The embrace was worth the struggles.
On a picturesque spring evening, Danielle Gherardini and Dan Cothern hugged on April 8 in front of a recreational vehicle in an RV park off Hwy. 141 in the Fenton area that is a permanent home for Cothern and his dog, Bentley, who have been homeless for years.
Gherardini, along with Nancy Hakala-King, Vanessa Williams Hathaway, Michelle Lamb and Pamela Sophie, rallied around Cothern and Bentley in January with a mission to find the two a home. Cothern has been homeless since 2013. He said he has lived in Festus, House Springs, De Soto, Cape Girardeau and Arnold.
“I’m pretty shocked that things have fallen into place,” Gherardini said. “There were a few times we were feeling pretty nervous that we weren’t going to find anywhere because people kept turning us away and wouldn’t rent to us.”
The group of Jefferson County women created a Facebook page, “Dan and Bentley’s Support Team,” and collected money through spotfund.com in January in order to house Cothern and his dog at the Pear Tree Inn, 1201 Drury Lane, in Arnold as they looked to arrange permanent housing for the pair.
Cothern and Bentley have lived at the hotel since Jan. 19, and he moved into the RV on April 9.
“I love it,” Cothern said of the RV. “I couldn’t believe it.”
Gherardini said the group’s main goal was to get Cothern a home, but there is still work to be done. She said the group paid $11,000 for the RV, and it costs $775 per month to rent a pad in the RV park.
Gherardini said the group will continue to collect money through the spotfund.com page, “DanAndBentleySupport,” to assist Cothern until his Social Security benefits are restored. She said Cothern was scheduled to meet with a Social Security representative this week.
“They told us it could take up to a year to restore his benefits,” Gherardini said. “We are trying to raise enough funds to make sure we can continue. We have donors who have kindly agreed to support us for the next 12 months. They will donate $100 each for each of the next 12 months. One person wrote me checks for $100 each for the next six months.”
Gherardini said the combined $300 being donated each of the next six months leaves a gap in how much money is needed to keep Cothern’s pad rental paid. She said the group is ready to pay the difference between the rental fee and what is collected through donations.
“We think we have about a $250 gap that we can’t cover,” Gherardini said. “With the Spotfund, we are working at it. We do a $5 Friday every Friday, and that is going pretty well.”
Dan Cuthern, Danielle Gherardini, Tracy Nelson, Vanessa Hathaway, Pamela Sophie, Michelle Lamb and Jerry Parsons pose in front of the new home these good Samaritans along with the community helped purchase for Dan.
Starting the journey
Hakala-King said she first met Cothern and Bentley in 2023 outside of the Walmart department store, 650 Truman Blvd., in Festus. She said she was in the area because she works at Mercy Hospital Jefferson in Crystal City.
She said she lost track of the two, until Gherardini asked people on the Jeffco 411 Facebook page about Cothern and Bentley after seeing them outside of the Target department store in Arnold.
Through Facebook, Gherardini and Lamb invited people on Jan. 18 to the Panera Bread restaurant in Arnold to discuss how to help Cothern and Bentley. Hathaway and Sophie came to that meeting, and the core group, which included Hakala-King who could not make the meeting, was formed.
The next day, the group moved Cothern and Bentley from a tent off Richardson Road near the I-55 overpass to the hotel.
Hakala-King said it has been less than three months since they started looking for a home for Cothern, but it feels longer. She also said she is thrilled the group was able to get the RV.
“He has been homeless for 14 years, and now, he will get to sleep in a bed and have air conditioning,” Hakala-King said.
Finding a home
Gherardini said the group found the RV, which has a queen-sized bed on one end and a living room and small kitchen area on the other, at Second Chance RV in Union.
“It seemed very fortuitous,” Gherardini said. “We went out and looked at it. It is the perfect size and has the amenities that they need. We had almost enough money in the fund to cover it, and we decided as a group to bite the bullet and cover the rest. We just could not let this go.”
Hakala-King said securing the home was only possible because of so many people supporting the movement to help Cothern and Bentley.
“If it were not for the community and everybody else’s support, we wouldn’t be where we are now,” Hakala-King said.