Hawkeye kid captains' experience 'beyond Christmas'

One moment, Ryan DeMott was your average 11-year-old boy sitting around a campfire in rural Iowa during a Saturday night sleepover with friends.

The next moment, he was something else. His dad calls him a fighter. Doctors have called him an inspiration. In an instant, Ryan was a child with new and painfully difficult obstacles to overcome.

“But his inner being, the person he really is, hasn't changed,” Ryan's father Bill Mueller said. “Thank God he is still the same Ryan he was before Oct. 16 of last year.”

Ryan was badly burned around the campfire in Western Iowa that night when another boy stoked the blaze with more gasoline, and a fire ball erupted. An adult tackled Ryan to douse the blaze burning through his clothes, but not before he suffered third-degree burns on 70 percent of his body, Mueller said.

Initially given a 5 to 10 percent chance at survival, Ryan was transferred to the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, where he endured numerous skin graft surgeries and operations on his windpipe, which began to narrow due to his burns.

Ryan, now 12 and making vast improvements, still needs therapy and is scheduled for more surgeries – including one next week. But today he gets to forget about all that.

Today, first and foremost, Ryan is an Iowa Hawkeye fan.

Ryan is the seventh and final UI Children's Hospital “Kid Captain” to be featured this season before a Hawkeye home game. This morning, he will walk onto the field, high five fans as he enters, schmooze with coaches and stand at the 50-yard line while the 70,000-plus people in attendance hear his story.

He'll then be allowed to hang out on the sidelines with the team during the National Anthem.

“This is beyond Christmas,” Mueller said. “And I think it's going to be something that's even more of a ‘wow' factor than what he has envisioned.”

There are six more “honorary” kid captains designated for away games. They are featured much like home game captains – without the game day experience. All captains are profiled online, pictured on banners lining Hawkins Drive, highlighted on the Iowa Football show and given custom jerseys.

“For him to be rewarded for the things he has gone through and noticed and recognized for his ability to keep fighting and striving toward a better life and health – that's a great way for him to be honored,” Mueller said.

The UI Children's Hospital launched its kid captain program in 2009 as a way of celebrating kids who have or are still going through difficult situations, said Cheryl Hodgson, senior marketing specialist for the UI Children's Hospital.

The hospital receives hundreds of kid captain nominations every year, and a selection committee of 13 people from a variety of hospital departments wades through the nominees to find a good mix of stories that tug at their emotions.

Lori Lindseth, whose daughter was featured as last weekend's kid captain, said she likes the game day experience but mostly appreciates that the kid captain program recognizes the hospital and its staff.

Lindseth's daughter, Meg Michalski, was nearly killed in a boating accident on the Cedar River on July 3, 2007. Megan, who was 13 at the time, was tubing behind a boat when she was whipped into a cement wall, causing a skull fracture and a potentially fatal blood clot.

Meg would have died without the fast work of Children's Hospital doctors, Lindseth said.

“This brings an audience to the Children's Hospital and all the things they do,” she said. “They saved her life, and we will always be grateful to them.”

Still, Lindseth said, watching her daughter – who is nearly fully recovered and an honor student at Xavier High School in Cedar Rapids – receive applause from tens of thousands of people in Kinnick Stadium was “absolutely amazing.”

“It was probably the highlight of our year,” she said.