Altavesta Community Memorializes Ethan Hickey

The shiny plaque on the new bench reads, “In memory of Ethan Hickey, 2009.”

It doesn’t say that Ethan was a smiley, friendly third grader when he started school here.

Or “Nice and smart,” in the words of his friend, Charles O’Connor, who is now in seventh grade.

And “part of our family,” according to Principal Wendy Sprague.

The bench in Ethan’s memory was unveiled last week in the Altavesta School auditorium.

Ethan and his family moved from Malden to Woburn around 2007, Ethan’s mother, Barbara Hickey, told Woburn Patch after Sprague spoke briefly.  He entered third grade at the Altavesta School. Before they moved here, when he was 5, she said, Ethan was diagnosed with a brain tumor.  While he was at the Altavesta, he was diagnosed with cancer.

He died on April 20, 2009.

At the Altavesta, “Ethan touched all our hearts” with his smile, Sprague told the audience, which included his family, some of his friends and their parents, school staff, school and district administrators and a number of School Committee members. He became, Sprague said, “a teacher to us.” Through Ethan’s strength, she said, students rose to the challenge and supported him.

The bench represents good, sad and silly times, too, she said, her voice choking.

As Charles O’Connor spoke to Woburn Patch about his friend, his eyes watered.

“We didn’t want him treated differently from other kids,” his mother told Woburn Patch.

Ethan’s third grade teacher, Patti Valente, said that Ethan, who she called, “my buddy,” was “a joy to have in class,” with his “infectious smile.” He made friends “right away” and was “easy to work with. He wanted to learn, even though he had obstacles.” She attended a workshop on how to work with sick children, she said.

“Enjoy every minute of every day,” Valente, herself a mother, urged.

The school shared Ethan’s story, as it happened, with parents of Altavesta students, school staff and, Sprague and school psychologist Donna Janas said, with students. Sprague sent letters to parents telling them about an anticipated transplant for Ethan. It didn’t happen.

Ethan got sicker, Sprague told parents.

His fellow students made videos for him. According to Sprague and Janas, “He loved that.”

He got even worse. Sprague and Janas began to prepare students for the worst.

Students made video good-byes. They were “unbelievable," Sprague said, “so mature.”

Then Ethan died.  Janas brought a book to school, “Tear Soup,” It’s about loss, Sprague said, any kind of loss.  Sprague brought a pot to school, and the school made its own “tear soup.” All students who wanted to participate contributed an ingredient to the soup, a thought or question about Ethan.

Some were funny, Sprague and Janas said. One child, trying to empathize, they said, wrote,  “My fish died.”

Another child asked Ethan, “Are you in heaven?”

Death, Sprague and Janas said, is part of life. "I hope it's years," Sprague said, before the students have to deal with death again.

Life has to go on, Ethan’s stepdad, Shawn Daly, told Woburn Patch. He and his wife and the rest of the Hickey-Daly family, Shane and Cory, both freshmen at ; Nick, a sixth grader at the ; and Mark, a fifth grader at the , attended the Sept. 6 ceremony.

When they moved to Woburn, Barbara Hickey told Woburn Patch, they “instantly felt they had family” here.

Besides Ethan, Cory also had cancer, his mother told Woburn Patch.  Cory is doing “wonderfully,” she said. He was “like a mother hen,” she said, to Ethan. Both boys, she said, had the same oncologist, or cancer specialist.

Cory is living proof, his mother said, that there are "survivors" of cancer.

Altavesta students and the school PTO raised money for the bench unveiled Tuesday.

Ethan’s bench will be placed outside the school, Sprague said, among flowers, overlooking the playground.