‘There’s something very special about him’
Drowned 7-year-old recalled as vibrant kid
At the end of the school year, Boston-based restaurant b.good whipped up green kale smoothies and grilled burgers for more than 600 students at Mather Elementary School in Dorchester.
Some of the kids turned their noses up at the green concoctions. But not 7-year-old Kyzr Willis. The first-grader from Dorchester gulped it down and even helped himself to the smoothies his classmates didn’t want.
He ended up with a big green mustache and a big smile.
“He really took a risk of tasting the weird green smoothie and he loved it,” a heartbroken school staffer told me yesterday. “Kyzr was a kid who really did have a lust for life, a relish for everything. He was like, ‘‘I’ll take yours.’ ”
Kyzr would have started the second grade this fall. On Tuesday, rescuers found his body in the water off Carson Beach after a city-run summer program lost track of him and he drowned. Now his school, family and community are reeling from his tragic death.
Kyzr’s big brother, Ralph Jr., 9, attends the same school and he’d take his little brother to class. Earlier this year, the close-knit brothers came to school with their hair in braids.
“He was so excited to have that hairstyle,” the staffer recalled. “He just loved life. There are some kids who live in poverty who are depressed kids. Kyzr didn’t feel like that. Kyzr felt like he was going to take charge of the world. He was going to do good things.”
Kyzr had just learned to read. At a recent school book fair, he picked a book about wrestling. He played with all the kids at school and around the playground. He had bright eyes, was cheerful and happy and full of energy.
“He was a really dynamic, vibrant kid,” the staffer said. “He loved to play. It’s so tragic. He was a kid who stood out. There’s something very special about him.”
Brett O’Brien grew up next to Kyzr’s mom, Melissa Willis, and met the boy’s father, Ralph Toney, when he started dating Willis. Eventually, O’Brien hired Toney, a member of the sheet metal union, for Custom Air Solutions in Canton, where O’Brien is general manager.
“The boys are everything to him,” O’Brien said. “There’s not a day where he doesn’t talk about his kids. It’s why he gets up in the morning.”
O’Brien has set up a GoFundMe page, https://www.gofundme. com/2gn6u4hv, to help the family with funeral costs.
Come September, Kyzr will be sorely missed when his brother will start the third grade without him.
“It’s going to be really hard,” the staff member said. “It’s affected our whole school.”