By now, you’ve probably seen the heartwarming photos of Drake visiting a terminally-ill Houston high school student over the weekend.
The 15-year-old, named Kennedy, was diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer, and in fear that she was running out of time, her classmates organized for her to experience prom, homecoming and graduation all in one day. They also decided to take things a step further and start a social media campaign in hopes of getting Drake’s attention so that he could record a video message or come and visit Kennedy. The campaign worked, and Drake was on the next flight out of LA to Houston in no time.
Yesterday, Kennedy’s dad Tony called into Houston’s 97.9 The Madd Hatta Morning Show to share all the details on Drizzy’s life-changing moment for Kennedy. Tony talked about his daughter’s illness and how it’s brought the family together, as well as how he received a phone call from Drake’s people in the wee hours of the morning, which he thought was a prank.
Catch the highlights:
On how Drake found out about Kennedy & ended up surprising her
The six girls that were actually organizing the prom, the graduation, decided to do the ‘Drake for Kennedy’ hashtag to see if they could drum up enough social media interest in this whole idea and they were able to make it happen. It was truly amazing, man. Drake is really a nice guy. Down to earth. It was Drake and his whole crew. They came in, they settled in. They ate barbecue with us. Drake talked to my daughter [and] her friends the whole time. It was amazing how it happened. He’s a really down-to-earth nice guy.It was an L.A.-based number. It was something strange. I almost did not pick up the phone because it was in the middle of the night and I didn’t actually answer it that night, I answered it the next morning. It was actually Drake’s manager that had given me a call. Very nice guy. He said, ‘Hey Mr. Brown, this is Drake’s manager. Adele would like to talk to you about Drake coming to visit Kennedy.’ In my mind I’m like okay, somebody’s got my number. They’re prank-calling me. I gave him a call and needless to say I called him like, seven o’ clock Houston time. If this is a prank caller, we’re gon’ wake them up. I did wake him up because he was in L.A. and it was five a.m., and he answered the phone and he said, ‘Hey yeah, this is Drake’s manager. We’d like to make your daughter’s wish come true. I’m gonna work on getting him there tomorrow.’ And it was Friday and he said, ‘We’re gonna get him there tomorrow.’ I’m like, that would be great if you can make that happen. He said, ‘I’ll get back with you,’ so he called me back later in the day and said it looks like it’s gonna happen. And then didn’t hear from them and he called me again on Saturday around one a.m. and said, ‘Hey, we’ll be there tomorrow.’ I said,’We wanna keep it small, intimate. We don’t want a whole bunch of media. We want this to be for my daughter and her friends who organized this thing.’[…]He stayed an hour and a half, almost two hours with her. It was real cool. I had to remind him that they had to get a plane out here, right.
This was a total surprise. This was by far the biggest and toughest secret I had to keep. I knew, my wife knew, my brother-in-law knew. I didn’t tell anyone just because of the fact that Drake’s a superstar, we didn’t want chaos in the neighborhood.
On Kennedy’s illness
Kennedy was diagnosed in July of 2012. It was right before school started so it was the end of the month. It was just a simple pick in her face that we decided to get checked out with her pediatrician that turned out to be a tumor.There is a genetic trait that is in the family that doesn’t necessarily cause brain cancer because the likelihood of brain cancer happening in a child that age is less than one percent. So it’s very rare in her situation, but there was some hereditary connection there.
If you know Kennedy, she’s very independent and throughout this whole ordeal, I mean for the last eighteen months to two years, she did not want to be treated differently. When she started high school at Carnegie Vanguard, there was no history there in terms of her illness, so she did everything possible to make sure she was treated the same. She didn’t ask for extra time to get her homework done, and when she was out she always got her homework done on time. Many of the students weren’t aware that she was going through such a struggle.
On how the family is handling it
My sons, they understand what’s going on. I think it’s actually brought us closer together. We talk more. The kids are spending quality time with their sister. Let me tell you a heart-wrenching story. When Kennedy first got the news about this, she asked my wife, ‘Mommy, can you take me to the bank?’ She drew out half of the money that she had because she wanted to give her brothers a gift. She bought them each a GameBoy, a game. She looks at me and she says, ‘Well Daddy, I have something for you. Everybody else is getting a gift.’ I said, ‘No, you don’t have to get me anything.’ She goes to her room and she had made me — I’m a University of Texas alumni — so she had made me Texas Longhorn love engraved with the Longhorn and fall of 93, which is when I graduated. I was like wow, this little girl is really thinking ahead.
Drake is amazing for this!
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