Community, Giving Helps Family Through Tragedies

January 18, 2012

MINSTER — In the dark hours following the deaths of their daughter and newborn granddaughter, the Weigandt family in Minster has been humbled by the generosity of both the community and complete strangers.
Although the tragedies now lie months in the past for most, the new reality that has set in for the Weigandts is very present — no one can brace for the loss of a child.
• The family
Dick and Juliana Weigandt were blessed with four children: Todd, Dee Dee (Bender) and their twin girls, Abi (Bardasian) and Mandi (Wells).
Abi and Mandi were identical, blond-haired, brown-eyed twin sisters who could always be found together growing up.
“They were never apart,” Dick Weigandt said.
The twins were both cheerleaders for Minster High School. Both graduated from MHS with the same GPA, and then went on to room together at Miami University of Ohio. Both ended up working as pharmaceutical consultants for the same company right after college. Both married men who worked in the medical field.
Though the twins eventually did live apart — Abi in St. Louis and Mandi in Chicago — they still talked on the phone five or six times each day.
Both twins were even pregnant at the same time, with due dates just weeks apart.
“They had all kinds of plans,” Weigandt said. “They were going to dress them like twins.”
Abi welcomed her second son, Mayer, into the world in early October. But all of the planning and excitement surrounding what was supposed to have been a joyful time in their lives changed in an instant.
In late October, something told Abi to call her sister at a time of day they never talked.
• The tragedy
Abi and Mandi were chatting on the phone that afternoon on Oct. 29, when Mandi cried out in pain and the call was lost. Abi tried calling again, thinking Mandi was going into labor. Mandi answered, but was incoherent, saying she couldn’t breathe.
After dialing 911 in St. Louis, Abi was refused assistance, and so she called Mandi’s husband, Leighton Wells, who dialed 911 in Chicago. A rescue squad finally rushed to the scene.
“The twin in St. Louis — the phone was off the hook — could hear the rescue squad talking to Mandi,” Dick Weigandt said. “Then she thought, well the rescue squad is there, she’ll be fine.”
What no one knew at the time was the cause of Mandi’s pain — an aneurysm that burst near her spleen.
Miraculously, she remained conscious and was able to speak to the paramedics when they arrived. She was even able to say goodbye to family members at Swedish Covenant Hospital in Chicago.
“For some unbelievable reason, and the doctor’s can’t figure it out, she stayed able to talk until they put her out for the emergency C-section,” Weigandt said.
“She talked to the lady doctor that was going to do the C-section. And so they put her to sleep, and they cut her open ... and she was full of blood.”
Mandi died that Saturday in October, just days before her due date. The life-saving efforts were then focused on Mandi’s daughter.
“The baby was deprived of oxygen, so they delivered the baby and resuscitated it, and put it in the nursery,” Weigandt said. “And then they noticed something wasn’t right, so then they rushed it to Children’s Hospital.”
Abigail Juliana Wells (A.J.) — whom Mandi and Leighton had already named after Mandi’s twin sister and mother — was kept alive on life support for three days.
“And after three days, they did a brain scan and there wasn’t anything there,” Weigandt said.
A.J. passed away on Nov. 1 at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago.
• Community support
A double funeral service was held in Minster for Mandi and A.J., and then another double funeral was held in Syracuse, Ind., where Mandi’s in-laws reside, before mother and daughter were laid to rest there.
“(A.J.) was shown in a little bassinet, and she was absolutely perfect — she was gorgeous,” Weigandt said. “Everybody thought she was a china doll.”
The outpouring of support following the tragedies has been incredible, Weigandt said, describing the generosity of both community members and strangers alike.
“I think it’s important to realize that what people did for us is absolutely phenomenal — absolutely phenomenal,” he said.
Weigandt spoke of the amount of money alone that was sent to Children’s Memorial Hospital in Mandi’s honor.
“The overwhelming support that we got is unbelievable,” he said. “People have sent over $15,000 to Children’s Hospital in Chicago for Mandi and her baby ... and money continues to be sent there afterward.”
A special plaque will also be dedicated to Mandi and A.J. after a new children’s hospital is built in Chicago, Weigandt added, because it is so rare to lose a mother and a daughter in childbirth.
The extent of Mandi’s willingness to help others was reflected in many other ways in the aftermath of her death. The Weigandts, for example, were not expecting such a gift from the company in Chicago where Mandi was employed.
“We get a phone call where her fellow workers and company paid for everything — paid for everything,” he said. “That’s unbelievable. I mean, to work in a company as large as she worked for and to have them call up and say — the company and her associates, the fellow pharmaceutical reps — we’re going to pay for everything.”
A friend of the family, too, reached out to help when the Weigandts needed to return to Minster from Chicago for funeral preparations.
“He called up and wanted to do something — he’s got a very, extremely nice private jet,” Weigandt said. “So he sends a multi-million dollar jet to Chicago to pick part of the family up and fly us back.”
Since the deaths, the family has also received more than 400 sympathy cards, Weigandt noted.
“We still get cards,” he said. “We get cards from people that’ll say we don’t know you and you don’t know us, but we heard what happened, and we can’t believe it.”
Most of the cards came along with handwritten letters, he said, which offered further comfort to the family.
“I think through this whole thing, when you send a sympathy card, just don’t sign your name — write something in there,” Weigandt advised. “I mean it was so neat to get those cards that had notes in them.”
A group of Minster youth also showed reverence for the tragedies, Weigandt said, when they drove to Indiana and spent the afternoon at Mandi’s grave.
“It’s all about giving,” Weigandt said. “What people gave to us, I just can’t reach out to all of those people and thank them enough for what they did.”
• The gift
Reflecting in his office one day, Weigandt decided he wanted to celebrate his daughter’s giving spirit and love for children.
“Mandi would do anything for you,” Weigandt said. “If it was possible, she would do it. That’s the way she was. Her fellow workers that came to the funeral in Indiana, it was remarkable what they said about her as a person wanting to help other people. So that’s what left me to say, knowing Mandi, I want to help other people.”
The Weigandts decided to buy Christmas presents for a needy family with children in the area. Fittingly, they ended up finding one with a set of twins.
“I guess the kids were overwhelmed because they didn’t have, I was told, nice clothes, so we bought them real nice coats and clothes and toys, and they didn’t have bikes, so we bought them matching bikes,” Weigandt said. “I think that was the hardest part because I can remember when I bought my twins matching bikes.”
The giving will continue every year in some form, Weigandt noted, although it doesn’t necessarily have to be for twins, or for children or even locally.
“We not only want to continue, but maybe expand doing something at Christmas because Mandi loved kids — oh God, she loved kids,” he said.
“Mandi gave her life to have a baby, to be honest. She went through in-vitro, I think, three times to get pregnant. This was her dream, and as her twin says, she had nine months of bliss because that’s all she ever wanted.”
To a certain degree, giving to this family helped the Weigandts cope with their loss during the holiday season, he said.
“The amazing thing is, as my remaining twin struggles, when we did it, it really helped her,” he said. “It really made her feel a little better.”
Weigandt stressed his family gave not to be hailed as heroes or to gain recognition of their own.
“The basic idea was just, in honor of Mandi loving kids,” he said. “We’re not doing it for recognition; we’re doing it because we had a daughter who loved kids. It’s that simple.”
• Reflection
As a father who never imagined having to bury his daughter and granddaughter, Weigandt offered a few words of wisdom.
“I tell people if you’ve got kids, love them because if you lose them, you think of all of the things you should’ve done,” he said.
“I’m not saying spoil your kids, but man when you lose one, I never dreamed it’d be so hard — especially when you’ve got all the stuff just sitting around that was supposed to be. That’s the clinker.”
Through the heartache, Weigandt has pondered many of the what-ifs; at least, he said, Mandi was on the phone with her sister when the aneurysm burst.
“Why were they on the phone together at a time of day they never talked?” Weigandt said.
“Abi said, ‘We never talked at that time of the day, but something told me, call Mandi.’ If she wouldn’t have called her, Mandi would have died, her husband would have came home and found her on the floor and A.J. would have never been born.”
Weigandt also reflected on the precious yet temporary gift of life.
“Treasure your next five seconds because the sixth second, you might be dead,” he said.
“We don’t have any guarantees. You’ve probably got plans and stuff you’re going to do next year, or next month or next week. Mandi was going to have a baby. One minute she’s on the phone with her twin, and the next minute she’s dead. I think people forget that, I really do.”