(Arianne Starnes/Examiner)
“All my life people have been helping me out, so I thought I’d give back,” says Calvert Hall Senior Brady Voltran, 17, of Parkville, who was born with a heart defect, and has spent the last 4 years raising around $100,000 for children at Johns Hopkins Hospital with heart troubles.

Michael Olesker, The Examiner
2007-12-04 08:00:00.0
Current rank: # 898 of 6,136

Brady Vontran has so much heart, you wouldn’t believe it. He is 18 years old and collects toys for critically ill children. He raises astonishing amounts of money for these kids. He does all of this out of the generosity of his own heart, which nearly failed him at birth.

“An extraordinary young kid,” says Brian Morrison, the CEO and founder of the Believe in Tomorrow Children’s Foundation, which builds and manages hospital and retreat housing for critically ill children and their families. “He’s gone above and beyond any effort that I’m familiar with, of a young person who volunteers his time and contributes back to the community.”

“He is pretty special,” says Brady’s mother, Kelly Vontran, speaking with unnecessary modesty. “I mean, he’s at an age when kids are absorbed in computer games and wondering if their hair looks right. But I guess it comes from everything he’s been through in his own life. He’s always known the history of his beginnings.”

Brady was born on Thanksgiving Day 1989, with a bad heart. Three weeks later, doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital performed open-heart surgery. The Vontrans — Kelly, husband John, and son Matt — muddled through a tough holiday season.

“We’ve all known what it’s like to have a child in the hospital during the holidays,” says Kelly Vontran. “One of Brady’s first Christmas gifts was a teddy bear, which he kept. And one year he just said he wanted to collect toys for other sick children. We said, ‘Great.’ He collected 300 toys that first year. The next year, he said, ‘Let’s do it again.’ Then he said, ‘Let’s send out letters.’ He got 3,000 toys, and he got money. He said, ‘Let’s make it a foundation.’ ”

So here it is: Brady’s Heart Foundation, a charitable organization founded four years ago by this kid who’s gone through his own pain, and understands what other children go through, and wants to help.

In Brady’s case, it wasn’t just the open-heart surgery three weeks after his birth. He’s gone through more heart surgery, and he’s had considerable ongoing medical care through his life.

He’s now a senior at Calvert Hall College High School. In his sophomore year, scoliosis was putting pressure on his heart and lungs. In February 2006, he underwent eight hours of spinal surgery.

Through it all, the efforts to help other children and their families never ceased. Last December, he led a Polar Bear Plunge in the Atlantic off Bethany Beach. He also held a party at his parents’ Parkville home. Three hundred kids packed into the place.

This year, the foundation will host The Snow Ball at The Hall, a Dec. 16 dance at Calvert Hall. (Tickets are $50 a person, and all donations are tax deductible.) About 650 people are expected.

But that’s only part of the story. The foundation’s biggest benefactors have been the Children’s House at Johns Hopkins and The Children’s House at St. Casimir’s, on O’Donnell Street in Canton next to St. Casimir’s Church.

The foundation’s on target to exceed $100,000 in donations since its start, and Brady was recently asked to attend the Board of Governors meeting for the new Johns Hopkins Heart Institute, which will be dedicated to helping those who suffer from heart disease and heart defects.

When he went to the Board of Governors meeting, Brady gave them $5,000 and committed his foundation to raising $25,000.

This is a kid who’s still working his way through high school — and still seems to think he’s in somebody else’s debt.

“Ever since I’ve been a child,” he was saying the other day, “everybody’s been taking care of me. I just figured it’s time for me to give back to everybody who’s helped me.”

It’s not just money. He volunteers time at the Children’s House at Hopkins. His mother says, “A lot of times, I’m waiting in the car outside, wondering, ‘Where is he?’ He’s real low-key about what he does. But he’s in there, sharing his story with some of these other families, telling them it’s going to be all right, trying to give them hope.”

Brady shrugs his shoulders modestly. “It feels good knowing I might help some people,” he said.

It runs in the family. He’s got a 16-year-old brother, Cody, who tutors elementary school children. He’s got parents who know their children have heart. Brady’s heart had a rough time getting started, but it’s powerful enough now that it beats for children across the landscape.

Please send news tips to Michael Olesker at olesker@baltimoreexaminer.com