“Merry Christmas from the Westendorfs.”
While the large sign hangs over the last working farm in Kettering, it’s more like a modern-day Star of Bethlehem.
Inside that 168-year-old barn — with its stone walls and the smell of hay and animals and pine shavings mixed into the straw on the floor — there’s a Christmas Eve gathering each year that’s reminiscent of the nativity scene.
While the chickens sleep and the barn cats hide, sheep huddle in a pen in the back of the barn.
A baby Jesus statue that originated in Germany more than 100 years ago lies in a straw-lined feed trough turned crib until Evelyn Westendorf, the 6-year-old granddaughter of farm’s owners — Tom and Susie Westendorf — lifts it out and holds it above her head as part of the annual celebration of faith and family and friendship that first began going on here the night before Christmas nearly a half century ago.
There’s a crucifix, freshly cleared of cobwebs, affixed to one pillar in the barn and framed photos of special family members — including Tom’s late mother Pauline and granddaughter Rosemary Webber holding a baby lamb; Tom’s dad, the University of Dayton Hall of Fame athlete Jerry Westendorf; Tom’s late brother Ed, the thoroughbred horseman and timekeeper at Dayton Flyers basketball games — adorn other uprights.
The bundled-up crowd that gathers for the touching, homespun service sits on hay bales thrown down special from the mow up above. Their communal worship is highlighted by prayers they say together and traditional Christmas songs — like Silent Night, Away in a Manager, Come All Ye Faithful — they sing with a guitar accompaniment by the Westendorf’s brother-in-law, Bill Hirt.
It all makes for a profound reminder of the true meaning of the moment.
“You’re in a barn. Jesus was born in a barn. There’s a feeling of comfort and peace. This is what Christmas is all about,” Susie said.
When 94-year-old Pauline, known as Polly, took part in her last Christmas Eve in the barn in 2016, she voiced what many others have felt:
“I’ve never felt closer to God than I do out here.”
Five months later she died, but her sentiment lives on today.
“You’re gathered with your family and a few good friends, and it feels magical,” Tom said. “What more could you want?
“We see this as our gift to everyone.”
The tradition began five decades ago when Tom’s aunt and uncle — Julie and the late Bill Zink, who owned the farm then — organized a Christmas Eve gathering of worship and fellowship at midnight. Back then, Father Cy Middendorf from UD, led the evening with his prayers and patter. But as the couple got older, the tradition was shelved for a while.
Tom and Susie bought the brick farmhouse, barn and 13 acres (Julie, who now lives at St. Leonard, still owns 45 adjoining acres) in 2010, kept the Whispering Pines Farm name and soon revived the Christmas Eve celebration, moved it to earlier in the evening and added a family meal beforehand.
Susie is a special education teacher at Beverly Gardens Elementary in the Mad River School District and Tom is retired after working over 40 years at the University of Dayton in the athletic department — including two stints as the athletics director — then with human resources and for a long time as the university’s registrar.
For four decades now — many of those years sitting next to his brother Ed — he’s worked as the timer at Dayton Flyers men’s and women’s basketball games.
Susie and Tom, who were in the first graduating class at newly merged Chaminade-Julienne High School in 1974, have been married 44 years and have four children and 11 grandchildren. Combined, they also had 14 siblings.
Many of those family members take part in Christmas Eve at the barn.
Over the years the crowd also has included other priests, like the Marianist Irishman Father Pat Tonry and the 6-foot-8 Lawrence Mierenfeld, known by all as Father Stretch. Former UD president Dan Curran used to attend and current president, Eric Spina, and his family now are regulars.
A few other folks with UD connections are there, as are some of Susie’s fellow teachers.
But it’s the extended Westendorf family who are the prime participants.,
Tom’s older brother Mark, a retired elementary school principal in the Lakota District, often leads the group in prayer. And tonight, two of his granddaughters will do spiritual readings from a lectern made of hay bales.
The Westendorf’s seventh-grade grandson, Calvin Henderson, is presenting a few prayer petitions he’s penned himself. Although Tom doesn’t have editorial control, he said he does have a sheep hook if Calvin morphs into a long-winded preacher.
Another granddaughter, Calvin’s sister Rachel, a fifth grader at Incarnation, will include her budding violin skills with a song or two tonight in her Christmas Eve debut.
The celebration is undeterred by the elements, be it snow, rain or last Christmas Eve’s bitter cold that Tom said was “4 degrees at game time.”
Then there was the time Isabelle the llama joined the festivities with an expectorate exclamation.
Over the years, the Westendorf’s stable included a few cattle, mostly Angus and a couple of Holstein — until they trampled a neighbor’s yard and left cow patty presents — a pig name Dolly that always wanted to come into the house, a donkey named Honeydew and Isabelle.
The Westendorfs initially got her to protect the sheep from coyotes.
Then one Christmas Eve, Isabelle brought her own gift to the manger scene, though it was not gold, frankincense or myrrh.
When a priest in the crowd approached her, she baptized him with a stream of spit to the face.
‘Entwined’ with UD
Susie and Tom have many ties to UD.
Tom’s dad Jerry — and his uncle Gene — both were multi-sport stars at the school in the 1940s and are enshrined in the Hall of Fame.
Jerry was the captain of the basketball and football teams, and Tom’s mom was the homecoming queen in 1943.
The following two years — as World War II commandeered everyone’s attention — the school didn’t have homecoming royalty, so Tom used to tease his mom that she was the school’s longest reigning homecoming queen.
Susie’s late dad, Jim Woeste, who also went to UD, remembered seeing Pauline, during her reign, waving to a crowd of students.
Tom and Susie both went to UD out of high school, though Susie left to go to nursing school before eventually becoming a teacher. Her brother and sister also went to UD.
Tom and his six siblings all graduated from Dayton and three of Tom and Susie’s four children were Flyers, too. Today their daughter Sarah teaches accounting at the school.
“I guess you could say we’re pretty entwined with the school,” Tom laughed.
He first served as the business manager of the athletic department and then became an associate athletics director. He took over the head job when Tom Frericks became ill and later he became interim AD when Ted Kissell took a medical leave.
These days you can see him sitting at the courtside table between the two teams’ benches. He alternates each game, working either the game clock or the shot clock, depending on which of the two other timers is working alongside him.
He hasn’t missed a game — men’s or women’s — in five years and although he has one of the best seats in the house, he said he never watches the game:
“I have a job to do and that takes all my attention.”
An area oasis
Originally hunting land of the Shawnee Indians, the seeds of the farm — according to research done by Tom’s Aunt Julie — were first planted in about 1824 when Judge McLean “bought a land grant of acres and constructed a log cabin.”
The Swigart Family bought the property from McLean and when their daughter Barbara married William Houston, they built the existing barn in 1855 and the farmhouse up the hill a year later. The property remained in that family until the 1930s. After that Con Fecher, who taught at UD, and his wife Marie bought the place and raised five children there, including Julie.
Originally the farm was close to 200 acres, Tom said, but the construction of 675 cut through the property and later some of the land was developed.
Today, Julie’s acreage is still planted in a rotation of corn or soybeans each year.
The Westendorf’s land includes a hay field, three pastures and a large pond stocked with bass, bluegill, and grass carp. A great blue heron and several turtles call the place home, as well.
Whispering Pines is just that. It’s an oasis between the Cornerstone of Centerville development, the Greene Town Center, Rolandia and the 675 bypass.
As you drive in off Swigert Road (it’s spelled Swigart on the other side of 675), you first pass a “Honey for Sale” sign and then find yourself flanked by an old, split rail fence that Tom has decorated with alternating strands of red and blue lights, Dayton colors.
It’s suspected some of the area deer may be Xavier fans since they’ve broken some of the lights this season, likely jumping the fence.
A basketball hoop stands at the end of the lane and beyond it are several beehives which are tended to by Tom and Susie’s son-in-law Adam Webber, the beekeeper who’s responsible for Two Bees Honey, a name derived from the fact there are two Bs in Webber.
A large Norway maple from the 1700s long dominated the yard, but when it finally died, a local woodworker turned part of it into a likeness of St. Francis of Assisi. Eventually, that too crumbled and Tom took the plaque bearing his aunt’s farm history that was tacked to the back of it and put it in the barn
Tom and Susie run their farm with a bit of whimsy. They host an annual Sheep Day, last attended by 250 people, many of them children who got to pet the lambs, get a photo taken and leave with a stuffed animal that Tom buys each year at post-Easter clearance sales at places like Meijer and Walmart.
There have been sheep naming contests featured on WDTN Chanel 2 and on Farmer Tom’s X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook pages.
Before a game against VCU, Tom promised a newborn lamb would be given the name of the leading UD scorer and that gave birth to the woolen Scoochie.
Friday morning another lamb was born and Tom called it Roberto. It has a black patch over one eye, just like a pirate, and his favorite non-Reds player is Pittsburgh Pirates legend, Roberto Clemente.
The star of the farm though is Jerry, the beloved 7-½ year old golden retriever with his UD collar.
“A UD student from China got him as a puppy and kept him at Irving Commons for a year in a cage,” Tom said. “The student had two dogs and when he was going back to China, he was going to keep one and take the other one to the pound. My sister found out about it and that’s how we ended up with Jerry.”
He’s named after Tom’s dad and though he might not yet have Hall of Fame status, he twice was named the area’s “Best Rescue” winner in annual Dayton Daily News’ contests.
Pictures of him — at the Greene, Delco Park, on the UD campus in front of the chapel and at Kennedy Union, lying in the snow in front of the barn, sometimes backed by beautiful sunsets, other times decked out in Flyers’ gear — populate Tom’s social media sites.
He’s a real “chick magnet” Tom said, and he and Susie jokingly say they’ve suggested their 33-year-old unmarried son start walking him around town.
But for all the activities that go on around the farm, nothing is more treasured than the Christmas Eve celebration.
It’s scheduled to be close to 60 degrees today which means there might me a few more participants at the gathering than at last year’s polar express prayer fest.
Besides the addition of baby lambs this year — four ewes were pregnant — there’s a new visitor in the top of the barn.
“On the first day of Advent a white dove showed up and has been living up there,” Tom said. “It sits in the same spot, where the overhang is, and finds corn to eat. It’s kind of made the barn its home.”
Tom has a photo of his “dove” on his phone and when he showed it to a friend, he was told it was a pigeon.
“That might be, but ... don’t tell my sister it’s a pigeon,” he said.
On Christmas Eve, it won’t be.
That’s when the magic settles over the barn.
It’s when the people feel the true spirit of Christmas.
And pigeons become white doves.
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