Walter Wetzel, now 17, had always thought about the little boy with a brain tumor who'd inspired him to get better while he was suffering from leukemia.
Just before Christmas, Mary Lamantia of Lake in the Hills, Ill., received a surprising gift: A young man named Walter Wetzel had left a post on her Facebook page, claiming that her son Ryan was his hero.
It took a little while for Mary to place the name, but before long, the memories began flooding back to her. Ryan was diagnosed with brain cancer at the age of 3, and Walter, then 9, had leukemia. The two boys struck up a friendship during their hospital visits. Ryan would chatter on about Spiderman and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a big smile on his face.
“He inspired me to survive my cancer,” Walter, now 17, told the Chicago Tribune. “Seeing him happy all the time made me happy. How could I be upset if he had it so much worse than me?”
But Ryan transferred hospitals, and the two boys lost touch, though Walter often thought of his little friend. In November, when he spotted a Ninja Turtles shirt at the mall, he thought to Google the details he remembered about Ryan to find out if he could track him down. He hoped to give the shirt to him as a gift.
He found Ryan—but the news wasn’t what he’d hoped. After bravely battling his cancer for three years, Ryan died in 2005 at six years old.
“It hit me pretty hard,” Walter said. “I was crying for a week straight.”
But Walter found that Ryan’s parents had started a foundation in their son’s name, and he wanted to write a tribute to his childhood friend. He left a message on the Ryan Lamantia Foundation’s Facebook wall, telling Ryan’s parents that “to see someone with so much pain and so many problems still smile and be cheerful really changed my outlook on life. Ryan was my true inspiration to survive my leukemia.” Walter’s cancer has been in remission for four years.
In early January, Walter went to the Lamantia family’s house to share stories about the boy who’d made such a big impact on him. The reunion was the best Christmas present the family could have hoped for.
“It’s not too often somebody calls your son a hero,” said Mary.