GREENVILLE, Texas — By her own admission, Jamie Brock is terrible at fishing.
But she didn’t come to Graham Park in Greenville looking for a big catch.
“If I can just make one child’s day better, that’s all I want,” Brock said. “Even if it’s just one child.”
That desire all started with her child, Dusty.
“If Dusty could’ve lived in the water, he probably would have,” Brock said. “You could tell that he just belonged there.”
Dusty wanted to be a professional fisherman and Brock says he might have been if not for cancer.
“He didn’t get to live the life he should’ve been able to live,” she said. “No kid deserves that.”
When he died from Leukemia in 2015, Brock says the world lost more than a good fisherman.
For example, Dusty volunteered to try a new treatment in hopes that it might one day save someone else.
“Dusty had a very giving heart,” Brock said.
That’s why she says she had to do something to make sure he wouldn’t be forgotten.
“He deserves his legacy to continue and I want to give that for him,” she said.
She says anytime Dusty went fishing, it’s almost like cancer disappeared.
“Even if he was only out there for 20 minutes, for those 20 minutes it wasn’t affecting him because his mind wasn’t on that,” Brock said.
With that in mind, she started Dusty’s Lines of Love, a non-profit for terminally ill kids and their families to go fishing and forget about cancer, if only for a day.
“We want these kids and these families to know they’re not alone and they’re constantly being thought of,” Brock said.
In addition to fishing, Brock says the non-profit will organize toy drives and provide care packages to families whose kids are in the hospital.
By doing so, she says the joy Dusty brought to this world will spread.
“That means that he’ll never be forgotten and that’s all a parent would ever want for their child,” Brock said.
Spreading love to kids with cancer is enough to make Dusty Brock one of fishing’s all-time greats.