Staying strong

Before Mountain Brook resident Sid Ortis died, he said a prayer with his close friends.

In that prayer, the 16-year-old encouraged everyone to do two things: remain strong in their faith by following the path of righteousness and to live prosperous lives. 

That sentiment is carried on today through his friends and through the Sid Strong Foundation, established in July 2016.

Ortis’ battle with osteosarcoma gained national attention as the city of Mountain Brook, a place where Alabama and Auburn are easily the most supported teams, was covered in purple and gold ribbons. It was the community’s way to show support for Ortis, an LSU fan, which drew attention to his story. 

Ortis died Oct. 31, 2015.

While outlets such as ESPN were doing stories on Ortis and people such as former LSU football head coach Les Miles were showing support, Ortis’ tight-knit group of friends who shared his dying prayer were always behind the scenes.

“They weren’t showing up because all of a sudden it was a story,” said David Walters, father of Grayson Walters, Ortis’ best friend. “They had always been there.”

Grayson’s mother, Kristi Walters, said while thousands of other people showed up, the kids stuck to their small group and their traditions.

“It [Ortis’ story] went viral on social media, and he got all of this attention,” Kristi Walters said. “It was a really, really big deal, which was good because it got a message out, but at the heart of it, you had these kids in the neighborhood who are really loners. They were not spokespeople, and they were not the kids that put themselves out there.”

Becoming the Sid Squad

The group that rallied around Ortis through his battle with cancer first formed when they were young. Kids in the neighborhood would gather to play man hunt, a nighttime, hide-and-seek type game, and all became fast friends. As they got older, those games of man hunt transformed into scary movie nights, and after Ortis was diagnosed, they stuck around.

“To spend 15 months being how they were, it was amazing,” said Scott Ortis, Sid’s father. “Because I think I would have run for something easier at that point.”

While the kids started out as just a group of friends, they soon became known as the Sid Squad, getting attention for their support.

“Somehow, whatever they were doing, people started looking at it and watching, and it inspired, really, a movement,” Kristi Walters said.

The kids did not let the attention affect them, however. The “magic formula” for their group, Kristi Walters said, came from a love for one another and their ability to treat Ortis as a normal kid. 

While the parents were worrying, the kids continued to watch scary movies and play video games, David Walters said.

“We were like best friends, and one day I just heard he had been to the hospital and they thought he had cancer,” Grayson Walters said. “I just wanted to see him all the time, and everyone else got involved and it got really big. But I just kind of stayed at the roots of being his best friend and hanging with him all the time.”

If anything, their group got closer and saw each other a little more after Ortis’ diagnosis, several members of the Sid Squad said. For many of them, it was the first person or friend they knew to have cancer. It threw them off a bit, said James Childs, but they just kept hanging out.

“It didn’t really seem real,” said Brice England. “I wasn’t quite aware of how bad it was.”

Having support from his same group of friends and keeping up their traditions helped Ortis, David Walters said, and even helped the parents.

“It didn’t change their interactions at all, and that was kind of the beauty of watching the innocence of still being a teenager and coping with real life,” David Walters said. “They just kept on, and that’s what Sid, I think, liked about having them around.”

Part of that came from Ortis’ desire to remain himself throughout treatment and the pain he felt, Scott Ortis said.

Ortis never wanted his friends to shave their heads just because he shaved his. He didn’t interact much with other children at the hospital.

“He didn’t want to be a cancer kid,” Scott Ortis said. “He never let cancer define him.”

As the cancer progressed, the Squad had to limit some of their former activities, Childs said, but that did not stop them from keeping up their movie nights, watching football games and showing up on Sundays with Buffalo Wild Wings to watch “The Walking Dead.”

“The squad was amazing. They rallied around him, and they rallied around each other,” Scott Ortis said. “They supported each other. The night he died, I think all but two stayed at the house. They stayed all night, knowing he was dying. They didn’t run.”

Establishing a foundation

Ortis’ death was a loss for everyone — the Squad, their parents, neighbors and the Mountain Brook community — and the parents at first were not sure what the next step should be, Kristi said.

“What happened was the ‘squad moms,’ we were walking with the Ortises and going through this, we’re each left with a kid who’s really young, who has suffered a major loss,” Kristi Walters said. “What do we do with that? What we realized was that they had been given a platform, and none of them were really mature enough to know what to do with it.”

The moms decided then to create the Sid Strong Foundation, a way to raise money for pediatric cancer research and something that would give their kids a chance to use their platform.

“It gives them something tangible, because we can’t do anything. We can’t bring Sid back,” Kristi Walters said. “We can only do so much as parents without professional help for our kids, but we can give them something tangible to work on.”

Because the members of the Sid Squad are still teenagers, the parents pooled together their skills and resources to kick off the Sid Strong Foundation. For now, the kids are learning the ropes of a foundation as well as helping promote foundation campaigns through social media.

The Sid Strong Foundation officially launched in July, and the junior board has since launched “16 for Sid,” a fundraising campaign that encourages donors to give $16 a month for the rest of their lives. 

“It’s mainly focused around his birthday because he died when he was 16, so it’s $16 for Sid,” said R.L. England, Brice’s brother, noting the campaign launched in early September, around Ortis’ Sept. 2 birthday.

Right now, the junior board helps to come up with ideas and works to promote the foundation, but most things they do are forward thinking. They’re learning the basics about raising funds and the intricacies of a foundation, and it’s something they plan one day to take over.

“It’s something to look forward to, which I think is great,” Brice England said. “I’m pretty excited that I get to be a part of this.”

Pediatric cancer receives about 4 percent of research funding, Scott Ortis said, and they hope to change that with the foundation. They hope to raise money to fund labs that actively research pediatric cancer, like the ones that are working with cells from Ortis’ tumor.

“Bare bones [for a lab] at Children’s is about $150,000 [to fund research] but to do it right — to do what they really need, to really make a difference — they said they need about $250,000 a lab,” Scott Ortis said. “That’s not a lot. For example, Mountain Brook for Relay for Life raises about $250,000, which none of that money — zero — stays local.”

Remaining Sid Strong

The Sid Strong Foundation goes past funding research, however. For members of the board and the junior board, it is also about keeping Ortis’ message alive — one of strength and one of faith.

“Obviously we want to be able to fund research and keep other families from having to go through this kind of thing if we can,” David Walters said. “But more importantly, you want to honor his legacy by making sure the people still see that change and that we’re acting on it.”

R.L. England said they lead their lives with the message Ortis left them, and they plan to lead the foundation in the same way.

“We try to keep his legacy in our message through the Sid Strong Foundation and not deviate from that, so staying strong in Christ and staying on the path to righteousness,” R.L. England said.

During their friendship with Ortis, members of the Sid Squad saw a renewal in their faith. Whether it was through Ortis’ prayers or his personal strength, his life has had a lasting influence, Childs said.

“His faith and his hope were so strong, and he had this disease that was so terrible and kills so many people, and I’m sitting over here like, ‘I got a bad grade on a test,’” Childs said. “It made me realize how strong my faith should be and how little those things were.”

Promoting awareness of pediatric cancer is also an important aspect of the foundation, David Walters said.

Sometimes it is hard to acknowledge the pain that comes with a child getting cancer, Scott Ortis said, and that lack of recognition can lead to a lack of funding.

“The thought of one of my children having cancer never once crossed my mind, and I deal with patients every day,” he said. “I think it’s just too painful to think about, so it’s just [raising] that awareness.”

Everyone involved with the Sid Strong Foundation and its junior board hope to save another child from going through what Ortis experienced and helping the family as well. 

“Even if it doesn’t end up directly affecting you, you think about the people that have it, they’re usually small children or teenage children like Sid,” Grayson Walters said. “Somebody cares about them. They usually have parents and close friends, so you step into their shoes and think about what their families have to go through.”

For more information about Sid Strong Foundation, go to sidstrongfound.org.