Dan Hewitt is not one to sit around---enjoying retirement after decades of hard work in multiple cities. The veteran of 45 years working in multiple retail operations signed up in May 2022 to be a Red Cross Volunteer blood donor ambassador.
Dan recently staffed a blood drive in Columbia, MO, greeting and signing in donors, answering questions and thanking them for their donations. He has made himself available for drives in Boone, Callaway and Cole counties in Central Missouri.
He came to this new role as a long-time blood donor, who after 20 years of giving whole blood, began three years ago to donate platelets. “I regularly gave blood because I believe it is critical to give back, but when I heard about the need for platelet donations, I began to donate every two weeks. I had several friends who were dying of cancer and wanted to help,” he said. For millions of Americans, platelets are essential to surviving and fighting cancer, chronic diseases, and traumatic injuries. Every 15 seconds someone needs these tiny cells in blood that form clots and stop bleeding.
However, at Dan’s most recent physical check-up, his doctor told him he had to lay off contributing platelets for a while until medical tests showed his hemoglobin levels had risen. “So, I decided I could contribute in other ways and became a Red Cross volunteer,” Dan said, adding that he was surprised at the many services the Red Cross provides and the range of volunteer opportunities.
“The Red Cross is flexible in matching candidates with their interest and abilities,” he added. “After years of hard physical work, I can’t lift heavy materials or stand for long periods.”
He had a knee replaced in 2012 when he also fought off a near-fatal infection caused by the knee surgery. Dan’s other knee is also a candidate for surgery– the results of years of physically taxing work.
Dan grew up in the Phoenix, Arizona, area. He got his first full-time job at a Phoenix-based grocery store chain after graduation from high school. Over time, he became the meat department manager. In his 23-year career in the grocery business, Dan opened and ran the meat departments in stores across Arizona, beginning his odyssey in Mesa, where he worked for two years.
His next stop was Sedona, where Dan was a member of the all-volunteer Sedona-Oak Creek Fire Department. He trained as an emergency medical technician and firefighter.
“In Sedona, the Fire Chief suggested I attend a community college photography class at the department’s expense,” Dan recalled. “I learned how to take and develop photos and became the one who took all the photos for the fire department. We sent them to local newspapers where they were published.”
From Sedona, Dan and his family, which included his son, moved to Kingman and later to Lake Havasu City. His grocery store career even included serving as a volunteer manager for a few weeks during the grand opening of grocery stores on the Navajo reservation near Gallup, NM. Dan ended his career in Winslow, Arizona, and began an entirely new adventure.
Dan’s first marriage had ended, so he decided to put a personal advertisement in a national newspaper—the precursor of online dating. Through that, Dan met a farm girl from Central Missouri who was divorced and the mother of a son. She worked in security, emergency services and law enforcement in Central Missouri.
In 1991, Dan moved to Missouri and married that farm girl. At first, he worked in construction and at the Callaway Nuclear Plant before becoming maintenance manager for an eight-restaurant McDonald’s franchise. For 22 years, Dan went to towns across Central Missouri repairing and renovating the restaurants and mowing and landscaping restaurant sites.
Eventually Dan and his wife made their home in New Bloomfield, MO. There, until his wife’s death in 2012, he had a team of horses the pair hooked up to a wagon to joined other wagon drivers and their teams of draft horses on trails across Missouri.
“My late wife loved horses, so we ended up with18 draft horses who roamed across our 38 acres surrounded by a national forest,” Dan said.
He still lives in a mobile home on that property, but the horses became too much for one person to handle. Dan has decided his next adventure will be as a Red Cross volunteer.