Charity is at the heart of much of Stargate fandom. Sometimes tragedy can lead to cathartic release and new opportunities. Gary and Colleen share their memories of Don S. Davis, and how a chance encounter with Teryl Rothery transformed into thousands of stuffed animals.

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0:00 – Opening Credits
0:27 – Gary Jones Introduces Colleen
1:36 – Don8 Stuffed Toys and Operation Gratitude
4:05 – Don S Davis Memorial Badge
7:43 – Gary’s First Encounter with Don
9:13 – Want to Share Your Story?
9:41 – End Credits

***

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TRANSCRIPT
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Gary Jones:
Hi everybody, I’m Gary Jones. You might know me as Chief Master Sergeant Walter Harriman on Stargate SG-1. I’m here at my home in Vancouver and through the magic and majesty of Zoom, I’m able to talk to people all over the world and, one of the people that I’m going to chat with right now is Colleen Burke. Colleen, welcome. Welcome to my home. How are you?

Colleen:
I’m doing good. We have a nice sunny day here in San Diego, so it’s a good day to be indoors, go figure.

Gary Jones:
Yeah, San Diego’s an awesome city. Do you… Are you living near the water or where?

Colleen:
I actually grew up in Pacific Beach right on the water practically, but when I married, I moved eastward. So now I’m about 10 miles from the beach but I still go and enjoy the rays every now and then.

Gary Jones:
Oh it’s such a lovely city it’s wonderful. Listen I’ve been reading a little bit about your background with, and your connection to Stargate, and you are a busy busy woman oh my god. Colleen, tell us a little bit about your connection to Stargate. You started something that I guess began when you connected with Teryl Rothery, donating stuffed teddy bears to children’s hospitals.

Colleen:
Right. Back just before the first GateCon in 2000. It was… She was going to convention in England on her birthday and the fans asked her what they… you know, what she wanted for her birthday and she said, “I don’t want anything, donate a teddy bear to a hospital for me.” And I’m like, “oh great”, and at GateCon, there was another toy drive and they were doing it there, so I brought a teddy bear to that and it just was so cool that when I came back I said, “All right, I love teddy bears, I love stuffed toys, I have to do something more”, and I just started doing Don8, and it’s D-O-N-8, stuffed toys, right? And, it’s a winged cat holding a teddy bear as my logo, and I just started finding ways to raise funds to buy teeny bean or beanie babies and stuffed toys and donate them to local charities here in San Diego and for operation gratitude, which sends care packages to military serving outside of the United States, so by the time I… it started wrapping down after 10 years I had collected and donated over 5 000 stuffed toys and teddy bears to various charities and organizations. So yeah, I mean the most successful was when we had a fan table on the daily room floor of San Diego Comic-Con and I would buy beanie babies for like two bucks and then I’d say, “You can sponsor one for 5 [bucks] and that one will get donated and anything over and above the cost would be used to buy stuffed toys. And I would raise 700-800 dollars and donate like hundreds of toys and beanies just from each Comic-Con.

Gary Jones:
Wow.
Colleen:
So we got, yeah… until we got moved up onto the mezzanine where nobody could find us, but then I had to come up with something else. So, that was the beginning of my getting involved in the charity side of things and it’s all because of what Teryl Rothery asked fans to do.

Gary Jones:
Oh, that’s so great. That’s really great and you know Teryl was a really really close friend of Don’s, Don S. Davis, and I understand you’re wearing a [commemorative]…

Colleen:
Oh you saw that? Yeah.

Gary Jones:
Yeah, tell us about that.

Colleen:
That was… When Don passed away, I think it was the May before the Comic-Con in 2008 and… We had our table upstairs, and I just felt, for Comic-Con, I wanted to do something special and being raised catholic when you had people pass away, they had these memorial cards that they would pass out at the funerals.

Gary Jones:
Right, yeah.

Colleen:
And so I thought, “I’m going to do this.”, because that was also the year they were having the Continuum airing on the USS Midway Museum and I just thought, “This is perfect”, so I created the badge and I made 18 of them and I handed them out on Thursday and everybody loved them so much that I had to go home after working the con for 10 hours and I made another four dozen of these badges, only I added a little tribute on the back that basically was, “His light may have gone out in our world but his star shall forever shine in our hearts.”, and a few other things like donate to the heart association. One of my friends, Dean, ran into some of the people doing the Stargate Worlds booth downstairs and they loved the badges. They asked for some, and they gave us tickets to the premiere of Continuum on the ship, then all the actors appeared, and Dean again goes “Do you have any more badges?” I’m like, “I’m out. I gave out 40 more that… So, we all took our own badges off and gave them to Dean, and Dean gave them to all the actors down below.

Gary Jones:
Right.

Colleen:
And the next day they were wearing them at the panels. So, you can imagine how…

Gary Jones:
Oh, this is like the best advertising ever.
Colleen:
I mean, I was both thrilled to see that they thought so much of this fan-made badge and that they cared for Don so much that they would wear them on stage so, yeah, that was…

Gary Jones:
Well, I think it really speaks to, you know, Don’s legacy and how much that guy was just beloved by people, oh my god. He’s just like, you know, he’s the best.

Colleen:
He got married, when? I think it was in 2003, I think it was? He married his best friend, he called her.

Gary Jones:
Ruby.

Colleen:
He was at Comic-Con again that year and I got to go into the green room and I got to talk to him and knowing, you know, you don’t want to be the typical fan, “Oh I love you, oh you’re a wonderful!” kind of thing and I just said, “I heard you got married, how do you feel being married?”, and he just glowed with happiness and joy.

Gary Jones:
He just lit up, yeah.

Colleen:
He did. He was just smiling as he talked about her and how lucky he was to marry his best friend. So, I’ve had many contacts throughout the years of this but that one, I think about every time I see the badge or when I think of him. That’s how I remember him, so happy to be married to this wonderful woman.

Gary Jones:
We’re gonna wrap it up right now but I will say that my first encounter with Don when I got introduced to him, I’ll never forget what he said to me. It was so Don. He… I said… They said, “Don, this is Gary. Gary, this is Don”. I said, “Hi Don”, I put my hand up to shake his hand and it was like putting my hand in some kind of pneumatic machine that just fused all the knuckles in my hand like he literally just crushed my hand, and he said to me, “Hi there I’m Don S. Davis, I’m 235 pounds of romping stomping Missouri bullshit.” And that was what Don said to me. Those were his first words to me I was like, “oh this guy is going to be awesome, as soon as I get, you know, my hand worked on, and I get out of the hospital, he’s going to be fantastic to work with.”. Anyway, thank you so much, Colleen. Lovely talking to you.

Colleen:
Thank you, Gary.

Gary Jones:
Great work that you are doing, and you know, another classic Stargate fan who just takes it to the next level and is just like, shares the kindness and generosity around the world. So, thank you so much for talking to me.

Colleen:
Thank you and thank you for having me on the Dial the Gate.

Gary Jones:
You’re welcome, bye-bye.

Colleen:
Bye.

Gary Jones:
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.