Adler Bryce Shelbourne was a kind, caring, loving, funny and smart boy whose courage facing cancer was an inspiration to all who met him, his mother, Stephanie Nagy Shelbourne, said.
Adler, 3, of Griffith, loved all things train-related including dining at Tyler’s Tender.
“He carried around his portable DVD player everywhere,” Shelbourne said. “There was a Thomas DVD in there at all times. He would carry a train in each hand.”
Fascinated watching his trains run around the track, Adler also enjoyed playing outside in his sand box and with his little brother, Camden, and his dogs.
“He was a happy all-around boy,” Shelbourne said.” He made friends with everybody. Even as little and as sick as he was, he always joked around. He made everybody laugh. He never wanted any of us to be sad.”
“He knew a lot of things for his age that we had never talked to him about,” Shelbourne said. The last couple of months when he was sicker he would look at Jason and me and he would tell us, ‘Mommy I am going to miss you so much.’ It is like he knew something.”
Shelbourne said Adler, who never questioned or complained about his suffering, had a positive impact on everyone he met.
“When he would begin his chemo or even when he was having fluids removed at Riley (Children's Hospital), even as uncomfortable as he would be, he would smile and wave at people walking down the halls and say, ‘How are you?’ He made everybody smile.”
In his memory, an Adlerstrong Birthday Walk to raise funds for the Ronald McDonald House and pediatric brain cancer research will be held at noon Jan. 19 at Griffith High School, along with a Red Cross blood drive.
“We miss him tremendously, Shelbourne said. “We miss his little voice. We miss hearing him say, ‘I love you.’ Our family is just incomplete.”
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