On Jan. 28, 2018, seven-year-old Will Kohn died of heart failure. The tough young lad from Bettendorf, Iowa would have been 15 by now, but he couldn’t make it to eight. To his family, there are many strong and positive things they will always remember about Will. To the rest of the world, he also left a small and lasting legacy.
He was the first patient admitted to what was then the new wing of the University of Iowa Stead Family Children's Hospital in January 2017. That building overlooks the University of Iowa’s Kinnick Stadium, where the school’s Hawkeyes football team plays to sold-out crowds of 69,000 fans on Saturdays in the fall.
Far too much of young Will’s life was spent in hospitals, particularly this hospital during what would be the last year of his life. He had been born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome and had undergone a number of surgeries before he even turned three. That’s when doctors added his name to the heart transplant list.
In September 2017, the Kohn family finally got the good news that doctors had found a donor match. Shortly after that, Will underwent transplant surgery. This enabled him to go home with a new heart by December of that year. Things were looking up.
During his stay at the hospital that fall, one of the positive things he got to experience was a new tradition that had just started inside that football stadium down below. The upper floors of the hospital looked directly into the Hawkeyes football stadium with a totally unobstructed view.
This provided the kids and their loved ones with a game-day distraction from hospital things on Saturdays. Right from the hospital, they could take in the games and all the pageantry of college football.
In the spring of 2017, a die-hard Hawkeye fan named Krista Young was thinking about that stadium, one where she spends every home game in her black and gold, cheering on her team. She was anticipating the sight of that new fixture in the skyline just above those stands. She had been paying attention to all of the coverage and attention given to the new hospital wing across the street while it was under construction.
According to KCRG-TV in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Young was the one who came up with an idea that there should be some connection made between those kids in that hospital and the fans down below. And so, KCRG reported, “The mom of three, from the small town of Anita, posted to Hawk fan page Hawkeye Heaven in May. ‘I think with the new U of I hospital addition open,’ the post read, ‘Kinnick should hold a wave to the kids minute during every game.’”
Young told KCRG, "It wasn't a big drawn-out process… I just kept seeing the photos when they opened up the addition. I just kept seeing sweet little bald heads staring down. I just thought, 'Hey, wouldn't this be cool.'"
In pretty short order, Levi Thompson, who operated the Iowa Hawkeye Facebook fan page, pushed the idea out to his page’s followers, all 100,000 of them, calling on people to send in their photos of their kids from that hospital. The response was awesome.
Soon enough, Young’s idea became a reality, and a new college football tradition was born. Now, between the first and second quarter of Iowa games at Kinnick Stadium, those 69,000 football fans, along with all of the players and coaches on both sidelines, pause to honor those young patients. They stop what they’re doing, look up to that hospital and just wave.
USA Today’s George Schroeder had the chance to chronicle the scene when young Will Kohn had the chance to watch that sea of black and gold look up at him and his fellow patients to wave to them during a night game:
The moment nears. Will Kohn's father leans over and asks: ‘Are you ready?’ The boy nods, his gaze fixed on the scene 12 stories below. And then his eyes grow very wide. Will is 6. This is his 295th day at the University of Iowa Stead Family Children's Hospital – his 44th with a new heart. He'd been up here once before to see the fans at Kinnick Stadium wave in unison to him and the other young patients watching from the windows of the new hospital wing. This time, Will's wave back to the crowd is bigger, more confident.
It's a night game, so many in the crowd fire the flashes on their phone cameras: Tens of thousands points of light, aimed at the children who can't be at the stadium. Will hasn't spoken in months, since he underwent a tracheotomy to help him breathe. He gets his parents' attention by clicking his tongue, then communicates by mouthing sentences. Sometimes, a dad only needs to see his son's eyes.
‘They were huge when he saw all the lights from the cameras,’ says Chris Kohn, his father. ‘This was his first night wave. I think it even caught him off guard.’
As Schroeder noted in his account, it’s such a little thing for the fans. It’s so easy to do, and yet when waving to those children, they are reminded that there are things in life more important than a college football game. He noted something that may seem obvious but must be said; some of these children are in the “fight for their lives.”
Will’s mother, Meghan Kohn, told Schroeder that the wave from all those fans means more to patients and their families than people may realize.
“A whole stadium turning and waving … it’s huge,” she told Schroeder. “The kids just forget about their hospital life for just a few moments.”
For the Kohn family, that joy would not last. In January 2018, doctors diagnosed Will with something new – large B-cell lymphoma. And so, while he had finally gotten that new heart he so badly needed, life had other plans. He died within weeks.
Will’s family maintained a Facebook page of their own at the time. It was called Team Will. In announcing his passing, the page read: “He can now be the boy we always dreamed him to be able to be. He can run around, shoot hoops and just be a normal 7-year-old boy."
To say that these kids have an impact on Iowa fans, the university, and especially the football program would be an understatement. Perhaps no one realized the power of it all at first, but this new game-day tradition has been something more. It has served as a vehicle where Hawkeye Nation got to know who those patients were and are and forge a deeply meaningful relationship. They may not always know each other’s names, but the bond is clear.
The thing that keeps it all going is something that only lasts for 60 seconds at the end of the first quarter at every home football game. But its power lies in the fact that it’s the intentional act of noticing. For more than a few in that stadium and in that hospital, it’s even more than that. It’s also the quiet but intentional act of praying, if for just a moment.
It’s not far-fetched to believe that there’s a healing power in that wave. To be sure, it can’t fix a broken body, but it can most definitely boost the spirit of a child who needs some encouragement. And it can warm the soul of every fan inside that sea of black and gold.
Today, the undefeated Iowa Hawkeyes will meet Northern Iowa University Panthers at 3 p.m. CDT in Kinnick Stadium. You can be sure the stadium will be packed, and those little fans in those windows will be there, looking down, waiting for the end of the first quarter when one of the finest college football traditions in the country continues. I have to believe that Will Kohn will be looking down, too.
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