A little guy with a big heart, Kyle.

By GREG JOHNS
P-I REPORTER

Eight-year-old boys should never die. They should be forever running, chasing, playing, laughing.

They should be doing everything Kyle Roger did every day of his life, until the cancer in his brain finally overcame the spirit that pushed him to the very end Saturday morning.

Two years ago, I went to write a story on a little 6-year-old from Bellingham who wanted to meet Washington quarterback Jake Locker. At the time, Locker had yet to play a college game, but he was happy to accommodate a Huskies family from his hometown.

Turns out, that was a day to treasure. Locker was tremendous, a gentle soul willing to run around the turf at Husky Stadium playing catch, allowing Kyle to chase and tackle him, walking out of the tunnel hand-in-hand with Kyle and his brother, Nicolas, just like a pregame ritual, eventually finding out where Kyle sat in the stands on Saturdays and promising to point to his new friend the first time he scored a touchdown in a real game.

Locker was pure gold. But Kyle? This kid was the real star.

You’d never have known such a bright little boy was sick, that an insidious, inoperable cancer called diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma was already weaving its way into his brainstem.

Kyle Roger had something special. An unpretentious spirit. A contagious enthusiasm. A natural ease uncommon for a child his age, or for most people, come to think of it.

This was a youngster who months later, at another visit to a UW practice, walked up to the intimidating Tyrone Willingham, stuck his hand out to introduce himself and then asked if it was OK if he could play with his quarterback.

That’s just the way he was. Happy to see you. Happy to be alive. And it was a spirit that touched everyone who met him.

“Whether he knew it or not, he was somebody I looked up to,” Locker said Sunday, a day after learning of his young friend’s death. “He was only 6 or 7 years old, but just how he went about living his life and how he treated people, he had a huge impact on me. He was somebody I really admired and respected.

“It doesn’t seem fair that a kid like him with such a great attitude and with so much life ahead should be cut short like that. It’s hard to wrap your head around why stuff like that happens.”

Locker formed a bond with Kyle from that first meeting and kept in touch. The two got together when the family came to Seattle for medical treatments. Locker played video games with the youngster, went to lunch, hung out whenever possible.

Six months after their initial meeting, Locker lived up to his promise, pointing up at Kyle after scoring his first Husky Stadium touchdown on a run against Boise State. And for more than a year, things seemed to be going amazingly well for the little fellow with the big heart.

His mom, Christin Willhite Roger, had one goal. She wanted her son to experience all of life he could in whatever time he had.

One of the first things was meeting Locker. But it didn’t end there. The family took Kyle to Disneyland and Hawaii. Went skiing, rode horses, swam with dolphins. Became Lucky Dawg for a day at a Huskies game, going out to midfield for the coin toss with the team captains.

In between school and vacations came constant trips for radiation and chemotherapy and MRIs of the brain to measure the disease’s progress, the kind of reality checks that stuck in the minds of everyone watching this family’s delicate journey.

After almost two years, Kyle’s body could no longer take the endless treatments and his “brain bump” as he called it, began returning at a rapid rate.

Unchecked, cancer can be quick and cruel. This past Christmas break, Kyle walked away from his elementary school in Bellingham on his own power. A few days later, he was in a wheelchair. He started losing his hearing, his sight, his muscle control.

Read full article: A little guy with a big heart, Kyle made the most of a life cut short