New Hope Dedicates Bench to Danny Holt

The New Hope Baptist Church opened its new playground Saturday and dedicated a bench to the Baby Bus, Danny Holt of Danbury.

Friends and family had been raising money for the park and bench, and the hard work paid off Saturday when more than 50 people gathered in the playground to dedicate its opening.

Greg Holt, Danny's father, recalled Danny playing football at Danbury High School, where they called him the Baby Bus, because he was hard to stop. He was named after Jerome Bettis, known on the Pittsburg Steelers as The Bus.

"New Hope put in the majority of the work. The kids (Danny's Brother Jay, his friends and Danny's friends) put in their work," Greg said, sitting on the bench with his son's name on it. "This is the coolest thing."

Danny Holt volunteered his time to help children at New Hope and at the YMCA. He died of lung cancer at age 23, but he didn't smoke.

"We lost someone so dear to us, who spent so much of his life working with the youth of this community. The Baby Bus left us," said Cedric Rice, who helped manage the New Hope Baptist Church expansion, which grew the church from about 5,000-square-feet to 32,000-square-feet. The final step on what was a 10-year path was opening the playground.