As home oxygen therapy is the key to DASCO Home Medical Equipment’s business, establishing the first-ever scholarship for St. Mary’s School of Respiratory Care seems like a natural fit for the durable medical equipment (DME) supplier.
However, CEO Rachel Mazur cites a more heartfelt reason: her father.
“The main motivation comes from Dad passing with respiratory illness several years ago,” said the daughter of Donald Seeley Jr. “We got to watch our father be served by a DME company and it was surreal. Whatever we can do to honor his legacy, we’re honored to do.”
DASCO has created four scholarships – two are awarded each spring and two each fall.
Based in Westerville, Ohio, DASCO already had a close relationship with MHN after establishing a joint venture in the fall of 2019.
The company operates in similar ways at all of its 38 locations, Mazur says. It employs 530 people in nine states, including 15 in Huntington. DASCO serves 130,000 patients, including 25,000 in West Virginia.
Those are impressive numbers, but the most fascinating element of the company’s history comes from the lineage Mazur and her brother— DASCO President Jason Seeley—share with their grandfather, Donald Seeley Sr.
An immigrant from England, who landed here with little more than a toolbox, the elder Seeley’s first job was in maintenance at a Cleveland hospital.
His aptitude included an ability to repair iron lung machines. After meeting several doctors, one asked if Donald Sr. knew a way to get oxygen for someone: a polio patient he wanted to send home.
“He went to a welding company and got some oxygen tanks and, in my estimation, got the first home oxygen equipment for a patient—ever,” Rachel said.
That led to the formation of Seeley Medical in which Rachel’s father was a part. However, he departed after a falling out with his parents. Donald Jr. went on to purchase the DME division of a large company to launch DASCO in 1987.
Fortunately, her father and his parents later reconciled. Because of that, today Rachel and her nearly 40 extended family members remain close.
“It’s a beautiful story,” she says. “Had my father not gone through that, things could have ended up a mess, but he learned through that and got tight with his parents again.”
When not running the business, Rachel is a member of Westerville Rotary Club, whose motto is “service over self.”
Rachel sees her work with Rotary reflecting a guiding corporate value that fuels DASCO’s gifts to Marshall Health Network.
“Our purpose is to help people breathe, sleep, and feel better with a loving heart,” she said. “That’s the epiphany my brother and I had. It’s not ‘someday’ we’ll do better when we retire. We’ll probably never do better than we’re doing now.”
