George Howley was never one to stay quiet when his family needed him.
The first time he and his parents were in the intensive care unit due to George’s rare genetic mitochondrial disorder, his temperature was bottoming out and he was showing signs of an infection.
As his parents panicked and prodded the doctor, trying to figure out what to do, George, with his big hair and even bigger smile, shut the whole room down with one loud, happy yell.
“WAA-OOO!” he shouted, and, at once, everyone in the room — his doctors, his nurses and his parents — burst into laughter.
“He took this serious moment, and through his joy, it was like, ‘It’s OK, Dad, it’s going to be OK,’” said Kevin Howley, his father.
George was never able to walk or talk, and he was completely tube-fed. He dealt with seizures, cerebral palsy, low muscle tone and microcephaly, a birth defect where a baby’s head is much smaller than expected.
Even with all he dealt with, right up until his death last June, he was the happiest, sweetest baby, said his mom, Staci Howley.
Shortly after he died in March of 2025, Staci and Kevin formed the Be Cheechy Foundation, a nonprofit organization established in his honor to spread joy through random acts of kindness, or “cheeching” people.
“We always knew that this day would come and that we would want to — and need to, for us as well — do something to keep us and other people talking about George, carrying his light and joy forward and just really continuing his cheechy little spirit,” Staci said.
So far, more than 2,400 people have been “cheech’d.” On March 21, the foundation’s first fundraising event took place at House Three Thirty in Akron to honor what would have been George’s fourth birthday on March 30, known as 330 Day in the Akron area.
Kevin said because George used his pain for a purpose, he and Staci wanted to do the same.
“He just did it all through joy and being happy and smiling,” Kevin said. “Really, if I had to say anything about my son, what’s so incredible is, without saying a word, he just moved everyone that he met.”
George’s shining personality
Staci and Kevin received George’s diagnosis of combined oxidative phosphorylation deficiency-35 (COXPD35) shortly after his birth from Dr. Stephen Steiner, a pediatric neurologist at Akron Children’s. Kevin said he remembers Steiner telling them, “Love George, and he will have the happiest life.”
“From Dr. Steiner telling us, really, it was just a joy fest,” Kevin said. “We’ve spent collective months in the hospital and ICU — it was just fun. It was joy. It’s weird to use those terms, but [George] always made people feel special.”
“He got to live the fullest life imaginable in his three years and a few months,” said Aubrey Cocklin, board member at Be Cheechy, owner of Mirror Promotions and a family friend.
She said she remembers when Staci found out what George’s life would entail.
“I remember Staci just saying to me, ‘Aubrey, he’s never going to know anything but joy and love in his life. He’s never going to have to go through the tribulations and trials of teenage life, and I’m never going to have to yell at him because he isn’t studying,’” Cocklin said. “What an amazing outlook. That has always just stuck with me as how they tackled everything.”
Steiner remembers George as always being dressed to the nines with the biggest smile.
“He was just this wonderful toddler who was very squishable and so adorable,” said Dr. Lucyna Zawadzki, a pediatric epileptologist at Akron Children’s. “His crazy hair and captivating smile — he made our days every time we saw him, either through the telehealth visits or in person.”
George would sometimes sit and snuggle with Cocklin, but she said he was happiest when he was with his parents.
“While he couldn’t express in typical ways what he was feeling, you could see the love between him and Staci and him and Kevin,” she said. “When you would put him back in Staci’s arms, you could see that he knew he was with his mama.”
What is COXPD35?
As of September 2025, only 16 cases of COXPD35 had been reported in literature. Steiner said the condition affects a protein that is involved in the body’s energy production and can generally be categorized as a mitochondrial disorder.
“The mitochondria are little batteries within all of our cells that help our cells function literally every single second of every single day,” he said. “When you have a mutation such as his in a very important protein that’s important for day-to-day function, it can cause a deleterious effect in cells throughout the body.”
There is no cure for the disease, and when it presents in a young child, it can often be progressive, as was the case for George.
“It creates this systemic illness, and it’s a very serious condition, very rare,” Steiner said. “You just try to treat them the best as possible and maximize the benefit that we get from treatments.”
George was experiencing seizures often when he was first referred to Zawadzki, and medications were not working.
“When I first met him, it was very hard to see who he was because he was seizing so much that he was sort of in that fog,” Zawadzki said. “His brain wasn’t even perceiving truly what was going on. … Most of the day, he spent intermittently in seizures and then recovery from that.”
With help from Akron Children’s Ketogenic Diet Program, which Zawadzki heads, George’s seizures came under control. A ketogenic diet, commonly referred to as a “keto” diet, is high in fat, low in carbohydrates and includes just enough protein for a child to grow.
“The first visit, when he came back, and mom reported how well he was doing, we grabbed Dr. Steiner, and we brought him in because it was a huge celebration for us,” Zawadzki said.
“You definitely saw more things pop out, like his smiling, his reactions to his parents’ voices or little, subtle things that we probably take for granted,” Steiner said. “Taking care of a child such as Georgie, those are big, big victories.”
How does the Be Cheechy Foundation work?
During one of the long, hard days the Howleys spent in the hospital, they went to Roosters Wings restaurant to get out for a bit.
“We just saw this really sweet family across from us … and they’re having a great time, and we just said, ‘Well, let’s do something nice for them anonymously,’” Kevin said.
They decided to pay for their meal, and when they saw the amazement on the family’s faces, Kevin said it gave them a “jolt.”
“Something clicked that, OK, this is what George does for us — that’s what we’re going to do for other people,” he said.
The name for the foundation came from George’s famous big cheeks.
“If somebody was nice, we called them cheechy,” Staci said. “If you were happy, you were feeling cheechy. It just became a part of our vocabulary, and he was our cheechy boy.”
Be Cheechy has served as part catharsis, part community service for the Howleys. Kevin said it’s their way of keeping George alive.
Cheeching can be as small as buying someone’s meal for them or paying for a student to get a laptop. Those who are cheech’d are not required to pay it forward.
“Working with all those families and knowing how much even a cup of coffee or any small gesture can mean to someone who’s so busy and so worried and doesn’t think about their own needs, I just feel like that means the whole world,” Zawadzki said. “In a given moment, it’s like everything that they need to even make them want to get up and continue.”
“What we need as people, or Ohioans, or Americans, we just need to do this for each other,” Kevin said. “It crosses lines. We chose ‘Live Like George’ as our tagline because he didn’t see politically; he didn’t see differences or anything. He was just the same for everybody.”
A way to navigate grief
Cocklin said Staci and Kevin are just as rare as George was.
“They never treated George as anything other than a perfect human being,” she said.
Erika Mayer, board member at Be Cheechy and leadership team member at the LeBron James Family Foundation, said it would have been easy to fall into deep grief and sadness after George’s passing.
“The way that they’ve turned that around to spread joy to others and pour into others and love on others … it just blows me away,” she said. “I think everyone can learn so much from them in how you navigate and journey through life and through some of the darkest times.”
“The alternative is I do this, or I’m just in bed, eating cake and crying all day,” Staci said. “It’s a choice every day to get up and think of ways to cheech.”
The Howleys hope cheeching becomes known nationwide, where, if people feel sad, they do a nice act for someone else.
Fundraising for the foundation
Staci said the birthday bash was the foundation’s first big fundraising event.
Two “Live Like George” awards were given to Steiner and Zawadzki to recognize the roles they played in George’s journey.
“We’re very grateful for that honor,” Zawadzki said. “We can promise that we’ll continue fighting, and we’ll never forget him.”
Mayer’s kids also ran a lemonade stand, working on their goal of raising $4,000 for the foundation this year.
The Be Cheechy shop on BeCheechy.org has kindness cards for purchase, which can be donated to the foundation in somebody’s honor. There is also apparel and free “You’ve Been Cheech’d” cards.
Staci and Kevin hope to get as many cheech nominations as possible through an online form, where you can recommend a gift and provide the information of the person you want to cheech.
Steiner said that, though it never gets easier losing a patient, he won’t ever forget George.
“There are definitely people who live full lives that don’t necessarily impact those around them as much as Georgie did,” he said.
“It’s really George’s lasting gift, is to give us something to do,” Kevin said. “If anybody can make this a national movement, it would be my son.”
Lauren Cohen is a community reporting intern for the Akron Beacon Journal and Signal Akron. The position is funded through a grant from the Knight Foundation, which is a financial sponsor of Signal Akron.