Years after his death, boy's legacy of kindness leads the way

At the end of every school year, Rob and Nora Tonn show up at Hinsdale Central High School and give away scholarships to graduating student athletes who are kind. Maybe the athletes are also fast and maybe they also won a lot and maybe they're going on to play their sport in college. But also, maybe not. “We ask for nominations from coaches,” Rob Tonn said, “and we say ‘Tell us about the kid who reminds you of Brooks.”

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Brooks is their son. He died Dec. 1, 2017, from rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare cancer that forms in the body's soft tissue. He was 10 years old. This spring, he would have graduated alongside the other kids at Hinsdale Central. Instead, his classmates — even the ones who never met him — honoured him with turquoise ribbons on their gowns.

This fall, he should be heading to college. Instead, seven of his classmates will start their next chapter with scholarships in his name, spreading what he stood for: Kindness. Friendship. Radical, resilient, invincible joy. The summer of 2017, when he and his dad were taking the 7am Metra from Hinsdale to Chicago for regular rounds of chemo, Brooks played 57 baseball games.

“One game, he had chemo that morning, got to baseball, threw up in the bushes, went in and played,” Nora Tonn told me the first time I met her family.