NFL star 'adopts' young boy with cancer, goes a step further
It doesn’t matter which NFL team you root for, this is the type of story that will add a new player to your list of favorites.
Robbie Gould has had a productive career kicking a football through a set of goalposts.
But what the former longtime Chicago Bear is doing for a young Illinois boy fighting cancer easily outweighs the 325 field goals Gould has made during his 13-year career.
When he was just 3 years old, Chase “Cha” Ewoldt was diagnosed with brain and spine cancer. The boy’s family was told he had roughly six months to live.
That was 5 years ago.
Two years ago, Cha met Gould at the kicker’s annual golf charity event. The two hit it off, and a real and lasting relationship formed between them.
“Honestly, I think Cha liked seeing an adult with no hair,” Cha’s mother, Ellie Poole Ewoldt, told the Chicago Tribune.
“He kind of just adopted Chase as his own,” she added. “This last winter Chase was in for a small procedure and it should’ve been over in a couple of hours, and it was a 12-hour day for Cha and all of sudden, I’m in pre-op, and my phone starts buzzing and it’s Robbie. He was just calling to check in on Chase.”
Earlier this month, Cha took part in a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new library in Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago. Funds to build the library came from a partnership between Gould and Ace’s Hardware.
And who was there to celebrate the occasion? None other than Gould, who is now a San Francisco 49er.
At the library’s dedication, Cha showed his NFL buddy a book his mother had written entitled “Chase Away Cancer: A Powerful True Story of Finding Light in a Dark Diagnosis.” The book now sits on one of the shelves in the new library, according to the Tribune.
Reading, it would appear, is a connection that knows no boundaries.
“Why a library?” Gould said. “I love reading to my kids. My two kids are here, they’re running around here somewhere. But I think what’s special is I get a chance every now and then to get to go home and read to my kids. We read a book before we go to bed, just part of our ritual, part of our routine. And when you’re in a hospital it’s difficult to stay in that routine. So at least there’s some normalcy.”
Though Gould is set to move to San Francisco to continue his career, he’ll first host his golf fundraiser in late June in Medinah, Illinois.
The past two tournaments have been huge successes, raising more than $1.7 million for Lurie Children’s Hospital.
Gould may not be a member of the Bears anymore, but he’s a part of something even bigger — Cha’s fight.
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