{"id":19223,"date":"2017-11-29T17:13:12","date_gmt":"2017-11-29T22:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=19223"},"modified":"2017-11-29T17:13:12","modified_gmt":"2017-11-29T22:13:12","slug":"community-rallies-to-support-business-owner-mike-rathke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/community-rallies-to-support-business-owner-mike-rathke\/","title":{"rendered":"Community rallies to support business owner Mike Rathke"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Marilyn Rathke could barely find the words to express the gratitude she felt Thursday as people filed through the doors of MR Menswear.
\nThe Alliston woman, along with her husband Hans, was there to lend a hand as people opened their hearts \u2013 and their wallet \u2013 in support of their son, business owner Mike Rathke, who has been waging a second courageous battle against cancer.
\nThe holiday season is a make or break time of year for any business owner, especially so for a sole proprietor like Mr. Rathke and this year was looking pretty bleak. His treatments over the course of the last year has kept him largely away from the store, a trend that will continue for the next little while as he recovers, but the future is looking brighter thanks to \u201cMike\u2019s Bitches.\u201d
\nTina Fey once said \u201cbitches get stuff done,\u201d and Mike\u2019s lived up to their name.
\nThe \u201cBitches\u201d \u2013 a group of friends who banded together to help Rathke get to and from his treatment \u2013 organized the event to support the store and, through a silent auction, support Southlake Regional health Centre in the process.
\n\u201cWe all know Mike in different ways and we got together wondering what we could do to help,\u201d said Steve Hinder, one of the \u201cBitches\u201d on hand as the morning drew to a close. \u201cUs bitches were the drivers for his treatments, and the five of us each picked a day and that was our day with Mike. We watched him go through the whole process. As we chatted, we realised we had to help somehow, so what does he need help with? It\u2019s his business.
\n\u201cWe knew he couldn\u2019t be at his business, and he was so fortunate to have stayed in touch with a number of his high school buddies. The girl behind the counter of his store, Debbie, went to high school with him. She was working in retail, happened to not be working right now, found out about Mike and said she would come back \u2013 maybe shorter hours, but they would keep the doors open. She drives down every day from Alliston to help him manage the store.
\n\u201cMike would never take charity, that was never in the works, but we felt that if we could open the store today people would come because he has such a loyal client base. People love Mike, but they just didn\u2019t know what was going on.\u201d
\nMr. Rathke could only stop by the store early on in the day and what he saw moved him greatly. Over 100 people RSVP\u2019d to the event with more still coming through the doors.
\nHis mother was similarly moved.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re just really overwhelmed,\u201d said Marilyn. \u201cPeople have just come together and supported our son. It\u2019s unbelievable. They love him, just love him, and that just means everything to me. He really wishes he could be here but it is really not something that is possible right now. It would just be too much for him, but we really want the community to know how much we appreciate it all. We\u2019re just so thankful.\u201d
\nAdded Mr. Hinder: \u201cThe message is you live in a pretty special place when people rally because there is someone in need. Think of others at Christmastime. There are a lot of folks out there who could use a leg up from time to time and Mike just sets a high example for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marilyn Rathke could barely find the words to express the gratitude she felt Thursday as people filed through the doors of MR Menswear.
\nThe Alliston woman, along with her husband Hans, was there to lend a hand as people opened their hearts \u2013 and their wallet \u2013 in support of their son, business owner Mike Rathke, who has been waging a second courageous battle against cancer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19194,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/2017-11-30-04.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-503","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-01 10:05:40","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}