Carter’s got a friend in Calvillo
Carter Brown is looking forward to a play date with one of his best friends.
While it’s not surprising that the eightyear-old Milestone, Sask. resident wants to hang around with a buddy, what is surprising is that this particular buddy passed for 79,816 yards and 455 touchdowns during his CFL career. Carter’s pal is Anthony Calvillo. “It has really been an honour (having Calvillo as a friend),” Carter says.
The two met in Montreal in August, when Carter was a guest speaker at a golf tournament held to raise funds for the Shriners Hospital for Children-Canada.
The new facility is to open in Montreal in August.
Carter has made frequent trips to the Shriners Hospital over his eight years. He suffers from Osteogenesis Imperfecta — also known as brittle bone disease — and has been getting treatments at the hospital since he was seven weeks old.
Since November, Calvillo has gone to the hospital every time Carter has been there for treatment.
“A lot of times he’s pretty tired because he’s going through his treatments or he’s recovering from treatment, so we’ll talk about sports or about family,” says Calvillo, who’s now the receivers coach for the Montreal Alouettes, the team he quarterbacked for 16 of his 20 seasons in the CFL.
The future Hall of Famer will be in Regina on Friday for an event with Carter to raise funds for the new Shriners Hospital in Montreal.
When Carter and Calvillo are together, Carter’s mom, Jennifer Brown, can feel the love.
“Anthony is a fantastic person in Carter’s life. He also happens to be a CFL legend, but he’s a friend first of all.”
Doctors told Carter’s parents their son would spend his life in a wheelchair surrounded by pillows and that he would suffer a fracture just picking up a pencil.
In Carter’s first visit to the Montreal hospital, he was given a drug that increases bone density and eases the pain in the patient’s bones. He can now walk with the aid of a walker.