Washington Wish Trip Lifts Teen’s Final Days

A lot of people would give almost anything for the kind of access Jason Brady had last week in Washington.

He met one-on-one with George Bush, Nancy Reagan, George Shultz and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the staff of one of his senators from Oklahoma knocked itself out to fulfill his every need.

He has power-lunched, done the weather with Willard Scott on the “Today” show, gone to a Georgetown basketball game, been paged at the Air and Space Museum, gave a press conference at the White House.

But most people wouldn’t want what gave Jason, 16, entree to the corridors of power. He has Burkitt’s lymphoma, a rare and fast-growing form of cancer. He has been told he has but a few weeks to live.

Most of the kids helped by the Make-a-Wish Foundation, a nonprofit group that tries to fulfill the dearest hopes of terminally ill children, want to see a celebrity or go to Disneyland. Children have been taken to Mexico to meet Sylvester Stallone or to Hollywood to meet Bill Cosby. (But not anywhere to meet Eddie Murphy, whose representative recently turned down the wish of Washington’s Tonya Williams to meet the comedian. Instead, she went to the Caribbean and stayed in the same hotel room Murphy had stayed in.)

But not many children think of Washington when asked their fondest dream.

“I have always been interested in politics and government and the law,” said Jason, who noted that “in Oklahoma, there’s nothing more than 100 years old.”

So this is the story of how Jason, his parents Robert and Irla Brady, and his 11-year-old brother Matthew came to Washington. They had hoped only to “see the sights” and see “anybody willing to meet him.”

The Brady family left Wednesday for their home in Moore, Okla., utterly amazed that so many movers and shakers found it impossible to resist the interest of a pale boy with no hair and a wheelchair.

As Jason told the story of his four days and nights in Washington, he sat at the desk of Sen. David Boren (D-Okla.) in his Senate office. He wore a David Letterman hat, which he bought in Georgetown, and a T-shirt and jeans.

He spoke methodically and deliberately, as though rehearsing a tale that he has committed to memory because he does not want to forget a single moment. When his father tried to pitch in, Jason asked him to wait. “I want to tell it chronologically,” he said firmly.

A Marching Band

It seemed that at each stop the Bradys got more than they expected. When they left Oklahoma City, more than a dozen members of the Moore High School marching band showed up to pipe him aboard the flight, and 100 or so other well-wishers turned out to wave goodby.

TWA upgraded to first class the budget seats that the foundation bought, and the crew presented the family with an inscribed cake.

When television reporter Andrea Mitchell took them to NBC on Dec. 19 to meet weatherman Scott, Jason ended up on the air with him. (One of his tasks was to announce the temperature for Oklahoma City, which they had to guess at being somewhere between Kansas City’s and Little Rock’s.)

“I thought he was joking (about going on television) until these people showed up and started putting makeup on me,” Jason said. His father said his television debut was flawless; “he was loaded with poise.”

“If you think Willard Scott is nice on TV, he’s three times nicer in real life,” Jason said. “He even kissed my mother.”

“Twice,” his father added.

Later that day, Boren (“an extremely great guy”) took them to the Senate chamber and lent them his car and an aide to drive to the State Department.

There he met Secretary of State Shultz and told him that he approved of his decision to deny PLO chief Yasser Arafat a visa. Shultz took the family to the operations center, where they could see computers and clocks with overseas times on them and a task force coordinating activities related to Armenian earthquake rescue operations.

Gift From Shultz

Shultz gave Jason “a really nice ink pen” that can write upside down or underwater and a knife with the State Department seal on it. They also got a tour of the eighth-floor Diplomatic Reception Rooms, where Jason was particularly impressed by a silver bowl made by Paul Revere and a desk made by Thomas Jefferson.

Later, on a visit to the National Archives, Jason was perturbed to find that the original of the Treaty of Paris, a copy of which he saw at the State Department, was not on display.

A number of local restaurants treated the Bradys last week, including the Palm, the Old Ebbitt Grill and the Four Seasons, where they had Sunday brunch and where Jason was very impressed with the service.

“I had to get up a number of times, and each time the waiter took away my napkin and put a new one down,” he said. “And in the middle of the meal he brought out this thing like a knife and scraped all the crumbs off the table.”

The Bradys also took their first taxi ride, an experience that the whole family seemed to find chastening.

After meeting with Shultz, they returned to the Capitol and met the other Oklahoma senator, Don Nickles, and the congressman from their district, Rep. Dave McCurdy, who took them on a tour of the Capitol and also hailed them another cab. (The next day Cassidy and Associates provided the family with a car and driver.)

On to the Pentagon. Adm. William J. Crowe, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, showed them his “extensive hat collection” and gave Jason a Joint Chiefs of Staff cap, a sweater and a knife.

“The Pentagon is unlike every other government building,” the young observer from Oklahoma said. “There’s no art on the wall or fancy furniture.”

The Bradys’ encounter with Bush also was made possible by Boren, who had scheduled a meeting with the President-elect. Jason found Bush “bubbly and full of life.” Bush presented Jason with a tie clasp, an autographed card and a knife, this one with the vice presidential seal and Bush’s signature on it.

Incidentally, Jason describes himself as “a staunch Republican” but has room in his heart for a few Democrats.

He visited John F. Kennedy’s grave, for example, because he thinks that “it’s everyone’s patriotic duty,” and he hoped to meet Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) on Wednesday because “the Kennedys have done a lot for this country.”

Nancy Reagan met the family in the White House Diplomatic Reception Room and gave Jason a beautifully wrapped package. He said he told the First Lady that one reason President Reagan was so successful was because of “her support.”

On his way out, he met columnist George Will, who had lunch with the First Lady on Tuesday. “I don’t know who George Will is, though,” Jason said.

The First Lady seemed quiet and thoughtful, he said. “It seemed to me she was kind of emotional about something.”

Jason gave his first press conference as he left the White House, where television crews and reporters were assembled to get his report on his visits.

He noticed Vice President-elect Dan Quayle walking by and worried (a little) that Quayle might be miffed to find the news media waiting not for him but for a 16-year-old boy from Oklahoma.

He took the present from Nancy Reagan back to the hotel and unwrapped it very carefully. It was a jar of Jelly Belly jelly beans with a Ronald Reagan insignia on it. Jason is going to save the paper for his scrapbook.

In fact, he is saving everything from Washington--every napkin, every matchbook, every autographed picture, every knife--and is going to put them in a special book and a box. But first he is going to borrow his grandmother’s video camera and make a filmed report of his trip.

“You probably know I’m going to die pretty soon,” he said. “I told my parents that when they talk about me I want them to show people this scrapbook.”

On Dec. 12, Jason was told by his doctors that he had a choice. He could take an experimental course of chemotherapy, which he has had before and which might prolong his life for a while, or he could cease treatment and expect to live another six to eight weeks. Jason--and his parents stress that it was his decision--chose to go home.

“The chemotherapy would buy me only a little time, and I would be ill and in the hospital the whole time,” he said. “I decided I would rather be with my family.” A member of Emmaus Baptist Church, he believes firmly that “there is a life hereafter, where there is no pain or suffering.”

“That has given us a lot of strength,” said Bob Brady, who works as a crane operator for a construction company. Irla Brady works for AT&T.;

Keeps Up the Grades

Since June, Jason has spent 113 days in the Children’s Hospital Center in Oklahoma City. Nonetheless, he has maintained a straight-A average in the Home Bound Studies Program and is a member of the National Honor Society. The day after he decided to leave the hospital, he got his driver’s license, scoring 93% on his test.

By Wednesday afternoon, a few hours before his plane left for Oklahoma, Jason was tired.

About 2 p.m., half an hour before he was due to meet Sen. Kennedy, he collapsed in Boren’s office. His pain was intense. The Capitol physician administered a pain killer.

Kennedy came to Boren’s office to see Jason. According to a Boren aide, Kennedy told Jason that his prayers were with him and his family and that so many people cared for him. He offered to help in any way he could.

“Oh, Sen. Kennedy,” Jason said. “I wish I could have met you under different circumstances.”

(Jason had looked forward to attending Christmas services at his church in Moore. But he developed breathing problems and was “not doing very well,” family members said Sunday.)