Bradley Brock, Central High School senior, looses battle with cancer

Bradley Brock – the Sullivan High School senior who inspired his classmates as he battled cancer – wanted to live long enough to see his 18th birthday.

His wish came true Friday following weeks in an intensive care unit battling pain and fatigue caused by Ewings sarcoma, an uncommon type of bone cancer.

Brock died nearly eight hours into legal adulthood.

Funeral services are 7 p.m. Sunday at Indian Springs Baptist Church in Kingsport. His family will receive friends starting at 4 p.m. at the church. Private, graveside services will be conducted Monday.

A week ago, on Aug. 27, hundreds of fellow students and friends held a candlelight vigil for Brock following a school football game at Central. It was all they knew to do to help out a friend, Principal Melanie Riden said at the time.

“The kids, I guess they just feel like they’re doing something,” Riden said last week. “The young man has been sharing things with them, and sharing [his faith] with them.”

Riden said Brock’s classmates seemed to want to give him something back.

It was from Brock’s ability to draw people together that another wish came true on his birthday. Two years ago, in a web journal detailing his battle with cancer, Brock described his burning desire to be a church youth leader.

On Friday, moments after his death was announced at Central, several students gathered in a theater room for an impromptu memorial service consisting of Bible readings and prayer. That’s when seven students vowed to follow Brock’s religious path by converting to Christianity.

“It was like he was carrying out his ministry even though he has passed away,” Sullivan Central senior Stacy Rutherford said as she described the service.

Riden said Brock was a young man with a happy heart and an amazing smile.

“The thing I always look for in Bradley is his smile,” Riden said last week. “He has a beautiful smile. And he never complains. We call it the Bradley smile. ... Its’ a unique smile. It identifies him.”

Brock was 16 when he began his journal on the Caring Bridge web site, at www.caringbridge.org/visit/bradleybrock.

In it he pondered death, alluded to chemotherapy, and noted that he plays guitar and sings in a Christian band.

He also explained his religious calling.

“Some of you may say I might die from this, but I know I won’t. God has so much in store for me,” he wrote. “One of [the] big things is being a youth minister, he has called me to be a minister.”

Pictures of the bald, smiling teen are posted on the site along with snapshots of his friends and family, and photos from before the chemotherapy, when he still had a young man’s full head of hair.

His mother, Valerie, posted the more recent journal entries about Brock’s hospitalization as well as celebrating his 18th birthday a few days early.

“This Friday, September 3rd ... Bradley is to turn 18,” his mother wrote Tuesday. “He has talked about turning 18 for quite a while. We believe he is holding out for that.”

The next day, Valerie wrote about her son’s fight to live and her struggle to watch.

“Bradley continues to hold on,” she wrote. “His O2 continues to drop, as he quits breathing, but then he takes that breath ... and he is going again.”

His mother asks in the journal for friends and family to “pray for Bradley to be pain-free, have peace and comfort and to feel our love.”

“The ‘Bradley’ moments are getting further apart,” she wrote, “and I don’t want him to suffer anymore. .. I love him so much, I have to let him go.”

The final entry, written by his aunt, Vicky Eaton, was posted soon after Brock died.

She wrote: “It is with a sad heart that I tell you, at 8 a.m. on his 18th birthday, Bradley heard the words from heaven, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant.’ ”

Assistant City Editor Christine Uthoff contributed to this report.

mowens@bristolnews.com | (276) 791-0698