Never underestimate the giving power of the Stargate fan community. Gary Jones sits down with Keith and Sally, two Stargate fans who tell their story of how charity auctions have helped shape their fandom and their lives.

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0:00 – Opening Credits
0:27 – Gary Jones Introduces Keith and Sally
1:13 – How Keith and Sally Met
2:35 – Supporting a Charity
5:15 – How Stargate Fits into the Charities
6:31 – Dysautonomia International
10:25 – SGCharityAuction.org
12:01 – Want to Share Your Story?
12:29 – End Credits

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Gary Jones
Hello everybody, I’m Gary Jones. Welcome to Dial the Gate. You might know me as Chief Master Sergeant Walter Harriman and that’s how I knew myself when I showed up on the show Stargate SG-1 for 10 years and I’ve been privileged over the years to talk to many, many fans at conventions who came and chatted to me at my table and I’ve had the best time and here it is continuing because I’m talking to more fans. And today I’m talking to Keith. How do you pronounce your last name, Keith? Homel?

Keith Homel
It’s Homel.

Gary Jones
Keith Homel and Sally Whitesides. Welcome both of you and thanks for being here.

Keith Homel
Absolutely. Thanks for having us.

Sally Whitesides
Great to be here.

Gary Jones
Great. What is the connection between you two? Like you’re obviously not in the same city?

Keith Homel
We met at I think one of the Chicago conventions, right? And we started doing some charity work together. And that’s kind of how we met and became friends, and we’ve seen each other at multiple conventions, and now we do a bunch of charity stuff together with all kinds of Stargate themes.

Okay, so this is interesting. I’ve never, you know, so did you show up as just as fans and you met?

Sally Whitesides
Yeah, pretty much. So we kind of just started going to conventions and there was like fan run auctions before we started doing them. And then they kind of stopped, and Keith and I kind of were friends. And we met and we said “This is a really good thing. This is something that we want to continue and we kind of want to grow. Let’s talk about continuing this and what we can do.”

Gary Jones
Okay. Very cool. And so that’s how a charity organization just starts, just people “This is the idea, we like it. Well, how do we do this?” So what did you have to go through? I know that I’m gonna get to the fact that you’ve, you’ve raised over $20,000 through your charity. How easy was it for you to just start a charity? Talk me through that.

Keith Homel
So actually, that’s a little bit confusing because we don’t actually have our own charity. We support another charity. These days that’s Dysautonomia International. And sadly I talk a little bit more about that as we get on. But we just support different charities. We started out actually because they were going on before we started, before 2014 was really the first one that we kind of worked together on. And that was for Covenant House Vancouver because we had been talking with Teryl Rothery and she had generously donated some of her time for kind of a one on one, you know, meet type of thing outside of the convention, just for us, so we could auction it off and then support her charity which was atCovenant House Vancouver. So it just kind of bloomed from there. But it didn’t even start as anything, it just was kind of “Hey, we’re doing this thing you want to help out? Sure!” and kind of blossomed from that. And then we just, you know, organized more every year and then every time basically the Chicago convention happens, we would put on an auction that we thought that once that convention stops that we were going to be done. But then it started up again and we said “Hey, you know, we should do this again and even if it doesn’t continue, even if the convention doesn’t continue, we should really try and make this thing happen and keep it going.” Kind of wake up together and organize a little bit more and that’s our charity that we support.

Gary Jones
That’s very cool. And so you guys, have you become sort of closer and better friends? You didn’t know each other as well before this all started right?

Sally Whitesides
Yeah, I would say so. I think, you know, we both have our strengths, you know, Keith is really good at design. And he can design websites and graphics and thingsthat I’m not really good at. And I’m really good at coming up with I would say like the right things to say maybe, like the words to put on our websites or things to say to people or that kind of thing. So we both have our strengths and we work really well together. So I think, you know, we both have our strengths and we play really well together and so, you know, that’s a really good thing to have but we’re also, you know, becoming closer as friends and I think that’s a really good thing to have too.

Gary Jones
And did you say that the charities are Stargate-themed or Stargate-related or how does, I mean beyond meeting at a convention, how does Stargate fit into the your charity work?

Keith Homel
Yeah, it’s really just started from going to the conventions and so everything’s kind of Stargate-themed as far as the auction, although it’s not only Stargate items, it’s really whatever. But Stargate is a major theme in the auctions. So you know, we’ve had screen war costumes and, you know, props, real props, screen use props and all kinds of other stuff, everything from just, you know, somebody donating like a keychain all the way up to, you know, like I said screen worn costumes and things like that from Amanda Tapping and we had some other things. We had some Chris Judge stuff and so just a bunch of other stuff that we were able to get hands, all from, you know, very generous Stargate community members who donate all these things for us. So it’s really been just great interacting with all the fans and all the community. Everybody’s so generous donating these things and helping us out. And, you know, like we mentioned before, our charity we have been supporting and going forward supporting is Dysautonomia International. Sally, maybe you want to talk a little bit about that charity and how it relates to you?

Sally Whitesides
So I think it really started, you know, when Keith and I kind of joined together. I said, you know, “Could we use this charity? It’s something that is special to me. I have dysautonomia. It impacts me”. And so I said, you know, “Can we support this charity?”

Gary Jones
Can you just speak a little bit about what that is so that fans can understand?

Sally Whitesides
Yeah, definitely. So dysautonomia is the dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system is like, everything that you don’t think about doing on your own. It’s supposed to regulate things that you don’t think of doing naturally. So blood pressure, heart rate, digestion. All those things that you do naturally, that’s something that the autonomic nervous system is supposed to do and if you think of it as something like a switch, so like a switch either goes on or off, when the autonomic nervous system misfires. And it can happen after a viral infection, after someone’s bedridden for a while, after a prolonged pregnancy. Doctors are still really trying to figure out why this is happening in so many people. There’s not a lot of research out there about it, because it’s not necessarily rare, but it’s just not well funded. Doctors don’t recognize it really well. Dysautonomia International works to send funds. They do a lot of things but they send funds to research. They work with doctors so that they are trained in recognizing it. They also work with like newly diagnosed patients, and like how the correct treatments and stuff like that. So they’re a really good nonprofit, and they do a lot of different things. But, you know, there’s not a lot of money coming in for it. So it’s a really great nonprofit. And so when I connected with Keith he was really great and saying “Yes, I think this is really good charity that we should support”. And then, you know, it was really great, because even after the first year I had Stargate fans coming up to me, people that I didn’t know, and saying “Thank you for supporting this charity. I have an invisible illness” or I had someone come up to me and say “My husband just got diagnosed with this. We spent five or six years trying to get diagnosed. We just got diagnosed”. And that was after the first year and I said “This is something bigger than me, this is something bigger than us. And we have to we have to keep doing it”.

Gary Jones
I guess a kind of a less extreme example would be somebody who suffers from something like fibromyalgia where it’s just a general sort of pain that runs through the body and, you know, if the person is asked to sort of pinpoint it, they can’t. And like you say, it’s the whole invisibleness of it, you know, that people, you know, have a tough time relating to. It’s like one thing when you break your leg and you’ve got a cast on your leg “Oh, you broke your leg”. But if you say “Oh, I’ve got this condition where the switch to just turn on my digestive system is like faulty”.

Sally Whitesides
Yeah, exactly.

Gary Jones
Okay, well listen, Keith and Sally, thank you so much for coming on Dial the Gate and talking to me and letting us know about your charity. And before we go, maybe you can just let people know the name of your URL to your website that they can donate to. So go ahead and tell us that.

Sally Whitesides
Absolutely. Keith, you want to tell them?

Keith Homel
Sure. So the URL for the website is “sgcharityauction.org”. So like “Stargate Charity Cuction dot org”, but little shortened to “sgcharityauction.org”. We accept cash donations through the site directly and we’re also looking for obviously items for the physical auctions that we have every year that the Chicago convention happens anyway. We’re currently accepting donations either way. And do you have anything else to add to that, Sally?

Sally Whitesides
I think that’s it.

Keith Homel
All right.

Gary Jones
I will go through some of my things and see if I can find anything that I can maybe send to you.

Keith Homel
That would be amazing.

Sally Whitesides
That would be great.

Gary Jones
Yeah. So I will do that too. Because I’ve got things like scripts and all sorts of weird little things that I ended up with from the show. I’ll see what I can dig up and get over to you at some point. I can either go on your on your website or I can contact you and get your address and send them over.

Keith Homel
Thank you so much.

Gary Jones
Yeah, you’re welcome.

Sally Whitesides
We would really appreciate that. Thank you.

Gary Jones
Oh, absolutely. Thank you so much Keith and Sally for joining me today. We’ll talk soon, ok?

Keith Homel
Thank you. All right, talk soon.

Gary Jones
Bye bye. Hey, everybody. Thanks for watching this episode. Hey, do you want to share your Stargate story on air with me? Email the show at “[email protected]” That’s “[email protected]”. Tell us a little bit about how Stargate has helped you grow as a person or affected your life in a positive way. And I’ll be recording more fan interviews in 2021 and you might be next. See you next time.