When Bryce Orwig was a little boy, he was obsessed with the Titanic.

He had toys, books, everything. It was his thing. So when the students at Steele School wanted to show up for him during one of the hardest stretches of his life, somebody thought about that — and had shirts made. On the front: a picture of the Titanic. Across the chest: Unsinkable Bryce. On the back, his fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Kilpatrick Rubner's classroom motto: No Fear.

That's Galesburg.

The Orwig family's story begins at the very beginning of Bryce's life. He was born in November 2005, and when he arrived, there was a lump — a good-sized one — protruding from his left rib cage. A nurse in the nursery, picking up on the anxiety of first-time parents, advocated for an ultrasound. The pediatrician ran through the possibilities. Cancer was last on the list. It's the least likely scenario, she said. But it's on there. She referred them to a surgeon.

The surgeon looked at it and didn't like it. He took it off. When he came out of the OR, he sat down with Jeff and Pam in the middle of the waiting room — not the conference room — and said: I don't know what kind it is. But it's some type of cancer. Pathology came back: a rhabdoid tumor on the chest wall. Typically, that kind of tumor appears in the brain or the kidney. So now there was a new question — was this the only site, or had it spread? More scans. More waiting. A re-excision to clean the margins. CT scans to rule out secondary sites. All clear. The tumor was localized.

Then came the decision about chemotherapy. The numbers weren't encouraging — without treatment, 60% chance of recurrence; with it, 40%. The drug itself could cause leukemia. When Pam pushed back, the doctor said: It's fine, you can go home. But I know where you live. You'll hear from me. Jeff and Pam didn't even go home. They said yes right there.

Bryce finished eight rounds of chemotherapy at a month and a half old.

He finished treatment in July 2006. Surveillance scans followed, as they always do. At age two, something in his abdomen was biopsied — fat, muscle, and nerve tissue. Not cancer. A brief exhale. Then first grade, a failed hearing test led to a brain MRI, which turned up something worth watching. Bryce also has neurofibromatosis type 1, a condition associated with a particular kind of brain tumor, so they watched. By third grade, it had grown enough that it was blocking fluid in the ventricle. Craniotomy. The tumor was removed. This one was benign.

Then fifth grade. The abdominal tissue from age two — which had been monitored for years, stable at roughly one inch by one inch — had doubled in size. The surgeon looked at the scans and said: That's got to come out. It's no longer growing with him. It's growing against him. Surgery. Pathology: a malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor. Chemotherapy again.

Through both rounds of treatment, the medical care was coordinated through the St. Jude affiliate clinic in Peoria — 45 minutes from home. The Peoria clinic was the very first St. Jude affiliate in the country, a relationship built decades earlier when Jim Maloof, longtime mayor of Peoria, was a personal friend of Danny Thomas, St. Jude's founder. That friendship made it possible for Bryce to be treated by doctors working directly with Memphis without the family ever having to leave Illinois. We didn't have to uproot, Pam said.

At Steele School, the response was layered and specific. Meal trains. Lesson plans covered — Pam has been a special education teacher at Galesburg High School for 32 years and is now department chair; IEPs don't write themselves. Someone at Steele, possibly Mrs. Van Hootegem, created a bulletin board called Bryce is Bored, and the family would send pictures so his classmates could see what he was up to during treatment. On his birthday, when he couldn't be at school, his class walked to the house and sang Happy Birthday from the porch. On days when big things were happening, staff wore purple — his favorite color in fifth grade. You can't ask for a better community, Pam said.

The doctor was right about something else he'd said during the chemo decision: When it comes down to it, you don't care about the overall percentage. You care about your kid. That one kid. How it's going to come out for your child. Jeff and Pam learned the truth of that. And because they did, they also learned something else.

It's bigger than Bryce, Pam said. It's bigger than our family.

The St. Jude Run started in 1982 — when two men decided to run 165 miles from Memphis to Peoria, one of them Mike McCoy, who would go on to become Peoria County Sheriff for many years. Galesburg was the first satellite run, beginning in 1984, after someone here heard their neighbor's daughter had been diagnosed and wanted to do something. Now, 34 cities run. The Memphis team starts on Wednesday; they arrive on Saturday. Galesburg runs 150 relay miles. The combined runs have raised nearly $100 million since 1982. Galesburg alone has raised $1,564,829.

Jeff and Pam are the Galesburg run coordinators. Jeff has been a para in the district for 22 years, including 15 as a one-on-one para following a single student through multiple buildings. Their committee includes Jen Robinson, who teaches world language at the high school and serves as treasurer, and Mindi Ritchie, who runs every year alongside members of her family.

And then there's Bryce. He's on the committee too. Last summer, he ran the final leg of the relay into the Peoria Civic Center. The kid the run once existed to help ran himself into that building.

He's 20 now. He graduated from Galesburg High School in 2024. He's finishing his second year at Carl Sandburg College and transferring to Culver Stockton in the fall to study communications, with a possible minor in digital media or art. In January, St. Jude officially graduated him from their care. He'll still have MRIs every few years. Some watchfulness never fully goes away. But the arc has bent toward health.

"We've met other families who have not been as fortunate," Pam said. "But who still will tell you that they are grateful because St. Jude gave them more time with their children." She and Jeff know, sitting here today, that somewhere a family is walking into a clinic for the first time, facing news they're not ready for.

"And that's why we do this," Jeff said.

He can't watch one of those commercials without getting teary-eyed now. That surprised him — he wasn't always like that. But now he knows what the place has done. What it can do.

"We're different people than we were," Pam said. More confident. More grateful. Changed by something they never would have chosen, into something they wouldn't trade.

Unsinkable.