His mother, Beth, said soon Andrew was asking nurses to take a little longer or even to add more procedures to his regimen. Andrew died after a lengthy battle with a congenital heart defect last summer.
“We wanted to honor Andrew’s memory by creating Andrew’s Bravery Box, and allowing other families to have the opportunity to reward bravery in their child,” said Beth Dorsing, who is also a math teacher at Blaine High School–and a singer and performer with her husband.
Meanwhile, some of her students at the school who are also in chorus wanted to try to help raise awareness by holding a charity concert in March.
“We were ready to go and do this live and our audience was going to bring toys or cash contributions,” said Blaine High School Chorus Teacher Sue Zemlin. “Suddenly, we weren’t able to do the concert.”
COVID-19 shut everything down, but not the idea of a performance to capture attention and possibly support for the cause.
Dorsing and Zemlin hatched the idea of a virtual concert, and through collaborations with video and music editors, more than 60 students performers backed Dorsing’s rendition of Imagine Dragons’ hit, “Believer.”
For students who sent in videos of their parts, it was not the same as performing live. Senior Luke Reilly said he recorded his baritone part in his laundry room.
“There’s something about doing a concert in front of people,” said Reilly. “The audience feeds into your performance.”
But the end result is something Dorsing knows Andrew would have loved, since “Believer” was one of his favorite songs to sing with her.
“I think the silver lining here is: we’ve created a keepsake that the kids get to have forever.”
