Unity child battling leukemia was man of the hour at Touch-a-Truck event 

By BOB MARTIN 

Eagle Times Staff 

NEWPORT, N.H. — It has been a tough couple of years full of treatment and hospital stays for 6-year-old Wyatt Lee of Unity, who has been battling leukemia since July 2023. Wyatt continues to wear a smile on his face, and the community has rallied around his recovery as exhibited this weekend at a successful Touch-A-Truck event. 

On Saturday, the Newport Police Benevolent Association organized a Touch-A-Truck event where Wyatt was able to chat with police and emergency personnel from across New Hampshire, check out equipment of area police and personnel, and share a laugh and a smile. 

“What everybody saw the day of the event, that’s that Wyatt that we get every single day,” Wyatt’s father Tucker Lee said. “That is the kind of power he has. He kind of pushes through everything. You think he would just want to curl up in a ball, but he comes out and he is smiling giggling, running around, and having the time of his life.” 

Lee explained that about a month after Wyatt’s fifth birthday they started noticing that something was off. He was always active and having fun, and during a beach day the family noticed that he didn’t really want to participate and was looking pale. At the end of the day, they decided to bring him to New London Hospital, thinking they would be walking out with antibiotics for “normal kid stuff.” 

“Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case,” Lee said. “We weren’t getting straight answers, not that they didn’t want to, but they didn’t know, and didn’t want to give us false information. But there was a lot of panic.” 

The family met with the oncology team at the Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock (CHaD) and their worst fear was confirmed that he had leukemia. Lee explained that this starts with treatment followed by a 30-day hospital stay, and then after that time he needed to pass a certain criteria before moving onto the next regiment. Wyatt did not pass and was bumped to high risk, which extended his treatment and made it more rigorous, in depth and extremely tiring.  

Throughout some of the treatment, Wyatt ended up coming down with a cold that landed him in the pediatric intensive care unit (ICU). 

“We’ve had so many extended stays in the hospital now,” Lee said. “I think our longest was 44 days. So, he’s been put through the ringer with medical stuff, but he never ceases to amaze me that he comes out smiling every single time.” 

Wyatt was diagnosed on July 8, 2023, and nearly two years later his treatment continues. Lee said that it has been tough going, having to go through Christmases and a birthday where he has missed out on the normal festivities. This has caused a little bit of burn out, and lately he has been pushing back on treatment and taking medication, which is entirely understandable. But Lee said his family, as well as the local police and emergency personnel, wanted to show Wyatt that the whole community is behind him. 

“It’s not just mom and dad, and the family,” Lee said. “It’s a community of people. They say it takes an army to raise a child, but it takes a whole entire village to raise a pediatric cancer patient. It’s not just support for him; it’s support for the whole family. It is amazing what everyone has done. We couldn’t be more thankful.” 

Lee said Saturday’s event was a true testament to how much the community cares about Wyatt. They had a police escort from their home in Unity all the way to Sugar River Bank in Newport for the event, complete with lights and sirens as they went through town. 

“I don’t have enough words to say how awesome it was,” Lee said. “It was humbling and definitely choked us up a bit. Wyatt was ear-to-ear smile from the time we rolled in to the time we left, and probably four to five hours after that. He just couldn’t stop talking about it.” 

Lee explained that the event hits home as there are police, military, and emergency personnel all throughout their family, with him being a former firefighter himself who now works in the medical field.  

Wyatt told his parents that his two favorite things were seeing the police and fire trucks and then going up into a bucket truck brought by Eversource.  

Wyatt left with a massive bin full of patches representing the organizations from all over the state that took part. Unity Fire and Sunapee Fire Department both gifted him a helmet, as well. 

“I have a 55-gallon container full of stuff that he came away with,” Lee said. “The first responder family came through and it makes us really proud of that. The Newport Police Department organized this and deserves so much thanks. They went way beyond the call of duty and did this out of the kindness of their hearts.” 

Newport Chief Stephen “Alex” Lee said he was a bit nervous because of the weather but it was remarkable seeing countless agencies turn out between police and fire departments, to utility trucks, to food trucks, to members of the community. 

“It was a very well attended event,” Chief Lee said. “It was great for Wyatt, and it was also great for a lot of other families and kids who came. A fun event for everybody.” 

The event included a raffle to help with the ongoing financial burden it is putting on the Lee family. There will also be a raffle going until May 4 where they are raffling off a custom Arctic cooler with Wyatt’s logo on it, filled with an array of items from local businesses. 

There have been hundreds of rounds of chemotherapy, countless days spent in the hospital and plenty of emotions surrounding the family, the community and Wyatt himself. The treatment continues for Wyatt, and in fact, the day before the event he had extensive surgery that included a spinal tap. But you’d never know when seeing the huge smile on Wyatt’s face. 

A GoFundMe has been set up to help with medical costs and can be found at gofundme.com/f/help-us-battle-wyatts-leukemia.  

To buy a raffle ticket, and for more information, log onto “Wyatt’s fight against Leukemia” on Facebook at facebook.com/WyattsFight/.  

Raffle tickets are being sold right up until May 4, and can be bought by sending a message to the page. Tickets are also being sold at Village Pizza in Newport.