Victim Always Willing to Help, Friends Say
by A single shoe near the curb on West Third Street is the haunting image many downtown pedestrians remember seeing shortly after C. Lloyd Wolfe was struck by an RTA bus about noon Tuesday.
But friends and neighbors, who attended his funeral Friday, have a different image of Wolfe. They remember him as a spry, energetic, 85-year-old man with a ready smile, who was always willing to help others. “He was just genuine, a swell guy. He had an interest in you and what you were doing,” said the Rev. C. Donald Thrash, pastor of Linden Avenue Baptist Church, where Wolfe had been a member since 1929. “He always greeted people with a smile and held his chin high.”
After preaching his eulogy Friday, Thrash talked about his friend as he held a cloisonne dish fashioned by Wolfe. “He loved beauty. He loved to be out in nature,” he said, adding that Wolfe held numerous jobs on church boards and loved gardening and working with his hands.
Bob DeBusk remembers Wolfe as a good neighbor who played hide-and-seek with his 10-year-old daughter, Nikki, and gave her a subscription to Ranger Rick magazine. And when the DeBusks’ dog was hit by a car, it was Wolfe who carried him to safety. “I remember Lloyd as a little short man with a ball cap,” DeBusk says. “He was the cream of the crop. I’m going to miss him dearly.” “If he had told you he was 65, you’d believe it,” said Chillicothe resident John Shelton, a cousin of Wolfe’s wife, Nora. “He just didn’t age.”
Wolfe, who was born in Lewisburg, moved to Dayton when he was a teen-ager and took business classes at the University of Dayton and Miami-Jacobs Junior College of Business. When he retired five years ago, he was secretary-treasurer of the Abitibi Paper Co.
When the incident occurred, Wolfe was on his way to attend his weekly Kiwanis Club meeting at the Daytonian Hilton, said his wife. Although the accident is still under police investigation, earlier reports indicated that Wolfe stepped in front of an oncoming bus and slipped before he could get out of its way.
“He was a quick-stepped, quick-witted, bright man, not slow-moving. That’s what baffles me so much,” said Thrash, who accompanied Mrs. Wolfe to St. Elizabeth Medical Center after the accident. The Wolfes’ daughter, Jeanne Theodore of Cincinnati, arrived just before her father died at 2:45 p.m., Thrash said. The family wasn’t sure if Wolfe regained consciousness but was told that when a nurse asked Wolfe if he wanted her to call his wife, he squeezed her hand in response.
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