BOY GREW HIS HAIR 2 YEARS FOR WIGS FOR KIDS WITH CANCER

A Maryland boy named Thomas Moore spent two years growing out his hair so it could be turned into wigs for kids with cancer, a Thomas Moore hair donation that began when he saw his mom watching a Facebook video. His aunt, Amber Ray, posted a before-and-after photo of the haircut on Twitter, and it went viral.

Thomas was almost 8 when he started and 10 by the time the scissors came out in September 2016, according to CBS Baltimore and FOX 35 Orlando. Bored Panda reported the hair was enough to make three wigs for children who lose their hair during chemotherapy.

Ray, who is his mother’s sister, put the photos online on September 11, 2016, with a short message:

my nephew grew his hair out for two years to donate to kids with cancer 😭

Cornrows and a very warm head

The idea came when Thomas saw his mother, Angie Pulos, watching a video about a girl who had lost her hair to cancer. She explained what cancer is and how treatment can make hair fall out, Your Daily Dish reported.

Thomas decided he would grow his own hair for kids in that situation. He never set a target length. BuzzFeed quoted him as saying he “just wanted it to be long enough to make the girl feel happy.”

Pulos described it to CBS Baltimore this way: “He, on his own, decided he wanted her to be happy, that he wanted to give her his hair.”

Two years is a long time to manage a growing head of hair, and the family had to get creative. “It started off just fine when his hair was shorter,” Ray said in an interview.

“But as the afro grew, they had to cornrow it to keep it nice and tame,” she said. Thanh Niên reported the hair was hot and inconvenient to manage, and that Thomas wore it braided while it grew.

When it finally came off, EURweb reported the hair measured nearly 17 inches from root to tip. The cut happened during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, CBS Baltimore said.

Thomas felt good afterward and hoped the donation would make other people happy. He told FOX 35 he was considering growing his hair out again.

The post takes off

Ray and Thomas were both surprised by how far the tweet traveled. Pulos told CBS Baltimore she and Thomas “just never thought this would go viral.” It passed 57,000 retweets, and readers piled on with thanks and praise for the boy’s kindness, Portal O São Gonçalo reported.

The attention also led to a connection. The girl in the video was Kyssi Andrews, who had died by the time the story spread, CBS Baltimore reported. Someone tagged her mother in Thomas’s story, and Pulos said the two mothers were able to reach out to each other.

“Someone tagged her in his story… we were able to reach out to each other and we talked,” Pulos said.

Thomas’s moment did not end with the retweets. According to Pulos, as quoted by CBS Baltimore, he was set to be the guest of honor and receive an award on October 14, 2016, at the Acts of Kindness gala hosted by retired NBA player Derek Anderson’s Stamina Foundation.