When you meet Hudson, you will likely see an energetic, happy and fearless little boy. He is full of personality and has a true joy for life. He loves being outside, exploring, and doing anything that feels like an adventure. He has a big laugh, an even bigger spirit, and a signature dance move that comes out almost every time his favorite song is played. Hudson is brave in a way that has very little to do with cancer. He has always been the kid who jumps in, explores first and figures things out as he goes. Cancer changed a lot about his life, but it never changed his spirit and love for life.

At just five years old, Hudson was diagnosed with Ewing Sarcoma, a rare and aggressive bone cancer. Over the next nine months, he endured 15 cycles of chemotherapy at UNC Children’s Hospital, including five-day inpatient stays and more pokes, infusions, procedures and scans than we could ever count. In September 2025, we traveled to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, where surgeons successfully removed Hudson’s tumor with clear margins and reconstructed his arm using the fibula from his left leg, donor bone and hardware. We stayed in New York for more than a month while he recovered before returning to UNC to finish treatment. On February 11, 2026, Hudson received his final chemotherapy treatment.

Today, Hudson is six years old, has no evidence of disease and is thriving in kindergarten. He continues to be closely monitored with imaging and ctDNA testing and travels to MSK for ongoing care of his reconstructed arm. We are doing everything we can to keep our little powerhouse healthy and strong while helping him get back to simply being Hudson again. But finishing treatment did not mean we could simply walk away from childhood cancer. During Hudson’s treatment, we made a promise that when he finished, we would give back in a big way. We often said that if Hudson made it out of this fire, we would come out carrying buckets of water for those still walking through it behind us. This Hero Fund is part of keeping that promise.

The reality is that our kids deserve better than what is currently available to them. Many of the chemotherapy drugs used to treat childhood cancers have been used for decades. In Ewing Sarcoma, the standard chemotherapy backbone still relies on drugs that have been part of treatment for generations of children. Progress has been made in how those drugs are given, but kids are still being treated with incredibly harsh chemotherapy because we simply do not have enough better options. Those treatments can save lives, and we will forever be grateful that they were available for Hudson. But being grateful does not mean accepting that this is good enough.

The same chemotherapy capable of killing cancer can also damage a growing child’s heart, kidneys, fertility, bones and other organs and increase the risk of serious health problems later in life. Survivorship does not always mean treatment is truly over. For many kids, the effects of cancer treatment follow them for decades. And for children whose Ewing Sarcoma returns, the reality becomes even more frightening. There is no single established treatment regimen that guarantees a path forward. Families can suddenly find themselves navigating different chemotherapy combinations, radiation, surgeries, clinical trials and experimental approaches, searching for something that might work for their child. This is why research matters so much.

There is incredible childhood cancer research waiting to be funded. In St. Baldrick’s June 2026 grant cycle alone, $38 million was needed to fund every research proposal that received an excellent scientific score, but only $10 million was available. That means excellent childhood cancer research is being left unfunded, not because the ideas are not worthy, but because there simply is not enough money. Every donation to Hudson’s Hero Fund helps close that gap. It gives researchers the opportunity to find treatments that are more effective and less toxic, create new options for kids who relapse or whose cancers do not respond to existing treatments, and find ways for today’s survivors to live longer, healthier lives.

Our faith, family, friends and community carried us through the hardest season of our lives. We know how incredibly fortunate we are to be watching Hudson run into kindergarten, play outside, make friends, laugh, dance and plan his next adventure. We want every family to have the chance to watch their child grow up. Hudson’s story is still being written, and this fund is our way of making sure his story helps write a better one for someone else. Our kids deserve treatments designed for them. They deserve more options when the first treatment does not work. They deserve cures that do not come at such a tremendous cost to the rest of their lives. They deserve better, and we intend to keep carrying buckets until they have it.