Noah Wilson’s legacy of kindness lives on

Even through the chemotherapy and radiation treatments, and even though Children’s Mercy became their second home, Deb and Scott Wilson of Olathe wanted their 6-year-old to feel like a kid.

But finding the fun in a hospital room was a daily challenge.

“After you’ve been there six months,” Scott says, “you’ve seen all the movies, you’ve played all the games.”

Luckily, little Noah had plenty of ideas. After deciding that beige bandages were boring, he collected colorful ones with kid-friendly designs and donated them to the hospital. He made handwritten cards for nurses and gave toys to other patients.

He made a happy birthday poster for his hero, Royals first baseman Eric Hosmer, and became a favorite of the team.

Noah was battling Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare bone cancer, but it went into remission last December. Then, early this summer, he was diagnosed with a secondary cancer, acute myelogenous leukemia. He died on June 30 at age 7.

But Noah’s legacy lives on in his charity, Noah’s Bandage Project, and in activities he designed for a new app called Zingity, which helps children build character traits such as kindness and creativity.

The free iOS app, which launched earlier this month, allows parents to choose from more than 120 activity packs, including one called “Noah’s Fun Ideas” that was designed by the Wilson family for kids who are in the hospital.

Zingity was developed by LeapSpring, an Arizona company that also created My Job Chart. The online chore chart, designed to teach kids’ responsibility, has more than 900,000 users.

CEO Gregg Murset met the Wilson family last year, when he and his family of eight drove an RV from Arizona to New York and back, stopping along the way to do household chores for families facing medical issues. After the Mursets found out about the Wilsons through a mutual friend, they volunteered to do yard work and help deliver Noah’s first batch of bandages to Children’s Mercy.

Murset says he felt an “automatic bond” with the Wilsons. Later that year, he watched from afar as Noah’s Bandage Project grew and was featured by The Huffington Post, Good Morning America and People magazine.

“I thought, ‘This kid’s got some good ideas,’ ” Murset says. In June, he asked if Noah would be interested in designing an activity pack for Zingity.

“Our vision is to have a lot of families contributing activity packs,” Murset says, “but Noah’s is the only one so far that was written by a kid. That makes it unique and special to us.”

Over the course of about three weeks, Scott and Deb worked with Noah to come up with “Noah’s Fun Ideas.” Noah had done most of the activities during his hospital stays, such as creating gifts for roommates, drawing signs welcoming new patients to the hospital floor, and building snowmen out of toothpicks and doughnut holes.

An activity called “Coffee Break” encourages kids to have their parents “bring in a few gift cards for your nurses. The cards can be for a local coffee shop, the hospital cafeteria or for some music.”

The “Contact a Hero” activity was inspired by the poster Noah made for Hosmer. After Scott tweeted a photo of it, the Royals player tweeted back:

“Thanks for my birthday sign #noahwilson. You are the man and can’t wait to meet you one day from your biggest fan HOZ.”

Hosmer later sent Noah video messages and visited the Wilsons in the hospital. Noah’s fame grew when he and his family attended several Royals games, including the World Series in 2014, as guests of Major League Baseball.

Zingity isn’t just for children who are in the hospital. Other activity packs include “Creativity in the Kitchen” and “The Magic of Movies.”

Many of the activities require the whole family’s participation, says Jennifer Morse, a mother of two from Surprise, Ariz., who tested an early version of the app with daughters Sara, 12, and Kayla, 10. While working on the “Furry Friends” activity pack for taking care of pets, they baked treats for their dogs — a learning experience for the kids and their parents.

“I see so many parents that don’t engage with their kids too much,” Morse says, because they’re busy working and kids are consumed with sports and other activities. She says Zingity “helped us do more together.”

It also helped Sara and Kayla gain independence. While completing a volunteering-themed activity pack, the girls organized a food drive in their neighborhood. They also delivered thank-you notes to police and fire stations.

Kids can earn digital badges and rewards chosen by their parents, such as a trip to the park or ice cream shop. Those who complete “Noah’s Fun Ideas” can get a free accessory pack from Shadow Buddies, a Lenexa foundation that makes doll “buddies” for children with certain medical conditions. The accessory pack includes buddy-sized clothing as well as a superhero cape, a hospital ID band and a box of brightly colored bandages.

Some Zingity activity packs are free; others cost about $1. “Noah’s Fun Ideas” costs 99 cents, and a portion of proceeds goes to Noah’s Bandage Project. The charity has donated about 24,450 boxes of bandages to date. Two of its biggest supporters are the Royals, who contributed 7,000 boxes, and Olathe schools, with 6,000 boxes.

Until there is a cure for cancer, the Wilsons want to help other families find bright moments in the midst of battling the disease.

Noah “had a lot of fun activities that helped take his mind off treatments and the chaos of fighting cancer,” Scott says.

On Oct. 28, on what would have been his eighth birthday, the Royals awarded Noah the Buck O’Neil Legacy Seat behind home plate at Kauffman Stadium. Scott sat alongside Deb with Noah’s siblings, Conner, 11, Kailey, 9, and Natalie, 5. As the family watched Game 2 of the World Series, they thought of Noah and how much he loved The K.

“We saw him smile last year,” Scott says, “and that’s something we’re so thankful for.”

This story was originally published November 16, 2015 at 12:04 PM with the headline "Noah Wilson’s legacy of kindness lives on."