Nick Wolf loved butterflies. His parents, Christina and Jim, raised them in the family’s patio garden. He and his younger brother Scott learned almost everything about them, and loved to share little tidbits of information about butterflies whenever they had the chance.
Last year, as a brain tumor ravaged the fifth-grader’s body, but never his spirit, and the end was near, Christina told Nick that when his time came, to remember to send messages from heaven via butterflies.
Thanks to almost 70 former and current students, teachers, friends and family, some of those message-carrying butterflies may actually land in a perfectly manicured garden behind Hunter’s Green Elementary, where Nick attended school.
Teacher Cheryl Pahl led a contingent of earnest gardeners on April 9 in building and planting the Nick Wolf Memorial, a butterfly garden behind the school near its athletics track just off Cross Creek Blvd.
Christina planted the ceremonial first plant, a pentas, as Jim and Scott looked on.
“I know this is how he would want to be remembered,’’ she said.
Pahl has not only spent the past 15 years helping children to grow in her role as one of the gifted class teachers at HGE, she has done a pretty good job in school’s garden as well. Tomatoes, beans, and kale — lots of kale — have sprung forth from a dozen or so raised beds she and her students monitor (and steal a healthy treat or two from on occasion).
Pahl said she was honored to help plant some memories for those who knew Nick. Built with money left over from last year’s fifth-grade fund raiser, the garden was tilled and ready to go when friends and family showed up at HGE on Saturday morning.
“He just knew how to light up a room,’’ said Alexa Trafficante, a former math and science teacher at HGE who taught Nick in the fourth grade. “He always came in with a joke to tell you. He even had a smile if it was the day after a chemo treatment. That’s why I think a butterfly garden is the best way to show our love for him.”
Nick was experiencing headaches and nausea in May of 2011 when Christina took him to the doctor. In just a week after that first visit, as Nick continued suffering from unbearable pain, he was diagnosed with a primitive neuroectodermal tumor (PNET) on the right side of his brain and headed into surgery, followed by months of radiation and chemotherapy. He spent 89 straight days in the hospital.
“All he wanted to do was get back to school,’’ Christina recalled.
Although he suffered permanent hair loss after six rounds of chemotherapy and 31 radiation treatments, Nick appeared to be winning his battle. “Yes, he got some stares, but that didn’t bother him at all,” Christina said.
In September of 2014, an MRI showed no indication of cancer. However, a few months later, Christina said, the tumor had returned. Nick also was fighting hemolytic anemia, an abnormal breakdown of red blood cells in which they are destroyed and removed from the bloodstream, a condition likely caused by the amount of chemotherapy he received.
Maxed out on radiation treatments, there was sadly little left for Nick to do.
“Nick was a fighter,’’ Christina said. “After he found out it came back, he cried for a bit but he said, ‘I’m not giving up.’”
Nick continued to talk about the future. He wanted to buy his own laptop when he got older. He wanted to know what kind of car he was going to get. The fact that he continued to press on with such a devastating tumor amazed doctors.
Christina took him to school to exchange valentines at HGE in 2015. She says Nick was able to complete many of the items on his bucket list — he swam with dolphins, rode on a motorcycle, served as an honorary team captain for the USF baseball team and got to go on a Disney Cruise with his family.
He was still fighting and defying the odds, until on April 12 of last year, following a seven-hour seizure, he slipped into an unconscious state. He survived another month before finally passing away at age 11 on Mother’s Day.
“Aside from that last month, even knowing what his condition was, he always had a smile on his face,’’ Christina says. “He just had an amazing attitude.”
That is what many who helped plant the butterfly garden will remember about Nick, and why so many showed up to help.
To attract monarch butterflies, the gaggle of gardeners planted plenty of milkweed, which is the only thing monarch butterflies eat, Paul said.
The group also planted plumbago and cassia, a flowering tree that attracts caterpillars. “If the caterpillars eat the tree, and it has yellow flowers, the caterpillars will be yellow,’’ Pahl said.
Parsley, dill and penstemon were also planted, all of which are feeding plants for caterpillars, as well as butterfly weed.
Pahl hopes to add a citrus tree, since butterflies like to lay eggs on citrus trees.
A brief ceremony followed the planting. A plaque with Nick’s name on it was placed in the garden, and butterflies were released by Christina into the sky. Most of them headed right for the fresh plants. Others landed on giggling children who had helped plant the garden.
Some, Christina likes to think, may have even been carrying messages.
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