Reese Family Story

The Kionne Reese Family Story

Kionne Reese Abrams lives in State College, PA with his parents, Alyssa and Dylan. He is thriving as a middle schooler, competitive gymnast, dog whisperer to Fred and Scottie, crop cultivator in our home garden, and gem collector/LED light extraordinaire! Because our journey is so different from most Four Diamonds Families, Kionne requested to tell his story from the day Alyssa met him and from her point of view. Kionne reviewed and approved this message. 🤩

The first time I met Kionne in September 2021, he had just moved to State College and was a new student at Park Forest Elementary, where I worked as a school psychologist. When he arrived at PFE, the school was notified that Kionne moved from Philadelphia and was in foster care. We soon learned that Kionne liked playing with magnets and (back then) his favorite color was green. Often, you would find him doing flips on the playground during recess! Kionne’s incredible 5th-grade teacher, Mrs. Kris Hall, quickly noticed some areas where he needed support and asked me to help.

As a school psychologist, I work with students to complete evaluations, which include many sources of data. Family/teacher input, rating scales (i.e., surveys for parents and teachers including literally hundreds of questions about executive functioning, behaviors, emotions, and social skills), classroom observations, and one-on-one testing all help me figure out how a student’s brain learns best. Then, I make recommendations for support at school. I also dig into a kid’s educational history to make sure there wasn’t anything missed…Which turned out was exactly what happened to Kionne. His report cards showed that Kionne was absent for 148 days and tardy on 51 days in total from Kindergarten through fourth grade. Also, his third grade year was cut short by over 50 days when schools nationwide shut down for the COVID-19 pandemic. Kionne then completed fourth grade online with little help. This means, through no fault of his own, Kionne missed a significant amount of foundational skills. He was never given the opportunity to learn the prior knowledge we were asking him to build on in fifth grade.

After months of phone calls to the Department of Human Services in Philadelphia in January 2022, I finally tracked down Kionne’s medical records. I took the 107 faxed pages from DHS to our outstanding school nurse, Nurse Gwynne Decker. She told me the records said that Kionne had been treated at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. In June 2015, he was diagnosed with Burkitt’s Leukemia (a rare type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma) when he was almost 4 years old. The plan was for intensive multiagent chemotherapy in cycles over a period of 8 months. A peripheral smear, marrow biopsy and lumbar puncture confirmed the findings of the disease. He began chemotherapy in July 2015 at CHOP.

Kionne completed his final cycle of maintenance therapy per ANHL 01P1 Group C-like protocol in January 2016, when he was four and a half years old. He has been in remission ever since!

Nurse Decker, Mrs. Hall, and I worked together with a team of educators to document Kionne’s cancer survivorship in his student record so it would follow him if he ever transitioned schools again. We also formalized a plan for academic support in an Individualized Education Program or IEP. Kionne started working with phenomenal special educators and the best teachers. Even though Kionne and I were done working together, he kept stopping by my office almost every day the rest of the year for a snack, help with a concern, or just to say “hi” and do origami together.

Although things at school seemed to be going well, Kionne’s foster care placement decided they were no longer pursuing permanent legal custody in February 2022 and Kionne needed a home. I probably wasn’t supposed to, but I called Kionne’s social worker to see what could be done because I could not let this kid move again after he finally was set up for success at PFE. The social worker informed us that wherever a child originated in foster care is the county that is responsible for placing him. Kionne was set to go back to Philadelphia at the end of the school year in less than four months. So, I went to Mrs. Hall’s classroom after school to tell her what I’d learned.

As we sat in silence, I thought about a quote I’d read by Josh Shipp, “Every kid is one caring adult away from being a success story.”

I called my husband, Dylan, from the hallway outside Mrs. Hall’s classroom and asked him if I could bring a kid home. He replied, “Sure, how old are they and when can I meet them?” After hundreds of pages of paperwork and signatures, several background checks, hours of interviews with our friends and families, countless home visits and inspections, and so many phone calls and emails, it turned out that Dylan and I were the best fit for Kionne’s next placement. On the last day of school before summer vacation in June 2022, Kionne and the social worker arrived at our house at the same time I got home from school. I got out of my car and hugged Kionne on our driveway.

That was the moment Kionne became our son!!! This kid who I had met only months before made me a mom overnight…Everything we’d been working on for months came together in that one life-changing afternoon. I am beyond honored to be Kionne’s “Mamasan.” ❤️

After he moved in, we transferred his medical records from CHOP and Kionne began receiving his survivorship care closer to us at Penn State Health Children’s Hospital in Hershey. I had to work the day that he had his first appointment, so Dylan and Kionne took a road trip to the hospital in November 2022. After a series of blood tests, scans, and a lot of waiting, the doctors confirmed that Kionne has been in remission since 2016! From the hospital, Dylan called me asking if I knew what Four Diamonds was. As a three-time Penn State grad (BS ‘16, MEd ‘17, PhD ‘22), I was VERY familiar with THON. But it didn’t even register or occur to me that Dylan was saying they were signing us up to be a Four Diamonds family.

We got a phone call in December 2022 asking if we wanted to be adopted by an organization called Zeta Beta Tau (ZBT). Knowing just how much caring adults can make a difference in a child’s life, I said yes as fast as I could! Time flew by quickly over the next two months and soon it was February 2023, and we were invited to THON as a Four Diamonds family. Kionne asked to bring his friend, so I accompanied two preteens by myself throughout the entire THON weekend…(remember, I was 27 at the time and had only been parenting for a few months!!) It was wonderfully chaotic in the best way possible, and I will never ever do it without my husband again…Although, I had A LOT of fun together with Kionne and his friend amidst the chaos!

So many core memories were made that weekend, like the first time we met ZBT! Kionne, his friend, and I had just gotten into the BJC and we were making a game plan to locate where ZBT was in the stands (a.k.a. I was trying NOT to lose the kids in the crowd). All the sudden I realized we were walking behind a bunch of guys and they all had “KIONNE” on their backs. Kionne will probably cringe when I retell this, but I went up to one of the guys and tapped him on the shoulder to enthusiastically tell him, “Hi! We’re looking for you!” only to see his very confused expression. So I pulled Kionne’s hand and pointed to him and us and back to Kionne. I tried to clarify by saying, “We’re Kionne! I mean…This is Kionne!” I must have been starstruck by all these guys there for Kionne 😅

The theme for THON 2023 was so fitting: Foster the Magic ✨ As a new foster family, and all of the things that had to line up in such a short period of time…it couldn’t have been anything short of magic that made it all happen.

Since then, we have gotten to meet Sigma Sigma Sigma (Tri-Sigma), ZBT’s paired sorority. ZBT and Tri-Sigma have hosted events for us like surprise parties in the front yard of the ZBT house, winter gingerbread house making with our neighbors and friends, fancy galas with red carpets and a crown for Kionne, and so much more. It feels like we are over at the house every other week during the school year! And if we haven’t seen them in person, I get texts almost daily from so many people that remind me just how much support we have for not only Kionne, but our whole family. Together at THON 2024 with ZBT and Tri-Sigma, we Treasured Every Adventure along with Dylan and my sister who was a senior at Penn State (Elena San Jose ‘24, who Kionne calls “Auntielena”). Before the Pep Rally, Kionne even got to lead the Men’s Gymnastics Team across the stage and he did an aerial in front of a full crowd! Everyone ROARED and it felt like the BJC was shaking as we walked off the stage!!!

There are no words to express the depth of our gratitude for the opportunities THON, ZBT, and Tri-Sigma are giving to Kionne: For him to have fun being a kid and letting him enjoy his childhood.

Over the following summer, we FINALLY became an official family: Kionne was adopted on July 26, 2024! Over fifty people (i.e., Kionne’s THON fraternity brothers/sorority sisters, his teachers, his friends, our neighbors, and our extended family) showed up to the courtroom or watched live via Zoom as Kionne’s adoption papers were signed. Judge Katherine V. Oliver said it was the most people she had ever seen at an adoption hearing yet!

I wholeheartedly believe in the saying, “It takes a village to raise a child.” Truly, Kionne’s team of educators at school, the THON community, and particularly ZBT and Tri-Sigma have all stepped up as his village to support our family. We cannot begin to tell you how much it means to us to be paired with our organizations. For each person who texted Kionne with motivational messages when he switched schools, put together road trip snacks for our drives to his survivorship checkups in Hershey, or showed up for him at his gymnastics competitions. There is an indescribable feeling I get whenever we are with ZBT and Tri-Sigma…When I look around at the community celebrating my son and the tremendous joy on his face, it reminds me every single time: we belong to something magical that makes a well-deserving kid feel seen, supported, and treasured.

The well-known psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner said,

“Every child needs at least one adult who is irrationally crazy about him or her.”

Kionne Reese Abrams is a THON child with ZBT and Tri-Sigma. Today, he has HUNDREDS of adults who are irrationally crazy about him. Our story together started with one caring teacher and has grown to include people all over our local community and even across the country.

I often think about when I was a freshman at Penn State excitedly running into the BJC for my first-ever THON. That year in 2014, the theme was “Redefine the Possibilities.” The possibility that I would be co-parenting the awesomest teenager in the universe with my best friend before I turned 30 was definitely not one I imagined. Since meeting Kionne, it is so clear to me that there are ENDLESS possibilities that have been redefined!

For The Kids, and especially for Kionne. I love you so much, buddy ❤️ Thank you for letting me tell your story.