to grow, it became more physically challenging as well as he had to carry him on his shoulders to move him from his wheelchair to the family car and back again when going to doctors, friends’ houses or elsewhere.
“My wife was a full-time medical assistant, and then when we found out what Damarius had, it was very devastating and he definitely needed 24-hour care so she had to leave her job,” Roman said.
Roman and his wife, Marilyn, also have two other children ages 13 and 4.
The parents started a GoFundMe.com campaign to help raise awareness about their situation and raise funds for a new vehicle that would be beneficial to everyone.
A friendly face at Capitol Lighting on Route 36 in Eatontown, where Roman has worked for the past 11 years, would also help put into motion a campaign that would end up raising $20,000 in six months for the family.
“Capitol Lighting has always been very philanthropic, very charitable,” said Eric Lebersfeld, president and chief marketing officer of Capitol Lighting.
“The owners of the company have always donated lots of time and financial resources and … many of [our employees] are involved in charitable organizations.
“A member of our Eatontown team who works with Mike brought up to the board [his] situation with Damarius and his effort to raise money so that they could get a van with an elevator lift for a wheelchair, and it was a big initiative, most of our initiatives are smaller — $250 for this, a walk for that — and Michael’s need for Damarius was much greater than any of the other efforts that we had supported up to that time but … this was our main initiative for 2015, 2016.”
Through the company’s “Making Lives Brighter Initiative,” Capitol Lighting launched a matching donations challenge and e-blast campaign with employees, vendors and customers companywide.
Capitol has nine showrooms in New Jersey and Florida and an Internet store, and the campaign spread the word about Damarius and the Roman family’s need for a wheelchair-accessible van.
“People love to do good for other people,” Lebersfeld said. “It makes you feel good, and obviously for us this was wonderful to do and help one of our own.”
Moved by Capitol Lighting’s outreach and efforts, Camille Vaccari, founder of David’s Wishing Star Fund, matched Capitol’s donation so the van could be purchased and retrofitted for wheelchair accessibility.
“It was very hard, but thanks to the ‘Making Lives Brighter Initiative’ and everybody who helped and pitched in and those who read our story on GoFundMe.com and donated … it was definitely a wonderful experience of my lifetime,” Roman said.
“It was definitely all worth it to know that I have a second family at Capitol and to know that other people support good.
“I do believe there are a lot of good people out there, and it definitely showed with the donations and everybody having my back.
“Since we have the van all [Damarius] talks about is ‘I want to go here, I want to go there’ so it is definitely a good feeling to see that wonderful smile that my son has and to actually feel good about him going out and exploring the world because it was very difficult to do that with him.”