LOCAL

For Blake: Global kindness movement honors East Lansing native's young son

Rachel Greco
Lansing State Journal
East Lansing native Rob Davis said his son Blake's diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension at age 1 and his death in December of 2018 inspired a kindness movement. People in 24 states and several countries have carried out random acts of kindness in honor of Blake.

SAN DIEGO - Leah and Rob Davis never intended to create a kindness movement around their son Blake's diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension.

But the rare condition of high blood pressure in the blood vessels that line the lung struck suddenly, with no warning.

The couple's seemingly healthy boy lay unconscious in a bed at Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego, just days after he'd stopped breathing at a park near their house.

Leah and Rob, who grew up in the Lansing area and graduated from East Lansing High School, watched as Blake, 1, lay listless, a tube down his throat helping him to breathe. 

"What can we do to help?" friends and family asked. 

"There wasn't something that would make it better," Leah Davis, 40, said.

So they asked people to help them surround their child with positive energy.

Go do good, the couple asked. Do it for Blake. 

At first "For Blake" was a Facebook page, a place where family and friends wrote about the random acts of kindness they'd done that day for Blake.

Leah and Rob Davis sat inside their son's hospital room in those first few weeks reading the posts to Blake.

They believed he could hear them.

East Lansing native Rob Davis said his son Blake's diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension at age 1 and his death in December of 2018 inspired a kindness movement. People in 24 states and several countries have carried out random acts of kindness in honor of Blake.

They read him stories about good deeds in honor of a little boy fighting a serious condition.

In the months that followed #ForBlake became a hashtag used by strangers telling Blake's story to other strangers after a kind act.

Blake died in December 2018, suffering a heart attack on the day his parent's learned he'd been added to a lung transplant list.

Earlier this month the Davis family launched forblake.org, a website used to track and share the kindness Blake still inspires. The site, created to mark the anniversary of his death, catalogs the hundreds of good deeds people have done in his honor. They span 24 states and five countries. 

Kindness is now a way of life for the Davis family. #ForBlake is helping them to share it with the world.

"It was a terrible chapter for us, but his death has also created this beautiful wave of light and love, of positivity," Leah said. "As terrible as our story is, we're so happy that we have that side of it. It keeps him and his legacy alive."

A new normal

Rob Davis, 40, remembers watching Blake resist one July afternoon in 2017 as Leah strapped him into his car seat after an afternoon spent playing on the slide and swings with his sister Scarlett.

Rob and Leah Davis with children Scarlett and Blake. Blake was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension at age one. The condition, high blood pressure in the arteries of his lungs,  is rare. Blake died in December of 2018 at age 2. His struggle with the condition and his death inspired #ForBlake, a kindness movement that's spread to 24 states.

His son didn't want to leave the park that day, Rob Davis said. He bucked, thrusting his hips forward as Leah secured him into the seat.

Davis watched from the other side of the car, as he buckled Scarlett, then 3, into her seat.

He remembers seeing Blake's head suddenly drop to his chest. His body went limp in an instant.

"Is he breathing?" Rob asked Leah.

Before that afternoon, the pulmonary hypertension Blake was born with had never showed itself to anyone.

Blake was an active, happy little boy until he stopped breathing that day. What followed was a three-month hospital stay filled with moments of dread and discovery.

Blake Davis, pictured  with his sister Scarlett, was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension at age one. The condition, high blood pressure in the arteries of his lungs,  is rare. Blake died in December of 2018 at age 2.

The Davises watched Blake stop breathing more than once there. They also documented milestone moments, taking video of Blake sitting in a wagon flanked with medical equipment, the first time staff let him leave his room.

JoAnn Perrault, Rob's mother, who flew from Michigan to California after Blake was hospitalized, said her grandson's diagnosis was a shock to everyone.

"He was so full of energy and life," she said. "He never cried. He just adored life."

When Blake left the hospital his family began to live a life filled with medical appointments and treatment.

"We called it a new normal," Rob Davis said.

As the Davis family learned to navigate that they embraced the #ForBlake movement, making good deeds a part of their life.

A year after Blake's hospitalization they returned to the park where Blake had collapsed to hold a community event to collect 180 toys for Rady Children's Hospital.

Rob Davis remembers how Blake never asked for a single toy they collected that day.

"He understood it was for something bigger," he said. "We took it all to the hospital together. I like to think he had an understanding of what we were doing and why we were doing it."

"This became our way of life," Leah Davis said. "It wasn't just everybody else doing it. We wanted to be doing good deeds to create good energy for him, so he was part of it."

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A legacy

Life with pulmonary hypertension meant constant vigilance, said Rob Davis, but by December 2018 he said the couple felt like Blake had taken a turn toward better health.

East Lansing native Rob Davis said his son Blake's diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension at age 1 and his death in December of 2018 inspired a kindness movement. People in 24 states and several countries have carried out random acts of kindness in honor of Blake.

Then Blake suffered a heart attack after he'd stopped breathing in the family's living room. The Davis family didn't see it coming.

"Life was normalizing for us," Leah Davis said. "We had gotten used to his medical management."

Rob Davis said his son put his hand to his chest and said "Ow," before he stopped breathing.

He ended up back at Rady Children's Hospital before being transported to Texas Children's Hospital. Leah and Rob Davis were in the room with their son when he died.

In the wake of Blake's death, good deeds in his honor and use of the hashtag #ForBlake surged.

East Lansing native Rob Davis said his son Blake's diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension at age 1 and his death in December of 2018 inspired a kindness movement. People in 24 states and several countries have carried out random acts of kindness in honor of Blake.

At restaurants and drive-thru lines across the country, people paid it forward, picking up the tab for a stranger's meal or coffee order. Others planted trees in Blake's honor, or stopped to help a stranded motorist. They handed out gloves on busy street corners and donated to nonprofits in his name.

Random acts of kindness came fast and furious, and were documented on the "For Blake" Facebook page, which now has 1,500 members.

In the year since Blake's death the good deeds haven't stopped.

"People have been a part of this movement from the beginning and after his death they doubled down on acts of his kindness in his memory," Leah Davis said through tears. "It became a flood."

The website forblake.org went live Jan. 2. It offers a closer look at Blake's story and the hundreds of kind acts people have done in his honor. They are marked on a global map and visitors are encouraged to add their own good deeds. Blake has been honored throughout California, in Florida, Michigan and all along the east coast.

The website offers downloadable "kindness cards" that can be printed out and handed out by anyone doing good.

"Across the country and beyond is a movement of kindness born from the struggle of this little boy and his family," the cards read. "He recently received his angel wings, but the miracle of Blake has forever changed the world as we know it. Join the wave of positivity and pay it forward with your own good deed #ForBlake."

The positive force that surrounded their son in his hospital bed more than two years ago is alive and well with #ForBlake, Leah Davis said.

"He is actually continuing to make an impact," she said. "We do want to foster that because it keeps his spirit alive. We are hoping that it perpetuates, and that it builds in momentum. Everybody and anybody can join in. We are all so connected. We really ought to be treating each other better as humans."

Learn more

Learn more about #ForBlake on Facebook at "For Blake," and at www.forblake.org, where anyone can document random acts of kindness in honor of Blake Davis.

Contact Rachel Greco at rgreco@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @GrecoatLSJ.