I have a lot of ideas, but that is all they would be if I did not have Cathy Knudtson to bring them to life. There are no words to say how much I think of her, or what she means to me and my family. One thing I do know, she was sent by God. All I can says is, Thank you Cathy. Joe (Papaw) Anderson (written by Lisa DeMaio Brewer, Record Correspondent for The Record Newspaper and published in the February 16, 2000 edition) William Joseph Anderson was a special boy whose family remembers him not just for how he died, but for how he lived. "I called him 'Mr. William'", said his grandfather, Joe Anderson. "His mother had named him William Joseph and had forbidden anybody to call him anything else besides William. So I told him one day that a boy with a name like that ought to have a 'Mister' put in front of it. So I always called him 'Mr. William' after that." He was a young boy, only six years old at the time of his death. He was born March 6, 1993 and died November, 30, 1999. On the day of his third birthday, he was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a rare form of cancer. "It goes without saying that the family was devastated." recalled Anderson. "I remember as clear as if it was yesterday. The doctors talked to my wife and I in the hall. They told us William was in Stage 4, a far advanced stage as there being only 5 stages of neuroblastoma." Joe and Patricia Anderson, parents of William's mother, Tammy, were told that the survival rate for neuroblastoma patients was about five years, or about 12 to 14 percent. But given the rarity of the disease, there was "not that much to go on," and William would "probably make his own case." Chemotherapy treatments were begun immediately and continued for about three months. In early July, William was scheduled for surgery to remove a tumor the size of a tennis ball from his abdomen. It was believed that surgery would last no more than four hours. Instead, it required eight hours as surgeons worked to remove the tumor's grip from around William's blood vessels, veins, kidneys and adrenaline gland. Approximately 90 percent of the tumor was removed; the rest would be attacked with radiation treatment. After recovering in the hospital, he was sent home. "He healed very fast," Joe Anderson recalled. "He was up running around and playing in no time at all, it seemed like." In August, William's bone marrow was harvested, cleaned with radiation, frozen and stored. William would receive his own bone marrow at Duke Medical Center in November. In the meantime, the Make-A-Wish Foundation had been notified. Since William's case was considered terminal, he was granted a wish. He was able to take his family to Disneyworld. A limousine took William, his mother, and his grandparents to the Hickory airport. A small plane flew the family to Charlotte, where they boarded a jet for Orlando. From there, they were provided a rental car to drive to Give the Kids the World. "That's a place that works with Make-a-Wish," Anderson said. "It's a place where families with terminal kids stay. It was a very nice place; William loved it very much. "It had its own two-bedroom apartment and it had a large backyard. There was a boardwalk out there and a lake which had large turtles and a crocodile, a baby crocodile." Anderson paused a moment to chuckle at the memory. "William was really thrilled at this crocodile. We had been out there throwing bread to it. His grandmother came out and she was sitting on the top of the boardwalk laughing and throwing bread over, when suddenly this crocodile jumped out of the water and it nearly scared her to death. Mr. William like to busted a gut laughing. It tickled him so." The seven days at Disneyworld were fun-filled for the family, as they visited MGM Studios, Universal Studios, and the Magic Kingdom--twice, at William's request. William played hide-and-seek behind cut-out cartoon figures and had his picture made with Winnie the Pooh in a computerized setting. Anderson recalled that William was particularly pleased to see Mickey Mouse's house and Pluto's house. But when the boy saw Minnie Mouse's house, he became upset. "He would not go in Minnie Mouse's house," Anderson said, "because he had always believed that Minnie and Mickey were married and that they should live together. He would not go in there. We all thought this was very funny, that a kid three years old was worried about whether they were married or not." On November 5, the Anderson's last grandchild, Samantha, was born. It was both a happy and a sad day for the family, because it was the day William was to leave for the bone marrow transplant at Duke. William held his newborn cousin, and left for Durham. "We thought a transplant was something major, like a surgery or something, but actually it was like an IV," Anderson recalled. "They just gave him his bone marrow back through an IV. It had an awful smell. They told us it would, but we were not prepared for the way his room smelled for a long time. I can't describe the smell but it was not good." For several weeks it was touch and go. William fought off a couple of infections before finally improving. Right before Christmas, his mother and grandmother went shopping and left Anderson in the room with his young grandson. "Me and William sat there in the room and we had the best time with a tin of candy that somebody had given my wife at work," he said. "We played with that tin of candy for, I guess, two or three hours, just pouring them on the bed and throwing them back into the tin. It was Reese's Peanut Butter cups. But we had the best time with that. William always like to get those tins after that and play with them." William was released from the hospital shortly before Christmas. He and his mother stayed at an apartment in Durham near the hospital so he could return daily for tests, platelets and blood as needed. By late February, 1997, he was ready to come home. "We had signs up all along Highway 421 saying, 'Welcome Home, Tammy and William,'" Anderson said. "We had a big banner across the front porch of our house made by kids at the nursery school he attended before he got sick. He was very healthy looking. He played, he really had a good time." The Anderson's had a challenging time ahead of them trying to satisfy William's appetite. "Nobody could ever understand a cancer patient and their appetite unless they go through it," said Anderson. "From chemotherapy, William had a taste problem. He would always, constantly be searching for something that would taste good. He would eat constantly; he might not eat much, but he would eat constantly. He would eat well but he just wouldn't eat a lot at one time." Anderson recalled how the young boy would develop particular favorites among food, and asks that they be prepared in a special way. "At first it would be Oscar Mayer bologna," Anderson said. "He loved that and had to have it. He would eat it piece after piece after piece. And somewhere along the line he got the idea that nobody could fix it like PaPaw. And PaPaw had to fry his bologna. He would not let anybody else fry it. "Then it was wieners, KFC chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, pinto beans. It was a constant search for something that would taste good. He would eat it to the point where he would never want it again. It was just one of the side effects of chemotherapy," Anderson said. After William had been home, he was cancer free for about a year. But at the end of 1997, only one week after Christmas, Tammy Anderson informed her parents that William's cancer had returned. Anderson recalled that William's doctors said that patients usually did not respond well to chemotherapy the second time around; however, they would begin treatment immediately and see what happened. William did, in fact, respond very well, and gave every indication of being a very healthy little boy as long as he was receiving chemo. For 18 months, he would receive the chemical treatments, for about five days at the beginning of each month. "William always thought his mommy should stay with him in the hospital, but that it was his PaPaw's job to take him to the clinic and get platelets and blood in between," Anderson said. "We did very well. He never gave me one problem. William never complained. He was always 'all right,'" he said. "I can remember sitting in the living room of my house, and William was down in the floor playing," Anderson continued. "I don't know what kind of expression he would see on my face, but sometimes he would see it, and he would just stop, crawl up in my lap, put his arms around my neck and say, 'I'll be alright, PaPaw, I'll be all right.' "He never, ever complained. His one dream was to be a super hero. I would tell him that he was a hero. He was my hero. 'No, PapAw, I don't have any powers,' he would say. But he did have powers. He had powers that he didn't realize he had. You could see it when he was in the hospital," Anderson said with conviction. William's grandmother and aunt made him a Superman costume. Hospital nurses later told the family that they should have seen him running up and down the hall of the unit, fighting crime at two o'clock in the morning. Anderson was particularly moved in recalling William's radiation treatment during the last six months of his life. By coincidence, no other children were schedule for radiation at this time. The other patients were mostly elderly people. "There were some elderly people really having a hard time," Anderson said. "They were bitter. They were upset that life did them this way; they couldn't understand why God would do this, why me, why me. Some of them were downright hateful and hurtful, not only to each other but to anybody else who came along. "But after a couple of weeks of seeing William I began to notice that a lot of them, their attitudes were changing. They began to get calmer. I don't know how to describe it. They were just different people, just talking with William and seeing how William handled his pain. At times William, when he went to radiation, he was in some terrible pain until they got it regulated with pain medicine. But it was amazing how they reacted to William. "I'll always believe that was one of the reasons William was sent here. It was to help these people. Once when we were leaving, a lady stopped me. She told me how she had been upset, that she was really tore up about having cancer and radiation treatments and losing her hair and how she had been rejecting God and didn't want to go on, and how she thought it was everybody's fault, but hers. She told me that since seeing how William handled it, the night before she had called her pastor; he had come to her home and she had received God. And she gave William the credit for this. "And it was seeing things like that that made me realize that William's life here on earth wasn't for nothing , that God did use him in ways to help others. I had always suspected this anyway, but I saw it firsthand, so I know it's true. And I know today that William is better off than he was the last six months. "The last two months I saw the young'un every day. He was in terrible pain in times. At times he felt good. Those times I treasure," Anderson said. William's family believes that he is happy and free of pain in heaven today. Although they are learning to live without him, they insist that he is still with them because he lives on in their hearts. William's grandmother, Patricia Anderson, was insistent that the many people who helped William with fundraising and moral support be thanked. "We just wanted everybody in Wilkes County to know how much they are appreciated," she said. "People on our [Charlotte Observer] paper route have helped us in every way. People don't realize how good people are until something happens and they start helping. People think people nowadays don't care. Well that's not true. They do care. You just have to give them a chance to care, and give them a reason to care, I guess maybe that's what it is. I just thought everybody ought to know just what kind of neighbors they really do have and how great they are." The Andersons, their family, and friends organized donut sales, raffles, a gospel benefit, and other fundraising efforts to help pay for Tammy's living expenses in Durham following William's bone marrow transplant. Insurance and Medicaid covered the medical expenses. The Mulberry Ruritan Club, Rev. Tim Pruitt and Peacehaven Baptist Church, Key City Furniture, Harley Riders from Tyson, Lowes Foods in Yadkin County, Sara Lee in Yadkin County and Wal-Mart held special events for the boy. Individuals who were especially helpful included Tammy Cline, Wilma Reavis, B.J. Johnson, and John Cook at High Country Honda in Boone. For a brief time, William was well enough to attend kindergarten at North Wilkesboro Elementary School. Many there at the school participated in fundraisers for him. Friends raised money to see that William enjoyed a special visit to Tweetsie Railroad, where he "drove" the train in the cab with the engineers. William's treatments were at Baptist Hospital and Duke Medical Center, but he would often go to Wilkes Regional Medical Center for blood work. Mrs. Andersons said that he got to know "everyone" there and loved them all. She thinks that they loved him too, because she saw many WRMC employees come through the line to pay their respects to William at the funeral home after he had passed away. William's mother worked in the WRMC lab the last few months of William's life. Hospice of Wilkes was "a big blessing, especially at the end," Mrs. Anderson recalled. "And I also just wanted people to know just what kind of special boy William was," Patricia Anderson said. "He wasn't just a child that was born and then died. He was very special. And he meant a lot to a lot of people, and everybody that ever met him, they just absolutely fell in love with him and thought he was just as great as we thought he was." Mr. Anderson is especially thankful to William's mother, who sacrificed much of her own time with William to Mr. Anderson. She recognized the special relationship that they had, and allowed them to spend time together, even knowing that her time with William would be short. William Joseph Anderson is gone for now, but surely he is not forgotten Article reproduced with the permission of The Record, North Wilkesboro, NC
I have a lot of ideas, but that is all they would be if I did not have Cathy Knudtson to bring them to life. There are no words to say how much I think of her, or what she means to me and my family. One thing I do know, she was sent by God. All I can says is, Thank you Cathy.
Joe (Papaw) Anderson
(written by Lisa DeMaio Brewer, Record Correspondent for The Record Newspaper and published in the February 16, 2000 edition)
William Joseph Anderson was a special boy whose family remembers him not just for how he died, but for how he lived.
"I called him 'Mr. William'", said his grandfather, Joe Anderson. "His mother had named him William Joseph and had forbidden anybody to call him anything else besides William. So I told him one day that a boy with a name like that ought to have a 'Mister' put in front of it. So I always called him 'Mr. William' after that."
He was a young boy, only six years old at the time of his death. He was born March 6, 1993 and died November, 30, 1999.
On the day of his third birthday, he was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a rare form of cancer.
"It goes without saying that the family was devastated." recalled Anderson. "I remember as clear as if it was yesterday. The doctors talked to my wife and I in the hall. They told us William was in Stage 4, a far advanced stage as there being only 5 stages of neuroblastoma."
Joe and Patricia Anderson, parents of William's mother, Tammy, were told that the survival rate for neuroblastoma patients was about five years, or about 12 to 14 percent. But given the rarity of the disease, there was "not that much to go on," and William would "probably make his own case."
Chemotherapy treatments were begun immediately and continued for about three months.
In early July, William was scheduled for surgery to remove a tumor the size of a tennis ball from his abdomen. It was believed that surgery would last no more than four hours. Instead, it required eight hours as surgeons worked to remove the tumor's grip from around William's blood vessels, veins, kidneys and adrenaline gland. Approximately 90 percent of the tumor was removed; the rest would be attacked with radiation treatment.
After recovering in the hospital, he was sent home.
"He healed very fast," Joe Anderson recalled. "He was up running around and playing in no time at all, it seemed like."
In August, William's bone marrow was harvested, cleaned with radiation, frozen and stored. William would receive his own bone marrow at Duke Medical Center in November.
In the meantime, the Make-A-Wish Foundation had been notified. Since William's case was considered terminal, he was granted a wish. He was able to take his family to Disneyworld.
A limousine took William, his mother, and his grandparents to the Hickory airport. A small plane flew the family to Charlotte, where they boarded a jet for Orlando. From there, they were provided a rental car to drive to Give the Kids the World.
"That's a place that works with Make-a-Wish," Anderson said. "It's a place where families with terminal kids stay. It was a very nice place; William loved it very much.
"It had its own two-bedroom apartment and it had a large backyard. There was a boardwalk out there and a lake which had large turtles and a crocodile, a baby crocodile."
Anderson paused a moment to chuckle at the memory.
"William was really thrilled at this crocodile. We had been out there throwing bread to it. His grandmother came out and she was sitting on the top of the boardwalk laughing and throwing bread over, when suddenly this crocodile jumped out of the water and it nearly scared her to death. Mr. William like to busted a gut laughing. It tickled him so."
The seven days at Disneyworld were fun-filled for the family, as they visited MGM Studios, Universal Studios, and the Magic Kingdom--twice, at William's request. William played hide-and-seek behind cut-out cartoon figures and had his picture made with Winnie the Pooh in a computerized setting.
Anderson recalled that William was particularly pleased to see Mickey Mouse's house and Pluto's house. But when the boy saw Minnie Mouse's house, he became upset.
"He would not go in Minnie Mouse's house," Anderson said, "because he had always believed that Minnie and Mickey were married and that they should live together. He would not go in there. We all thought this was very funny, that a kid three years old was worried about whether they were married or not."
On November 5, the Anderson's last grandchild, Samantha, was born. It was both a happy and a sad day for the family, because it was the day William was to leave for the bone marrow transplant at Duke. William held his newborn cousin, and left for Durham.
"We thought a transplant was something major, like a surgery or something, but actually it was like an IV," Anderson recalled. "They just gave him his bone marrow back through an IV. It had an awful smell. They told us it would, but we were not prepared for the way his room smelled for a long time. I can't describe the smell but it was not good."
For several weeks it was touch and go. William fought off a couple of infections before finally improving. Right before Christmas, his mother and grandmother went shopping and left Anderson in the room with his young grandson.
"Me and William sat there in the room and we had the best time with a tin of candy that somebody had given my wife at work," he said. "We played with that tin of candy for, I guess, two or three hours, just pouring them on the bed and throwing them back into the tin. It was Reese's Peanut Butter cups. But we had the best time with that. William always like to get those tins after that and play with them."
William was released from the hospital shortly before Christmas. He and his mother stayed at an apartment in Durham near the hospital so he could return daily for tests, platelets and blood as needed. By late February, 1997, he was ready to come home.
"We had signs up all along Highway 421 saying, 'Welcome Home, Tammy and William,'" Anderson said. "We had a big banner across the front porch of our house made by kids at the nursery school he attended before he got sick. He was very healthy looking. He played, he really had a good time."
The Anderson's had a challenging time ahead of them trying to satisfy William's appetite.
"Nobody could ever understand a cancer patient and their appetite unless they go through it," said Anderson. "From chemotherapy, William had a taste problem. He would always, constantly be searching for something that would taste good. He would eat constantly; he might not eat much, but he would eat constantly. He would eat well but he just wouldn't eat a lot at one time."
Anderson recalled how the young boy would develop particular favorites among food, and asks that they be prepared in a special way.
"At first it would be Oscar Mayer bologna," Anderson said. "He loved that and had to have it. He would eat it piece after piece after piece. And somewhere along the line he got the idea that nobody could fix it like PaPaw. And PaPaw had to fry his bologna. He would not let anybody else fry it.
"Then it was wieners, KFC chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, pinto beans. It was a constant search for something that would taste good. He would eat it to the point where he would never want it again. It was just one of the side effects of chemotherapy," Anderson said.
After William had been home, he was cancer free for about a year. But at the end of 1997, only one week after Christmas, Tammy Anderson informed her parents that William's cancer had returned.
Anderson recalled that William's doctors said that patients usually did not respond well to chemotherapy the second time around; however, they would begin treatment immediately and see what happened.
William did, in fact, respond very well, and gave every indication of being a very healthy little boy as long as he was receiving chemo. For 18 months, he would receive the chemical treatments, for about five days at the beginning of each month.
"William always thought his mommy should stay with him in the hospital, but that it was his PaPaw's job to take him to the clinic and get platelets and blood in between," Anderson said.
"We did very well. He never gave me one problem. William never complained. He was always 'all right,'" he said.
"I can remember sitting in the living room of my house, and William was down in the floor playing," Anderson continued. "I don't know what kind of expression he would see on my face, but sometimes he would see it, and he would just stop, crawl up in my lap, put his arms around my neck and say, 'I'll be alright, PaPaw, I'll be all right.'
"He never, ever complained. His one dream was to be a super hero. I would tell him that he was a hero. He was my hero. 'No, PapAw, I don't have any powers,' he would say. But he did have powers. He had powers that he didn't realize he had. You could see it when he was in the hospital," Anderson said with conviction.
William's grandmother and aunt made him a Superman costume. Hospital nurses later told the family that they should have seen him running up and down the hall of the unit, fighting crime at two o'clock in the morning.
Anderson was particularly moved in recalling William's radiation treatment during the last six months of his life. By coincidence, no other children were schedule for radiation at this time. The other patients were mostly elderly people.
"There were some elderly people really having a hard time," Anderson said. "They were bitter. They were upset that life did them this way; they couldn't understand why God would do this, why me, why me. Some of them were downright hateful and hurtful, not only to each other but to anybody else who came along.
"But after a couple of weeks of seeing William I began to notice that a lot of them, their attitudes were changing. They began to get calmer. I don't know how to describe it. They were just different people, just talking with William and seeing how William handled his pain. At times William, when he went to radiation, he was in some terrible pain until they got it regulated with pain medicine. But it was amazing how they reacted to William.
"I'll always believe that was one of the reasons William was sent here. It was to help these people. Once when we were leaving, a lady stopped me. She told me how she had been upset, that she was really tore up about having cancer and radiation treatments and losing her hair and how she had been rejecting God and didn't want to go on, and how she thought it was everybody's fault, but hers. She told me that since seeing how William handled it, the night before she had called her pastor; he had come to her home and she had received God. And she gave William the credit for this.
"And it was seeing things like that that made me realize that William's life here on earth wasn't for nothing , that God did use him in ways to help others. I had always suspected this anyway, but I saw it firsthand, so I know it's true. And I know today that William is better off than he was the last six months.
"The last two months I saw the young'un every day. He was in terrible pain in times. At times he felt good. Those times I treasure," Anderson said.
William's family believes that he is happy and free of pain in heaven today. Although they are learning to live without him, they insist that he is still with them because he lives on in their hearts.
William's grandmother, Patricia Anderson, was insistent that the many people who helped William with fundraising and moral support be thanked.
"We just wanted everybody in Wilkes County to know how much they are appreciated," she said. "People on our [Charlotte Observer] paper route have helped us in every way. People don't realize how good people are until something happens and they start helping. People think people nowadays don't care. Well that's not true. They do care. You just have to give them a chance to care, and give them a reason to care, I guess maybe that's what it is. I just thought everybody ought to know just what kind of neighbors they really do have and how great they are."
The Andersons, their family, and friends organized donut sales, raffles, a gospel benefit, and other fundraising efforts to help pay for Tammy's living expenses in Durham following William's bone marrow transplant. Insurance and Medicaid covered the medical expenses.
The Mulberry Ruritan Club, Rev. Tim Pruitt and Peacehaven Baptist Church, Key City Furniture, Harley Riders from Tyson, Lowes Foods in Yadkin County, Sara Lee in Yadkin County and Wal-Mart held special events for the boy. Individuals who were especially helpful included Tammy Cline, Wilma Reavis, B.J. Johnson, and John Cook at High Country Honda in Boone.
For a brief time, William was well enough to attend kindergarten at North Wilkesboro Elementary School. Many there at the school participated in fundraisers for him.
Friends raised money to see that William enjoyed a special visit to Tweetsie Railroad, where he "drove" the train in the cab with the engineers.
William's treatments were at Baptist Hospital and Duke Medical Center, but he would often go to Wilkes Regional Medical Center for blood work. Mrs. Andersons said that he got to know "everyone" there and loved them all. She thinks that they loved him too, because she saw many WRMC employees come through the line to pay their respects to William at the funeral home after he had passed away. William's mother worked in the WRMC lab the last few months of William's life.
Hospice of Wilkes was "a big blessing, especially at the end," Mrs. Anderson recalled.
"And I also just wanted people to know just what kind of special boy William was," Patricia Anderson said. "He wasn't just a child that was born and then died. He was very special. And he meant a lot to a lot of people, and everybody that ever met him, they just absolutely fell in love with him and thought he was just as great as we thought he was."
Mr. Anderson is especially thankful to William's mother, who sacrificed much of her own time with William to Mr. Anderson. She recognized the special relationship that they had, and allowed them to spend time together, even knowing that her time with William would be short.
William Joseph Anderson is gone for now, but surely he is not forgotten
Article reproduced with the permission of The Record, North Wilkesboro, NC
