Russell Wilson returns to Seattle, 10 years after his 1st visit to Seattle Children’s
Russell Wilson isn’t just returning to Seattle with his new Denver Broncos against his former Seahawks in September, to begin the NFL season.
He’s already been back. Back to Seattle Children’s hospital, just last weekend.
The Seahawks’ now-former franchise and Super Bowl-champion quarterback left Denver on the eve of offseason practices with his new Broncos and returned to Seattle last Saturday. He and his wife Ciara hosted a Dream Big: Anything is Possible dinner in Seattle for his Why Not You Academy. The event was in conjunction with the College Success Foundation.
The academy is the charter high school Wilson and his wife started in 2021 in Des Moines, south King County The school, named after Wilson’s Why Not You Foundation he started for children in Seattle, has a freshman class of 100 as a tuition-free public high school.
“It’s enduring partnerships like this that have enabled the WNYF to grow deep roots in the Seattle community which will continue to prosper and impact many more people for years to come,” Wilson said.
Also last Saturday, Wilson returned to Seattle Children’s.
It was the 10th anniversary of his first of what became a decade of weekly Tuesday visits to one of the premier pediatric research and health-care complexes on the West Coast.
In May 2012, Wilson was a rookie third-round draft choice just trying to secure a job with his new Seahawks. He walked into Seattle Children’s and had to explain who he was and why he wanted to be there. He rented a house in the Laurelhurst neighborhood immediately north of the hospital, in northeast Seattle.
He doesn’t need to introduce himself at Seattle Children’s anymore.
“Today was an emotional day. “10 years of going to @SeattleChildren and seeing miracles every week,” Wilson wrote Saturday on his Twitter account @DangeRussWilson. “Today was nothing short of another miracle. Two amazing Heroes. Issac & Isabelle. Remember… just continue to touch the “next mailbox” Forever Grateful. @Ciara @WhyNotYouFdn”
Wilson, 33, won the Seahawks’ only Super Bowl championship at the end of his second NFL season. He set more than two dozen franchise records playing for Seattle from 2012 until the Seahawks traded him in March. He became the winningest quarterback in NFL history in the first 10 years of a career.
Yes, he self-promoted. He had his “performance team” and his own clothing line and brand. He often sounded and seemed programmed.
Yet Wilson’s legacy in Seattle is far beyond football, way past all that.
His work Tuesdays during and outside Seahawks seasons with the patients and families at Seattle Children’s, some of the sickest of the sick, is his legacy in Seattle.
‘Blue Tuesdays’
It began on his first flight to the Pacific Northwest, over the Cascades and into Seattle a week after the Seahawks selected him in the 2012 NFL draft.
“It gives me chills thinking about it, really,” Wilson said at the end of last season. “Flying into Seattle, it was May 11, 2012, it may have been May 10, 2012, but I flew in and first of all, I had never been out here. ...I had heard great things, but I also heard that it rained a lot.
“They got me. I came in May where it was 82 degrees.
“I remember landing and flying over Seattle, and I love nature, water, mountains, trees, and stuff like that. I landed and thought, ‘This is a beautiful place, and this is the place for me.’”
Meet Frida, Hunter, Mason, Ailynn
On yet another Tuesday visit to Seattle Children’s during the Seahawks’ 2018 season, two days after his team’s win at Arizona, Wilson flipped a pink football he’d just autographed to little Frida.
Her agape mouth and her wide eyes showed Frida was about two solar systems over the moon.
On that same Tuesday Wilson also changed the solemn lives of Hunter, of other kid patients. Their families. The hospital’s staff. Everyone there.
Hunter was a cancer patient at Seattle Children’s during the fall of 2018. That made him a genuine authority on courage. He talked with Wilson about courage while they sat on his hospital bed.
“You inspire me, Hunter,” the quarterback replied to the boy.
Wilson was wearing yellow, protective outerwear required for visiting the kids at most risk. Their conversation was on a video Wilson posted to his Twitter account. Wilson had his left arm around Hunter as they talked into a smart phone.
“But the cool thing about you, Hunter, is you are inspiring some other kid that is going through what you are going through,” Wilson told him. “And just how your family loves and cares, it’s really inspirational.”
Hunter nodded.
“I really hope that I can be an inspiration for people,” the boy said. “I want to be positive for people. And hopefully I can do that.”
“You are doing that, buddy,” Wilson said.
“You helped me do that,” Hunter told Wilson. “And I am really thankful for that.”
Wilson told Hunter: “Why not you, brother? “You are going to make it. We are praying for you. Continue the positive talk, just your self-talk. Your encouraging words. Your inspiration. You inspire me, that’s for sure.”
“Thank you, very much,” Hunter said.
Seattle Children’s Hospital is the pediatric referral center for the Pacific Northwest. It has some of the West Coast’s most serious and complex medical situations involving kids. Families from as far away as Asia seek Seattle Children’s specialists for their unique care.
The staff there eagerly awaits Tuesdays. For a decade, minus only the two years the coronavirus pandemic strictly limited hospital visitors, Wilson impacted the patients, families, doctors, nurses and staffers there. That’s both in the anticipation before he arrives and the appreciation after he leaves.
Seahawks gear has become normal duty attire for many who work there, because of Wilson.
During the pandemic, when he couldn’t go into the hospital, he visited the kids on Zoom. He didn’t hang out in the hospital lobby, cafeteria or first-floor play room fronting with the masses for mere photo ops, either. He went onto the floors, into the hospital’s most critical situations, into the intensive-care and cancer units.
He mocked up in protective outerwear and gloves to be at the bedside of the most contagious and at-risk kids. He played a ukulele for a sick boy at his bedside there, then autographed it for him.
Some criticized Wilson for promoting these visits on social media, for being self-serving. Fact is, he was there. And the posts of Wilson’s visits served others. They remain enormous sources of pride and appreciation for the kids he highlighted, and their families. Those of us not in those heart-breaking situations can’t even imagine.
The families of the kids he stopped in to see absolutely loved and cherished his visits. They cherished Wilson.
So did little Mason.
Months after he led the Seahawks into their second consecutive Super Bowl in 2015, Wilson mentioned at the end of one of his weekly Thursday press conferences another patient he had met that week at Seattle Children’s. Her name was Ailynn Arredondo. He had posted an Instagram photo and entry the previous week about her.
“This beautiful angel was asked by me to be her godfather! I said yes!” Wilson posted, in Spanish. “@seattlechildren She asked...”
Ailynn died the day after Wilson’s post.
“I want to say another thing,” Wilson said, unprompted, to end that presser in 2015. “I’m sure people have paid attention, but just Ailynn — such a sweet girl, first of all. I’m fortunate enough to go to the Children’s Hospital every Tuesday and I get to see a lot of kids, and unfortunately sometimes you see a kid and they pass away. Sometimes you get to see them on their last few days. Sometimes you may not see them for another couple months and then they pass.
“But just a special girl. I pray that everybody keeps their family in their prayers and all that, and just anything that you can do to help people. That’s the best thing we can do as people, especially with kids, like the Children’s Hospital...
“Thank you guys. Go Hawks!”
Wilson’s legacy
Thursday night, Wilson was back in Seattle again, virtually.
He appeared via online video call to receive the Paul G. Allen Humanitarian award. He was at the Seattle Sports Commission’s 87th annual Sports Star of the Year awards event at the Westin hotel in downtown Seattle.
The debate has already begun over whether Wilson will be relentlessly booed, cheered or both on Sept. 12, when his first NFL game for anyone but the Seahawks will come against...the Seahawks. The season opener like no other will be at Lumen Field, his home stadium for 10 hugely successful years.
But there is no debate about the city, what Wilson and his wife did in it and for it.
Ultimately, that’s more lasting and important than football.
“Seattle has a special place in our hearts,” Wilson said, “and will forever be a place we call home.”
This story was originally published May 26, 2022 at 11:51 AM.
