'We thought it was pneumonia': Daughter mourns COVID victim, preacher Gary West

WELLINGTON — When Gary West started coughing, his family didn't think it was anything serious. They were wrong. West and his adult daughter, Candice Regal, started feeling ill Dec. 11. "We both all of a sudden started with fevers and chills, and just not feeling 100 percent," Regal remembered in a recent interview. West would get sick around the holidays every year, and Regal has a chronic medical condition. They shrugged it off. But while Regal recovered, West's cough grew progressively worse. He delivered his last sermon Dec. 13 from the pulpit at Christ Community Church on West Herrick Avenue, where he had been pastor for 15 years. His family later discovered West had been COVID-positive that morning. Most of the congregation was watching the service virtually, with only a handful in the sanctuary. About 11 p.m. Dec. 17, West told his family he was going to the hospital. His cough had become deep, guttural, barklike. He couldn't breathe. He could barely stand. "At first I thought, 'It's just pneumonia,' but then they called and said it was COVID," Regal said. "We thought he was strong. I mean, he was healthy as a horse." West was blind — famously embraced by the community as "the blind preacher of Wellington" — and had heart surgery years before. The family thought he'd easily weather a short stay in the hospital, then return home, she said. That didn't happen. West was transferred to Mercy Health Lorain Hospital, where before long he was admitted to the intensive care unit. Just before Christmas, doctors placed the pastor on a ventilator and into a medically induced coma. That took some doing. Regal said her father had a do-not-resuscitate order, but doctors convinced him his lungs had a decent chance of healing if only they could rest. From time to time over the coming weeks, they would take him out of the coma and West would quietly signal he was OK. He wasn't. His lungs were getting worse. They swelled, and developed a leak that doctors said couldn't be fixed, Regal said. On Jan. 2, the family was allowed to have a Zoom call with West. "We sang to him," Regal said, crying. "We told him it was OK if he couldn't hang on. We'd be with him, and he'd be with God soon." But they couldn't be there with him in person — Regal said it was "impossibly hard" not to be able to hold her dad's hand as his body weakened. Early the next day, about 2:30 a.m., she felt something was different. Regal said she called the hospital to ask whether her father was still alive. The answer was yes, but just barely. "My spiritual opinion is he wasn't there anymore, not inside his body, because I could feel him with me," Regal said. The doctors said West's lungs had hardened and it was just a matter of time. When they took him off the ventilator, the reverend was gone in a matter of minutes. "He was our rock," Regal said, only barely reining in her tears as she told the story. "My peace and comfort at this point is that my dad is no longer suffering. He's not dealing with this worldly drama anymore." She said she believes her father is now in heaven, and he is no longer blind. And believing is everything, Regal said. A self-described "stereotypical pastor's daughter who led a wild life," she said she had spent years addicted to drugs, and has now been clean for a decade. She had wandered from the faith, battling her personal demons, and only recently had started attending her father's church again, once more feeling it was home. Regal said she had started turning back to God, but it took the death of her earthly father to fully show how much she needed Christianity in her life again. Contact Jason Hawk at (440) 329-7122 or news@lcnewspapers.com.