Connor, who is from Vancouver, was among one of the six designers who participated in the program this year. On Friday, the designers gathered at the Portland Art Museum for the program’s 20th auction, which raised $1.5 million.
Connor’s black and gold custom shoes sold for $77,500 — more than any design in freestyle program’s history.
He began the design process in December, alongside three members of Nike’s team. Connor has always been artistic, said his mother, Mayte Kassing. He enjoys creating digital art and building with Lego bricks. He has played piano since he was 3 years old.
A musical staff with eighth notes and a treble clef is engraved onto the middle of the shoe. It represents his love for music and the song he composed with his sister.
“Music has helped me a lot. I feel like I’m in a safe, comfortable place with music,” Connor said.
The bottom of the shoe bears the inscription, “paso a paso,” which translates from Spanish to “step by step” — a mantra that Connor’s family has lived by throughout their journey.
“The idea is to just take it one step at a time, and not focus too much on the future,” Connor said.
A medical journey
Connor was 8 the day his parents pulled him out of school because of a terrible headache. He was rushed to the emergency room at PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center, where doctors discovered a brain bleed.
He was transferred to Portland’s Randall Children’s Hospital, where he spent the next two weeks in the pediatric intensive care unit.
Slowly, Connor recovered and went back to living a life of building with Legos, going to school, playing his instruments and spending time with family.
“My son’s personality was still intact. His incredible wit and humor is still here. His intelligence is still there,” Connor’s father, Steven Kassing said.
But four years later, when Connor was 12, he suddenly had the worst headache of his life. It was another brain bleed.
“From a parent’s standpoint, it was just a flush of memories. Our worst nightmare came back,” Steven Kassing said.
Soon after, Connor was officially diagnosed with low-grade glioma, an umbrella term for different types of brain tumors, said Christopher Park, assistant professor of pediatric hematology-oncology at OHSU. Park has been treating Connor for about a year and a half.
“It’s far from a benign disease by any stretch of the imagination,” Park said in a video produced by OHSU.
This time, Connor began chemotherapy for a couple of months to stop the growth. But in April 2023, the brain bleed returned for a third time.
Connor’s family and doctors decided the best course would be to operate to remove the tumor. The 14-hour surgery was successful, and neurosurgeons at Doernbecher were able to remove a large portion of the growth.
But since the surgery last year, Connor has had to relearn everything. Music, Legos and his family have all been integral parts of his recovery.
“We realized he still had a connection to music, despite the loss of some of his other cognitive ability,” Steven Kassing said. “Through it all, Connor’s positive attitude and his willingness to face any challenges kept persisting.”
‘The Connor Heart’
When Connor was younger, he had a very unique way of drawing a heart, which his family called “The Connor Heart.”
A drawing of that heart also made it onto the shoe Connor designed.
“One of the things we found when we were in the hospital is that you can really bury yourself in the what ifs,” Steven Kassing said. “It wasn’t healthy for us to be worrying about that. We approach everything by the lines of ‘paso a paso.’ ”
Connor is now a freshman at Union High School. The tumor in his brain is still there, but it is significantly smaller. He is on a two-year course of molecular medicine to ensure the tumor remains stable and won’t grow.
Through it all, Connor’s parents said they realized how important it is to be your own advocate within the medical system.
“We had never been to the hospital with a kid. Then all of a sudden having to fight for Connor’s life was a crazy realization of how the medical system works,” Mayte Kassing said. “But he’s here. Every day Connor gets better.”
