Almost the entire Wheaton North football team met at the high school Saturday night, each of the players wearing a specially made T-shirt to honor a seriously ill teammate.
Then they walked in silence for nearly 2 miles to their destination on Washington Street, and they gathered in the back yard of Mike and Evelyn Ryan’s home.
In his bedroom lay defensive back Dave Ryan, slowly succumbing to the ravages of an inoperable brain tumor that he had battled courageously for 13 months.
His body paralyzed, Ryan could no longer eat, and he could communicate only with his eyes.
Mike Ryan thanked the Falcons for their unconditional support and expressed how much that meant to his oldest child.
On behalf of the team, coach Matt Foster and the four co-captains went inside to see Ryan one last time. They prayed together, and when it was time to go, each kissed Ryan on the top of his head before saying goodbye.
Back outside, Evelyn Ryan made one last request: Would the players sing the school fight song, as they had done after every game during last fall’s improbable run to the Class 8A semifinals?
They formed a tight circle and, at the top of their lungs, serenaded Ryan through the open windows of his bedroom. The Falcons sang that song twice, and neighbors several blocks away would later tell Mike Ryan that they had heard the singing and begun to cry.
Soon after the players’ processional back to the school, Mike Ryan went into his son’s bedroom.
“I asked him if he had heard the singing, and he moved his eyeballs up and down, which meant yes,” Mike Ryan said. “And then a tear came down from his right eye.”
Two days later Dave Ryan, 18, died in his home from brain cancer.
“It was really hard,” said co-captain A.J. Harris, Ryan’s closest friend on the team.
“I didn’t want to see him like that because I wanted to remember him when he was feeling better. But I had to do it if I’m ever going to get over it.”
Co-captain Andy Cvengros said: “It was a sad time. You could see he was in such pain. He has moved on to a better place.”
Despite the sadness that enveloped Ryan’s funeral service Thursday at the College Church of Wheaton, there were indications of Ryan’s spirit at work.
First he had made two last requests: that nobody wear black and that a pizza party be held immediately after the service.
Ryan’s life had been about caring for others ahead of himself. He put the team’s concerns ahead of his own and never missed a game despite surgery and radiation treatments. He wrote inspirational notes and gave pregame talks to his teammates.
“He was a gigantic inspiration,” Cvengros said. “Guys would get sick of practicing, and then they’d think of Dave, who would’ve done anything to be able to play. He taught us not to take anything for granted. Any second any one of us could be taken.”
Even in death Ryan was worried that in all the grieving, everyone would overlook what his life had been all about.
“He had such a tremendous faith in God, and he was not afraid to die,” Harris said. “At one point when he couldn’t swallow, the doctor offered to put a tube into his stomach. Dave said no, let it come. He didn’t want people feeling sorry for him.”
More than 2,400 mourners attended visitation Tuesday and Wednesday at the Williams-Kampp Funeral Home in Wheaton. On Thursday the Wheaton North baseball and softball teams canceled their practices to allow athletes to attend the service.
“He was like a continuous thank-you note to God,” said Ryan’s youth minister Jeannie Stevens.
One by one Ryan’s classmates and friends stood before the large congregation and told both emotional and funny stories. With trembling hands and a shaky voice, a pen pal from Connecticut read her final letter.
In an eloquent speech, Wheaton North senior Megan McMinn asked everyone to remember how Ryan lived for the moment and to never forget the passion that drove him for 18 years.
Foster recalled the time he and Ryan were the guests of Bears coach Dick Jauron at the team’s Lake Forest training facility, and how the soft-spoken Foster wanted to let Dave do all the talking.
“He didn’t make any tackles; he didn’t catch any touchdown passes,” Foster said. “But Dave Ryan was the most important part of our team this season from beginning to end.”
Turning to Mike and Evelyn Ryan, Foster added:
“There’s no doubt in my mind that I’m the luckiest coach in the country because I had your son.”
