Richmond family raises $1 million to fight pediatric brain cancer after son's death

RICHMOND, Va. — Scott Ungerer was originally going to be a doctor.

The former University of Richmond basketball standout was the first recruit for former head coach John Beilein, and basketball went so well that it altered his future.

"Coach Beilein, after my junior year, said you might have a shot at playing professionally overseas, and that ended up working out great. I got to do that for four years, to live out a dream, to get paid to play a game and travel the world, which was amazing," Ungerer said.

Ungerer is now the basketball analyst for the Spiders broadcasts.

His day job with Eli Lilly puts his biology and business degrees to good use.

It also led to a chance encounter with a co-worker that further altered his future.

"When we went into these offices, people knew his name. He comes in with this presence and this height, and smart and handsome and all the other good things," Sheila Ungerer said.

"And he said, 'Tomorrow, you're going to go ride along with the other Richmond representative. She's great. She's really smart. She's great with customers. She's a great teammate. She's really interactive. You're gonna love her,'" Scott Ungerer said.

He did.

Scott and Sheila soon married, and in February 2012 welcomed their first son, Luke, into their world.

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"He was even more perfect than anyone else's. That's the difference," Sheila Ungerer said with a laugh. "He blew our minds. We were obsessed."

For three years, Luke was the picture of health until one day — shortly after his third birthday — he began behaving erratically.

"I turned on a little show for him and he was like making strange observations and so I just I actually looked at him and again I was like Luke that's enough like you're being silly you know like we need to you're you're making me nervous like let's go you know like let's get it together," Sheila Ungerer said.

"The next thing I know, we're in an ambulance, calling Scott to leave work, where we go, what hospital, you know, and calling our parents, getting them to mobilize, and then it just really was the beginning of really, just a horrific 10 months," she said.

Luke was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, the most aggressive form of brain cancer. It had also metastasized into his spine. It is incredibly rare in children.

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"I don't think either of us were imagining what we heard from that doctor when when he walked in, and, you know, life stops," Scott Ungerer said.

"I think he knew that he was so little, but he was a sensitive, perceptive person, and he knew that we were sad or that we were trying really hard," Sheila Ungerer said. "He would talk about it for like a month or two before he passed away. He would say to me regularly, he'd be like, 'I'm not gonna be here for my birthday,'" she said.

Luke passed on January 14, 2016, less than a month before his 4th birthday.

Luke's Army was born out of the support the family was given after his diagnosis and out of his parents' wish that no family would ever have to go through this.

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"Don't even fly out to see us. Use whatever money you would have spent on that to give it to these smart people that will find a way for this to stop happening," Sheila Ungerer said.

The Ungerers have partnered with the St. Baldrick's Foundation and, to date, have raised and donated more than $1 million for pediatric cancer research in Luke's memory.

Scott and Sheila have no answers for why this happened to their family. They only know what has come of it thus far and what they hope will come of it in the future.

"I do think that part of it, there is this feeling that it is got to be part of bigger something bigger that we just can't understand. But I can say with certainty that like the influence of Luke's life has been beautiful," Sheila Ungerer said.

"It's the positive ripples. It's you throw the stone into the pond, and it starts out, and then it just keeps spreading and spreading. And I think that's the analogy that we feel with Luke's like life and the the impact that he had," Scott Ungerer said.