Case rings the bell for all the right reasons

Denny Case’s Saturdays are filled between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. He isn’t hosting a mobile radio event for WVLI, where he works as an on-air personality. Nope.

Long ago, he gave up his mobile DJ gig at local establishments. The holiday season has a heart-felt ring during the holiday season for the 47-year-old Case. Case spends eight to nine hours on these Saturdays ringing the bell, as he mans a Red Kettle for the Salvation Army’s annual fundraising campaign.



His dedication and kindness led to him being named this year’s Red Kettle chairman. Lt. LaToya Surratt, who leads the Salvation Army of Kankakee County, told Case as much when she said he would chair this year’s drive.

“It is quite an honor,” Case said. “I told her I was a bit nervous having to talk to those attending the kickoff dinner. I was thinking of having some bullet points.

LaToya said, ‘I just want you to do it your way.’ “I told her I would get up there and tell them the story of why I wanted to be a bell ringer and that is what she said she wanted.” He finished up the evening by donning a vest, grabbing a kettle and ringing his bell to get the fundraiser underway.

Case thinks of himself as a simple man who grew up with a loving family and is dedicated to spreading caring and kindness. “My mom and dad mean everything to me,” he said. “I am so glad they are still around.

” Since 2019, Case, a Manteno resident, has been a bell ringer. Case said it was that year that he interviewed Lt. Scott Parnell, who led the Salvation Army in Kankakee County at that time.

The interview was about the Red Kettle campaign. “During that interview (then) Lt. Parnell told our station’s listeners that they were in desperate need of volunteer bell ringers,” Case recalled during an interview earlier this week.

Normally, bell ringers work a minimum of two hours. Case worked 10 hours “I had the time of my life doing so and the outcome was overwhelming,” he said. HELPING HAND Ringing the bell has become an important to Case’s life, and it is to the organization.

“I truly enjoy it and the fact that I know that this money is going to help feed local families and provide toys for their kids, it allows me to feel as if my time on this Earth isn’t for nothing,” Case said in a post on Facebook. It isn’t the first experience Case has had with the Salvation Army and its helping hands. Back when he was in third or fourth grade in the Manteno school district, Case said the workers at the factory where his father worked went on strike.

It was an extended walkout. Times were tough. Case said the Salvation Army was the only organization which helped feed his older brother and sister and his parents.

Once a week the family received a box of food, and tucked inside was a toy for Denny. “I never forgot that,” he noted. Growing up, Case said he would always drop money in a kettle he walked by because of the organization’s kindness to his family.

GIFT OF HOT CHOCOLATE The people who donate show their appreciation for Case. Recently, he received a hot chocolate from a woman, who told him her sister did it every year. She had passed away.

“My sister loved you and I love you, and I wanted to be the one to bring the hot chocolate,” Case recalled her telling him. Then there was the elderly woman who was carrying a shopping bag and asked if he was Denny Case. “I said ‘yes I am,’” he replied.

She was on Social Security assistance and couldn’t donate, but she had heard him talk about people needing clothing items. “She said, ‘I make things. I crochet.

I haven’t mastered mittens yet, but I have scarves and caps,’” Case said. It’s the simple things that make Case the lovable guy he is with his listeners during his shift at WVLI. When told he is the kind of person you just know you can trust, Case said: “It’s like John Candy says in the movie “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

‘What you see is what you get.’”.