Christmas joy spreads at Doernbecher Children's Hospital, thanks to legacy of one special boy

On the 10th floor at OHSU Doernbecher Children's Hospital, Hunter Thawley's spirit is everywhere.

It's in the ornaments draping over hand-sanitizer dispensers outside each patient's room. It's in the garlands wrapping hallway handrails, in paper snowflakes flocking windows, in ribbons festooning chemotherapy bays and in wacky baubles and Dr. Seuss cat hats trimming holiday trees.

That sense of Hunter will be there after the season has passed and the decorations are packed away, too, because, as his mother, Lenore Davis-Thawley, wrote in a 2010 blog post about her 3½-year old, "We not only have to find a way to live without Hunter, but we have to find a way to live WITH Hunter. We have to find a way to live with his memories and his laughter and the joy he brought us. We have to find a way to cherish his being in a very positive and productive manner."

Grief swallows parents who lose children. Hearts crushed, their lives twist and knot. Their sadness stretches out ahead, seemingly beyond all hope.

But once in awhile, sweetness and generosity – even joy – sprout and grow from the sort of anguish Davis-Thawley, 41, and her husband, Todd Thawley, 42, know.

The Beaverton couple met in Los Angeles in 2002 and their getting together tale sounds as if a scriptwriter crafted it.

She was a spunky beauty and an Internet TV host. He was Hollywood handsome, a professional photographer and actor with a decent list of credits, including roles in such TV series as "ER," "Baywatch," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm."

When he stepped behind her in line at Best Buy she was sobbing, distraught over a lemon of a computer she hoped to return. He asked what the problem was and offered help. Afterward, outside the store, he roared off on his Ducati motorcycle before she learned his name.

She couldn't shake the thought of him and asked an acquaintance who worked in a photo lab if he might know a photographer who "looks like an Asian Keanu Reeves."

The answer: Zen Todd, as Thawley called himself in those entertainment industry days.

She dialed his number. He was involved but the two became friends and eventually more. He proposed in December 2005. A month later, she was pregnant with their first child. She had a plaster cast made of her baby bump and painted a lightning bolt across it.

Hunter was born Sept. 21, 2006.

Their life seemed idyllic. Lenore worked as the makeup artist for Zen's photo business, specializing in weddings and portraits for Hollywood's upper crust. Hunter was an easy-care baby and they took him everywhere, even to celebrity photo shoots.

As any parents would be, they were duly thrilled the day Hunter took his first steps, toddling from couch to table. One day later, though, their normally energetic child ran a low-grade fever and turned lethargic. Instead of bouncing and giggling in his crib, he slept.

His pediatrician prescribed one antibiotic, then another, but his condition deteriorated.

Children's Hospital Los Angeles admitted Hunter the day before Thanksgiving 2007. After a week of blood tests, scans and endless questioning from doctors about whether the 14-month-old might have been exposed to something infectious, a spinal tap delivered the answer.

Hunter had acute myeloid leukemia, a rare, fierce cancer that starts in the bone marrow, quickly moves into the blood and can spread to other parts of the body.

When doctors moved their son to the hospital's cancer floor, Lenore remembers thinking: "I don't want to go to that floor ... that is not the floor where good things happen."

Hunter started chemotherapy around Christmas. Given the nature of his of cancer, he had to remain hospitalized until he completed all five rounds, more than six months.

Exhausted from the ordeal, Lenore and Zen decided to escape LA's crazy pace. In summer 2008, they moved to Oregon. Zen was born in Culver, in Jefferson County, and he played football for Portland State University. The couple sensed the Northwest would be a place they could more easily savor family, love and life – a place where they could peacefully watch their little boy grow big.


: The nonprofit’s missions include bringing smiles to children struggling with cancer, assisting their families, and increasing bone-marrow and cord-blood donations, which can help save lives. Address: 11795 S.W. Kobbe Dr., Beaverton 97007. Phone: 503-343-5512 or 323-497-8038.

Many other Portland-area foundations provide assistance to children with cancer and their families. A few of them:

: Works to expand services for children and accelerate new cures for difficult-to-treat diseases. Address: 1121 S.W. Salmon Street, Suite 100, Portland 97205-2021. Phone: 503-294-7101.

: Founded in 2005 by the family of a Doernbecher patient, it provides compassionate financial support to families undergoing cancer treatment, blood or bone marrow transplants at Doernbecher. Address: P.O. Box 80852, Portland 97280. Phone: 503-890-7220.

: Among other work, it connects families with local and national resources, and offers a Chemo Pal mentoring program that connects kids and teens with trusted adults as they undergo chemotherapy. Address: 1200 N.W. Naito Parkway, Suite 140, Portland 97209. Phone: 503-244-3141.

As Hunter's strength returned, Lenore and Zen tried to make up for all those lost months in the hospital. They visited the zoo, played in parks and dug in the sand at the coast. On a trip to Australia with friends, Hunter had a couple of fevers but they passed.

Back home, his monthly blood test showed no signs his cancer was back.

It lurked, though.

In mid-January 2009, Doernbecher admitted him. He struggled through days of a 105-degree fever. He couldn't eat and his lungs filled with fluid. Hunter had pneumonia.

The year proved a blur of scans, blood tests, treatments and setbacks. Hunter spent most of it hospitalized. His parents quit working to be at his side.

Amy Kenagy, a Doernbecher nurse practitioner who cared for Hunter, says Zen "was a big advocate for trying different things for Hunter. He researched a lot. He looked into alternative therapies. He asked a lot of questions." Around the hospital, he was known as Dr. Dad.

Lenore spread sunshine. "She's got this presence she brings with her," Kenagy says, "that makes everybody a little more happy."

Between procedures, Hunter watched Disney's "Cars" movie so often on TV or his dad's iPhone that his parents probably can recite every line of dialogue. On good days, he'd dance, showing off what his mom calls "insane wiggle moves." When he hurt too much for that, Lenore says, "he had an eyeball dance. He had good rhythm."

Over the months, to keep family and friends updated, Lenore spilled the medical details and her emotions into posts on their blog, which the couple says still gets 10,000 to 20,000 page views each month. Photos show a usually unshaven Zen cradling his boy and Lenore, tired but nearly always smiling at Hunter, who was constantly hooked to IV drips and monitors.

Doctors tried many more rounds of chemotherapy, radiation and finally, that June, Hunter's last hope, a bone-marrow transplant.

He died at Doernbecher nine months later, shortly before 11:30 p.m. March 8, 2010. Lenore and Zen bathed him, dressed him in his "Iron Hunter" T-shirt and held him all night, until they had to let him go.

She was five months pregnant with their second child, Ryder.

They didn't know how they'd go on.

They'll never forget Hunter but they knew, Todd says, they eventually had to move past their grief. As the one-year anniversary of his death approached, Lenore remembers wondering, "What will get us through that day in a very positive and loving way?"

"You're left with this massive pile of wreckage inside of you that doesn't go away," she says. "You have to walk hand-in-hand with it."

Remembering how Hunter's face used to light up at the smallest things, like a Lightning McQueen toy car rolling over his blankets, she went on a Toys"R"Us shopping spree and with Todd headed to Doernbecher for the first time since losing their boy. Lenore remembers thinking, "Hold it together. Take deep breaths."

The gesture, that gift of toys, grew like a watered seed.

That September, before Hunter's birthday, Lenore mentioned on the blog and on Facebook that she wanted to deliver 21 iPods to Doernbecher, one for each patient in the 10-South unit, where Hunter spent his last days, often listening to music on his dad's iPhone. Donations spilled in, as they have since. The second year they delivered 30 iPods on Hunter's birthday and this year, 40, including some to cancer patients at Randall Children's Hospital at Legacy Emanuel.

She and Todd, now a firefighter with Portland Fire & Rescue, started the nonprofit Healing Hunter Foundation, which Lenore runs and helps fund with proceeds from Lightning Cupcakes, her gourmet cupcake catering company. The foundation's aim: deliver hope, love and random acts of kindness to Doernbecher's cancer patients and their families.

The work goes on all year.

Every month, the foundation surprises one family with a $100 gift card, to be used for anything they need. At Easter, "bunny sacks" filled with goodies go to the kids. Stuffed animals do, too, whenever the hospital's supply runs low. Parents get Starbucks cards to help them through the long days and nights. In Early December, Portland firefighters and other Healing Hunter Foundation elves unleash the 30 bins of ornaments and decorations the Thawleys stash at home, transforming Doernbecher's cancer unit from its usual hospital ambience into the Dr. Seuss-themed Spectacular Winter Wonderland.

"It makes us feel," says Kenagy, the nurse practitioner, "like we made a difference to inspire somebody to give back this much."

The year's not quite over. On a recent afternoon, as 3-year-old Ryder and River, the couple's 1-year-old, napped, Lenore buzzed around her family's dining room. The table nearly sagged under the weight of coloring books, crayons and new toys that will fill Santa Sacks. She'll deliver them Christmas Eve to children every bit as bright as Hunter, in the hospital permeated by his spirit.

"I want it to be a magical place at Christmas," Lenore says. "I want their eyes to shine."

-- Katy Muldoon