On the morning of November 14, 2023, 16-year-old Brynn Goedel was in great spirits, traveling on a charter bus with fellow band members, teachers, and chaperones from Tuscarawas Valley Middle-High School. They were headed to play at a conference in Columbus, an honor for the musicians from the small school district in Zoarville.
As the bus slowed down for traffic on I-70 in Licking County, Brynn headed to the restroom in the back of the bus. “The door was stuck or locked,” she says. “I couldn’t get it open.”
Brynn Goedel in the trauma unit in Columbus, with the two men who pulled her from the burning bus: Josh Chika, a passerby who stopped to help at the scene of the crash, and Tusky Valley band director Stephen Tripp.
That stuck door saved Brynn’s life, says her mother, Danielle Goedel. Brynn was standing in the aisle when a semi-truck loaded with batteries plowed over an SUV and slammed into the back of the bus, obliterating the bathroom she had been trying to enter. The collision threw her forward and ignited a massive fire. When Brynn came to, she was surrounded by flames; the bathroom door was on top of her and she was unable to move. Eventually, the band director and a good Samaritan pulled her from the bus as batteries from the truck continued to explode.
Brynn was the last person to make if off the bus alive. Six people — three students on the bus, plus two chaperones and a teacher in the SUV — died in the accident and many others, including Brynn, were injured.
Reality and recovery
“When they got me off the bus, I couldn’t feel anything from my waist down,” Brynn says. “I didn’t even realize how bad it was until I got to the hospital and had surgery. I had a concussion and burns on my face and my upper arm.” She broke so many bones she can barely remember them all, but the list includes her pelvis, her sacrum, her collarbone, and nine ribs. She spent 10 days in the trauma unit in a Columbus hospital, followed by three more surgeries and extensive rehabilitation in Akron. Doctors initially gave her a 5% chance of walking again, but she finally left the hospital on her own feet, using a walker.
Danielle took extended time off from her job as a nurse to be with Brynn in the hospital and as she started the long recovery and rehabilitation process. The combination of endless medical bills and lost income put an economic strain on the family, which was also dealing with the emotional toll of grieving and healing.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, the closely knit Tusky Valley community — and even people from Columbus and beyond — rallied around the survivors and victims’ families with assistance, donations, and fundraisers. For the Goedels, some key support came from their co-op; Carroll Electric Cooperative’s People to People Fund granted the family $5,000 to help with medical expenses.
Small change, big difference
Carroll Electric, based in Carrollton, is among about three-quarters of the state’s electric co-ops that invite their members to round their monthly electric bills up to the nearest dollar amount, collecting that spare change into funds that are in turn administered by boards of fellow members and distributed to a variety of worthy local causes.
Some call it Operation Round Up, others know it as the Community Fund or People Fund, but whatever the name, the results are the same: co-op members making a difference in their communities.
“Our community is amazing,” Danielle Goedel says. “None of us could have done it without the support we received.” She says she’s grateful for the co-op members who contribute each month and wants them to know their donations have made a difference. “You don’t think about what you’ll need until it happens to you. But we now know how many amazing people there are who are willing to help when you need it most.”
In 2025, Ohio co-ops granted about $1.8 million to individuals, community groups, schools, parks, libraries, police and fire departments, and numerous other community efforts. As the programs have grown over the past few decades, they’ve contributed more than $20 million within co-op communities around the state.
Brynn Goedel still experiences weakness and mobility challenges and has a long road ahead with continued rehabilitation and likely future surgeries. But for now, she says she’s “doing pretty well.” She’s taking classes at Kent State’s Tuscarawas Branch and plans to become a nurse. “Through everything, I’ve gained an appreciation for nurses and realized that’s what I want to do.”
The following pages showcase some other examples of how those extra pennies have made a big difference in co-op communities.
Paulding pupper
Paulding Putnam cooperative’s Operation Round Up provided a grant to support the implementation of a therapy dog named Luna for Paulding Middle School. The grant funded insurance, training, and certification for the dog and her handler, guidance counselor Maddie Reinhart; Luna’s therapy dog vest; and even a resting place for her.
Supporting schools
The digital divide — a gap between people with and without the advantages of ready access to technology and the internet — can be especially wide in rural areas.
Oxford-based Butler Rural Electric Cooperative’s Community Connection, the co-op’s round-up program, helped a local school district in closing that gap this year through an innovative partnership with the NFL Foundation and the Cincinnati Bengals.
Butler Rural Electric Cooperative linked the Bengals with Preble Shawnee Local Schools, a rural district in a lower-income area, to provide a $10,000 grant for touchscreen Chromebooks for all 85 first-graders at Camden Elementary. Butler Rural Community Connection helped with the grant process and made up the difference between the grant amount and the full cost of the computers.
“Our first-graders were still using tablets, while most districts had already switched to touchscreen laptops,” says Mary Snellgrove, the director of curriculum for Preble Shawnee Local Schools. “We didn’t have funding to make that transition.”
Providing the touchscreen Chromebooks to first-graders is important, Snellgrove says, because it’s an intermediate step, helping students build keyboarding skills they’ll need before taking tests on computers in second grade while still having the touchscreen capability they’re accustomed to with tablets.
“I believe that rural districts often get overlooked by organizations providing community support,” Snellgrove says. “But we get amazing support from Butler Rural’s Community Connection. They’re always making sure our teachers have access to resources, whether it’s a small grant or a large grant, to fund software or classroom projects. We appreciate the generous help from the co-op and its members.”
Butler and the Bengals
A joint effort between the NFL Foundation, the Cincinnati Bengals, and Butler Rural Electric Cooperative’s Community Connection provided funding for touchscreen Chromebooks for first-graders in Preble County. The school celebrated with the Bengals’ mascot, Who Dey.
Funding first responders
First responders often can benefit from a bird’s-eye view in an emergency. Lancaster-based South Central Power Company provided aerial capability to the New Lexington police and fire departments by helping to get the village’s drone program off the ground.
The co-op’s Operation Round Up granted the department $7,000 toward the purchase of a versatile drone that can help locate missing people, find fires, and even detect water leaks.
“We had raised about half the money through a police-versus-fire-department ‘Guns and Hoses’ basketball game, but it was going to take us another year or two to reach the $15,000 we needed,” says Police Chief Douglas Gill. “Once we received the grant, we were able to purchase the drone and accessories right away.”
The DJI Matrice 30 drone features wide angle, zoom, and infrared thermal cameras, as well as a spotlight and a speaker. It’s a valuable tool in a wide range of emergency situations.
“Once, we had a person who had fallen and was injured along railroad tracks,” Gill says. “We were able to fly the drone down the tracks, quickly locate the person, and find the best point of entry. It showed us that we could go into a field and across a creek, rather than traveling miles down the railroad tracks.”
The drone is also an important asset in fighting fires, New Lexington Fire Chief Jim Fain says.
Fain said in the case of one wildlands fire bordering on the Wayne National Forest, the department flew the drone day and night. “We can use a split screen between a camera view and the infrared,” he says. “It showed us where to direct our personnel and equipment, and we had the fire wrapped up in about 36 hours instead of many days or weeks.”
In the case of a building fire, the drone can show hot spots, letting firefighters know where to concentrate efforts, rather than going blindly into a structure.
“It’s a great tool for every fire department but many can’t afford it,” he says. “The funds from South Central Power got us over the top so we could purchase it.”
