GoFundMe gains traction for ill broadcaster Art Hains

Businesspeople are among donors to a trending GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign for local sports broadcaster Art Hains, who is ill.

The GoFundMe, called "Help Art Hains during his recovery from West Nile," had gathered $48,290 of its $250,000 goal by deadline. Rob Fulp, executive in residence at Missouri State University, organized the fundraiser three days ago.

"With the blessing from the Hains family – his wife, Lisa, his son, Chris, and his daughter, Kathleen – I have launched this GoFundMe to support Art and his battle back," Fulp wrote on the fundraising page. "Art Hains has been ... behind many of southwest Missouri’s greatest sporting moments throughout his hall- of-fame broadcasting career."

Hains’ illness began on Sept. 17 while he was calling the MSU football game at the University of Arkansas and experienced pain in his legs. He was admitted to CoxHealth two nights later after losing mobility in his legs, and in the days following was diagnosed with the mosquito-borne West Nile virus. He was moved to University of Kansas Medical Center, and his family is looking to relocate him to the Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital in Lincoln, Nebraska, according to the GoFundMe page.

Hains has called MSU and other Springfield sports games consecutively since 1985, according to a separate news release in 2016, when he was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame. MSU's director of broadcasting, Hains has been "The Voice of the Bears" for years, according to MissouriStateBears.com. In 2008 he added the additional duties of game-day host for the Kansas City Chiefs Radio Network, according to the website.

The GoFundMe page shows donations from businesspeople including David and Stacey O'Reilly, William Turner, Bill and Nydia Rowe, Summer Trottier and Fulp.