Benton pupils honor classmate> Sixth-graders collect money for spring planting of `Isaiah’s Tree’

BENTON – He was sick most of his life, but he never complained. If anything, the brown-eyed boy who loved Scooby Doo went out of his way to spread cheer.

Isaiah Desrosiers, a sixth-grader at Benton Elementary School, died last week after a nine-year fight against leukemia. He was 12 years old.

Teachers broke the grim news last Wednesday morning, just hours after the Benton boy’s death. He had attended school just two days earlier, for class picture day.

Saddened, Isaiah’s friends in Joan Vandemark’s class took a walk around the playground. Then they did two things: They created a tribute wall with little notes and paper hearts; and they took up a collection for “Isaiah’s Tree,” a flowering sapling they intend to plant next spring.

At a time when children should dwell on little more than turkeys and pilgrims, Isaiah’s friends say they hope to capture the spirit of a little boy who never wanted anything but their friendship.

“I thought of him as my brother. It was really hard for me,” classmate Steven Dawe, 11, recalled last week. “I liked to call him, `Little Man.’ He liked that.”

Another classmate, Megan Leary, said she went home and wept after hearing the news. Isaiah, whom she had known since kindergarten, was one of her best friends.

“He didn’t make fun of anyone, and n one made fun of him,” said Megan, also 11.

“He knew he had what he wanted in good friends and a good family,” she said. “He really cared about other people.”

Isaiah, the second of Daniel and Ginger Desrosier’s four children, was diagnosed with leukemia when he was 3 years old.

He fought the disease stoically, friends recalled, enduring what seemed like a seesaw of remissions and recurrences. He often missed school to undergo cancer treatments that left him frail and small for his age, but he showed up with a smile when he could. No one could recall ever hearing him complain.

Isaiah was a Boy Scout who helped walk stray dogs at the local Humane Society shelter. He loved Scooby Doo cartoons and making people laugh.

“He loved life. He never acted like he was shortchanged by his illness,” Suanne Giorgetti, principal of Benton Elementary, recalled late last week. “We didn’t pity him because he didn’t pity himself.”

Twice he almost died, in the second and fourth grades. Each time, staff members recalled, he fought back.

The cancer last went into remission a couple of years ago, allowing Isaiah to give the fifth grade his full attention. The cancer returned earlier this year, forcing him to miss about half of the first quarter of school.

Isaiah attended his final day of school Nov. 17, just two days before he died. He didn’t want to miss school picture day. His classmates cheered when he walked in.

“It’s sort of a sense that Isaiah came back to say goodbye,” Giorgetti said.

To honor Isaiah, children at Benton Elementary on Friday decorated a wreath of dried flowers. After his sixth-grade classmates added roses, the wreath was given to Isaiah’s family at his wake.

On a wall just outside the office at Benton Elementary, his classmates wrote “Remembering our friend Isaiah” in construction-paper letters above his picture. Then they attached paper hearts, flowers and even drawings of Scooby Doo. In the days that have followed, many children have paused to write notes.

“We miss you. Love Brittany,” one little girl wrote, signing her note with a heart.

Nearby, beside a paper heart and a butterfly, two girls seemed to speak for the whole school.

“We will always remember yo in our hearts,” wrote Amy Ward and Katlin Shaw. “We knew you suffered and we thought you were very strong. Why did you have to go? Why?”