If you look at Nick Henry's obituary, you'll see a list of three events his loved ones held to celebrate his life: calling hours, a memorial Mass and a community field day.
A couple hundred people gathered at a park in a suburban neighborhood of Charlton for that field day earlier this month. Attendees participated in a silent auction, enjoyed live music and competed in sports ranging from kickball and tug-of-war to sprints and relay races.
And they took time to honor Henry, who passed away a week and a half before the field day after an 18-month battle with neuroendocrine carcinoma — a rare and aggressive cancer.
"There are three things Nick loved most of all: his family, friends, and sports," Colin Meagher, who befriended Nick in seventh grade on the cross country team, said in a speech during the field day. "Throughout everything he was going through, one of his biggest concerns was his family. He fought so hard to remain here for them."
Meagher, Henry and their friends from the cross country team have remained close in the two decades since they graduated high school. Those friends describe Henry as kind and "annoyingly good" at everything from parenting to baking to sports. (Meagher says Henry even managed to win a round of golf this summer while undergoing chemo.) But above all, they say he was the kind of person who would check up on you when you were going through a rough patch, even after he was diagnosed with cancer.
"I was dealing with a running injury, and I was like, 'This is so minimal. Like you're dealing with a lot more,'" Megan James, another of Nick's high school friends, said. "And he's like, 'No, like how are you doing? Because this sucks for you.' But that was Nick. Like he cared about everyone else, and wanting to be there for them, and he was so loyal to his friends and his family."
Like many people diagnosed with rare cancers, Henry traveled for treatment. After he was diagnosed, his wife, Steph Henry, started signing him up for clinical trials. Henry ended up participating in five, even as he and his wife continued raising their four children, ages 7 to 3. Nicole Cooper, one of Henry's other high school friends, says Steph stayed strong, but the process was stay stressful.
"Like some of the trials that Steph set up, one was in Baltimore, one was in Dallas, Texas. They flew to Miami. The travel is extensive," Cooper said. "The clinical trials themselves are intense, and that requires a lot more. Even though you're not paying for that treatment in an experimental trial, it's travel, it's lodging, it's meals, it's all of the above."
So after Henry got his cancer diagnosis early last year, Meagher, James and Cooper started raising money. James biked from Niagara Falls to Manhattan last summer as a fundraiser, and the three friends organized their first community field day and bike ride in July 2025.
"We had started the relay, and it was just downpouring," Meagher said. "And Nick was going through chemo, and he did one loop and everything. He probably shouldn't have, but that's all right."
Those efforts raised more than $40,000.
So, the trio decided to expand their efforts. They founded a 501c3 organization, The Miles Together, and started raising money and advocating for other local families with a cancer diagnosis in the area. Diagnoses of certain cancers are rising in people under 50, and many families go into debt getting treatment for their loved one.
"We have local families that we're reaching out to, and we're trying to look at: Do you need help with lodging? Do you need meal support? Do you need tutoring because your kid is not going to be able to go to school or anything like that?" Cooper said. "So it's the domestic care, it's financial, those kinds of logistics."
But while she was raising money for the Henry family and becoming an advocate for rare cancers, Cooper was diagnosed with a type of rare cancer herself this June.
"Telling Nick was difficult, knowing what he's going through," Cooper said. "But the second that he found out, he white knuckled his way over to my house, like a 20-minute drive. He's not allowed to drive himself, so he shouldn't have done that. But he showed up. He consoled me for hours, didn't ever make me feel like I couldn't talk to him."
Cooper says Henry became her "cancer buddy." They bonded over talking about prepping for tests, making a bucket list and cracking "Breaking Bad" jokes.
But the experience also showed her what a huge difference cancer research can make for patients. Unlike Henry, Cooper had an easier time finding treatment. She was able to see a normal oncologist and get surgery. Her doctors are pretty sure they've removed all her cancerous cells.
"You can't lose a battle that you were never given the tools to fight. It's wildly unfair," Cooper said. "And I think that saying that someone has lost their battle with cancer is a way to dodge accountability, and we're not going to do that. We are standing up."
About 220 people, including long-time Burnt Hills Cross Country Coach Chip Button, attended the second-annual field day. The Miles Together raised just under $20,000 and school supplies for the Henry family.
They plan to hold field days every year to raise money for other families affected by cancer, and to celebrate their friend.
