Dear readers and writers,

Our family has come to a financial crisis. On July 19, Stephen Stone—president and editor of RenewAmerica.com—was rushed to the hospital due to excruciating pains in his stomach. He had been throwing up frequently and had lost 40 lbs in just four months. Through an endoscopy, it was found that he had an ulcer and blockage in his duodenum, a digestive organ that connects his stomach to his small intestine.

In mid-July, Stephen was in the hospital for four days with tubes in his nose—intended to drain his stomach and to feed his intestines. When it seemed he was on the mend, he was released from the hospital on July 23, but he still had a feeding tube in his nose since he wasn’t supposed to eat or drink anything by mouth for three weeks, except for fruit-based popsicles. His wife DeeAnn filled the bags hooked to the feeding tube with nutritional “formula” (provided by a home health supplier), as well as water, and maintained the pump for him, often getting only a few hours of sleep before she had to get up and refill the feeding bags. This was a 24/7 job.

On Wednesday, August 19, 2026, Steve went in for another endoscopy, where it was found that his ulcer had completely healed, although his duodenum was still partially blocked. The doctor slightly stretched the opening to 12 mm using a dilation device, but said Steve would need to come back in two weeks to have another endoscopy done to see how much he’d improved. If it was still blocked, he would need to have the duodenum stretched again, or have a stent put in, or in the worst case, have surgery. Meanwhile, he was put on a strictly liquid diet.

Compounding his problem is the fact that Steve has a large abdominal hernia that needs to be operated on, and which lately has become quite painful. The hernia was caused by the fact that a local gravel supplier insisted in delivering 13 tons of crushed concrete far from where it was needed for the floor of the home's large solarium, requiring Steve and his son Callan to move all 13 tons by hand, using shovels and a medium-sized wheel barrow, a difficult task that took several weeks to perform about ten years ago.

With Steve’s ambulance and hospitalization costs, the medical bills are piling up, which will go higher after he receives more treatment. So, for this reason, we are turning to our readers and writers for help. If you could send Steve a modest donation—that would greatly help us pay down these expenses.

An easy way to make a donation would be to send it directly to Steve’s PayPal account using his email address (editor@renewamerica.com).

If you’d rather send a check, you could send it to:

Stephen Stone
PO Box 50502
Provo, UT 84605-0502

Please let us know in advance if you plan to send a check—by emailing Stephen using the above email address.

OVERVIEW

For more than 30 years, Stephen has been actively engaged in high-intensity political work that centers in correcting social trends that ignore the foundational principles of "Americanism" upon which the United States was founded. At the outset, this work included three years of intense effort required to overturn an oppressive 40-acre zone imposed by Utah County in 1983 that changed the original one-acre zone that had been in place in most of the County since World War II to 40 acres—an extreme requirement designed to change the very nature of the County, which at the time WAS THE MOST CONSERVATIVE region in the state. As a result, by 1996, a large master-planned community named Eagle Mountain naturally sprang up in the north of Utah County, thanks to three out-of-state developers who took an interest in the beautiful region.

BACK TO STEPHEN'S CONDITION

After Stephen had his fourth endoscopy on August 19, he was progressing fine, his stomach had no pain, he had gained five pounds, and he was even able to drive a car for short distances.

Then, he went in for a follow-up endoscopy on September 8 to have the duodenum stretched to 15mm (the duodenum is supposed to normally be 20mm). After the procedure, the doctor said Steve should come back in four weeks to see how the duodenum was healing, and put him on a “low residue diet."

Unlike the previous endoscopies when Steve had no side effects, after the September 8 endoscopy Steve was in pain for 2-3 days from the procedure, had a fever, and brain fog. He lost his appetite, which caused him to lose more weight and become weak and malnourished, and he spoke only in a whisper.

The doctor’s office called him on September 16 to schedule his next endoscopy, but because of his weakened condition, we needed to reschedule it. A few days after that, Steve began throwing up, which worsened to the point he started spitting up blood.

Seeing the urgency of his condition, on Sunday, September 20, we took him to the ER once again, where they pumped his stomach and put him on IVs to restore the nutrients he had lost so he could regain his strength. He underwent his fifth endoscopy when another feeding tube was installed, which ended up being kinked, so none of the formula they were giving him for nutrition was passing through. He had to undergo another procedure the next day to straighten out the tube. After that, things worked fine and he was released from the hospital on Thursday, September 24.

The doctor said that if the duodenum wasn’t healed in 2-4 weeks from his discharge date, a robotic-assisted laparoscopic surgery would need to be used to repair the duodenum. Originally, they were going to put a stent in, but the doctor said their stents were problematictoo large for what Steve needed, so surgery was the only answer.

As of September 27, DeeAnn is helping Steve once again with his feeding through a pump and nasal tube. He is regaining his strength and is able to walk around on his own. Hopefully, if the duodenum heals this time, he won’t need surgery. Time will tell.

A LITTLE BACKGROUND ABOUT STEPHEN

For several years, Stephen Stone has been dealing with stress and health issues that have affected his stomach. Over time, these issues have been getting increasingly worse, which resulted in his duodenum rupturing in 2011, a situation that required major surgery—which not only resulted in having his duodenum repaired, but also resulted in the removal of his gall bladder and appendix.

After recovering from that crisis, he was doing fine for several years, but then in 2022, the symptoms started recurring and he sought help at an InstaCare facility. They prescribed Omeprazole and sent him on his way. But then on October 13, 2023, he began throwing up and had terrible pain in his stomach. So he was taken to the local hospital’s ER to see what was wrong. They did two CT scans and found inflammation in the duodenal loop that suggested a peptic ulcer or doudenitis—more of the same problem as before that wasn’t really addressed. They suggested he stay on Ompeprazole, which he did for several months.

For quite some time, Steve has coped with discomfort and pain in his right side. Then starting in 2025 when we were appealing our property taxes, the stress of doing so caused his symptoms to flare up, causing him more pain.

In late January 2025, Steve fell in the shower, landing on his face and scraping his back as he tried to get up. He tried for an hour to get out of the shower, but no one in the house was aware of what had happened to him. His face became swollen and he had bruising on his arms and back from the fall. This was the beginning of his most recent decline.

By May 2026, the pain in Steve’s right side increased, and he began throwing up. In fact, on Mother’s Day, he almost threw up at church, but was able to hold it until he got home. From then on, he became too weak to attend church regularly again. By July, he had lost 30-40 lbs and became very thin—almost emaciated. By July 19, 2026, Steve was in so much pain and so weak that he was taken again to the local hospital’s ER, as was explained above.

Again, please send Stephen a gift of any size to help with his medical expenses to:

• Steve’s PayPal account using his email address (editor@renewamerica.com)—that would especially help.

• If you’d rather send a check, you could send it to:
  Stephen Stone
  PO Box 50502
  Provo, UT 84605-0502
  

Heavenly performance by Malakai Bayoh of "Pie Jesu" on Britain's Got Talent

Stephen at work at his desk in the family's self-built home, which has been under construction since the early 1990s as a "homeschool project"—and which currently provides at least part-time housing for eleven family members, including Stephen and DeeAnn and their eighth child Callan (an advanced EMT), his wife Julie, their five small children, and Julie's parents, Jay and Nancy (after Jay received a liver transplant in April 2025).

(Note that building our own home has led to useful employment for at least five of our children, one of whom is the manager of a plumbing, heating, and cooling business belonging to a long-time family friend.)

Beginning in late 1999, the Stephen Stone family became the official representatives of the Alan Keyes for President campaign in Utah—leading to nearly a decade of being involved in Alan Keyes' multi-faceted quest for the U.S. presidency, a quest the family officially led the last installment of, beginning in the summer of 2007. It was during this roughly eight-year period that RenewAmerica was launched as a vehicle for getting the conservative message of Alan Keyes to the American public.

Constitutional scholar W. Cleon Skousen introduces Alan Keyes at a Utah Valley State College rally on March 8, 2000, in the same facility where the recent Charlie Kirk Memorial was held September 26, 2026. .