‘I’m a blessed man’: Ailing dad accompanies daughter down aisle at impromptu hospital wedding
Nurses in blue scrubs and doctors in white lab coats gathered Thursday afternoon in the cafe at Northwest Community Hospital as their patient Dan Benway was wheeled to the outdoor butterfly garden.
He wore a light brown suit, boutonnière pinned to the lapel, black sunglasses and a beaming smile.
It was his daughter’s wedding day.
“I’m a blessed man. I couldn’t be more blessed,” said Benway, whose biggest wish amid a nearly two-year battle with pancreatic cancer was to accompany his daughter down the aisle.
The 66-year-old Rolling Meadows man hoped he could attend daughter Grace’s wedding in southwest Colorado on Oct. 4, but his condition — now, stage four — has prevented him from returning home since being admitted to the Arlington Heights hospital last Friday.
On Wednesday, Grace and fiance Thomas Decourcey touched down at O’Hare International Airport at 3 p.m. and got to her father’s hospital room at 4:30. By 5 p.m., they decided to have an impromptu wedding the following afternoon.
Hospital nurses and other staff worked on the arrangements — including securing an officiant and guitar player for the ceremony — while the bride-to-be hurried out to the stores to find a dress.
“It was something we knew was a possibility, and we were just excited to be able to do it,” Grace Decourcey said. “It means a lot to him.”
She described her dad as a “fighter.”
Since being diagnosed on Thanksgiving 2023, Benway has undergone 40 rounds of chemotherapy and had Whipple surgery to remove tumors. Until April, he was still commuting from the Arlington Heights Metra station to his job downtown at Chase Bank.
“I’m trying my best. I tried my best,” Benway said.
But he quickly returned to feelings of happiness for his daughter and son-in-law’s happy day, and thankfulness to his family and hospital staff for making it all happen.
“They’re meant for each other. A very lucky man to have her. Probably the best I could ask for as a father,” Benway said.
Wilson Angumei, the hospital chaplain, was in Benway’s room late Wednesday afternoon as the wedding arrangements were being solidified. During his 25 years at the hospital, it’s the first time Angumei recalls a wedding being held there.
“I was saying, ‘OK, do you have a priest or pastor or somebody to come over?’ And the father said, ‘How bout you?’” Angumei said. “’It would be my honor,’ I told him.”
Besides the audience of doctors and nurses, attendees of the brief ceremony in the hospital garden Thursday afternoon included close family and friends. The Decourceys — who now live in Golden, Colorado, after meeting at work — will have a second wedding celebration for other family and friends next month.
Benway’s brother, John, said Thursday was the happiest and most cheerful he’s seen his brother in the last week.
“That look in his face has been there the entire time. He loves it.”