Scott Boorstein was a sweet and solid guy. Destined, truly, for greatness.
“Kind and lovable and friendly and curious and smart and athletic and just so kind,” Nina Boorstein, his mom, answers when asked to describe her only son. “I can’t even express how kind he was. He was a learner. He knew everything about everything. He’s who I would go to when I didn’t know something.”
He was an All-Conference golfer at Deerfield High School. After graduating in 2013, he attended Northwestern University and studied economics and business institutions. He pledged a fraternity.
“He absolutely loved it,” Nina Boorstein said. “He thrived there.”
The summer before his senior year, the family — Scott, Nina, her husband, Marc, and their daughter, Ali — took a vacation to Canada. Scott loved to travel.
A week after they returned home, Scott died by suicide. He was 21.
“It was shocking and sudden and it was so preposterous, actually, that something like this could happen,” Nina Boorstein said. “It will be the biggest question of our lives. It will never be answered.”
As the family reeled from the shock and trauma and grief, people who knew Scott sent them stories about him — a small but profound gesture.
“For any parent, you just don’t want people to forget your child,” Nina Boorstein said.
The notes were a gift — tangible, but also a window into his life.
“We received so many cards and letters from people we didn’t know, talking about experiences they had where Scott was kind to them,” Nina Boorstein said. “People who maybe didn’t fit in, and Scott would always find a way to touch them. Someone was embarrassed about something that happened in class and he would find them later and say, ‘That was good. You did a good job.’ He could read people. He was very intuitive.”
In December 2016, two months after Scott’s death, a group of his friends approached his parents and asked if they could plan an event in Scott’s honor and hold it on what would have been his 22nd birthday. They wanted to call the event “Selfless for Scott,” and they wanted it to include an act of service.
Two months later, on Feb. 6, 2017, Scott’s family and friends gathered at his fraternity house and packed lunches for people experiencing homelessness. His fraternity brothers had Selfless for Scott bracelets made.
“It was cheerful and uplifting,” Nina Boorstein said. “But it was also doing something for others in Scott’s name.”
That felt right, even when little else did.
A few months later, Scott’s growing kindness army connected with Green Star Movement, a nonprofit that creates public art across Chicago. They helped contribute to a sprawling and gorgeous mosaic at 65th Street and Dorchester Avenue, at the Woodlawn Metra underpass. If you look long and hard enough, you’ll find a Selfless for Scott tile.
“We decided every Feb. 6 to have an event — partner with an organization who could use a little help or a lot,” Nina Boorstein said.
They’ve spent Scott’s birthday working with the Night Ministry, a group that provides housing and social services to young people who are experiencing homelessness and poverty, and Cradles to Crayons, a nonprofit that provides school supplies and clothing to kids who need them.
They’ve worked with the Anthony Rizzo Foundation to create care kits for children going through chemotherapy and emergency kits for their parents, who are often rushing to the hospital with no time to pack a bag. They’ve partnered with Project Linus, a national nonprofit that sews and delivers quilts to kids who are ill or traumatized.
“What’s so beautiful is that Scott’s tentacles are going and going and going,” said Beth Gilford, Nina’s dear friend since they were 7.
Each year they hold a multi-week kindness challenge: Participate in a random act of kindness every day for a set number of days leading up to Feb. 6. They used Selfless for Scott Facebook and Instagram accounts to spread the word and suggest small gestures: Pick up trash at a park. Write a thank you letter to a teacher. Buy a stranger’s coffee. Earlier this year, when Scott would have turned 27, the challenge lasted 27 days.
They’re in the thick of planning this year’s 28-day kindness challenge, which will kick off in January and culminate on Feb. 6., 2023, with a community service event at the Chicago Furniture Bank, an organization that provides free furnishings for people in need.
But kindness — like grief, like longing, like memories — doesn’t live in the confines of a calendar.
“Nina will get texts all the time,” Gilford said. “‘I did something kind today. I thought about Scooter.’”
After a gunman opened fire on the July 4 parade in Highland Park, Illinois, Nina Boorstein rallied her friends and supporters to create fabric squares for Project Linus to sew into quilts. When they’re completed later this month, the quilts will be delivered to Highland Park first responders and other survivors and witnesses of the mass shooting.
“Scott makes us better people,” Gilford said. “Nina and Marc make us better people. They’ve helped us all see that we can make an impact on the world, and it doesn’t have to be donating a huge chunk of money. It can be showing kindness to someone.”
Greatness, achieved.
“Scott always wanted to change the world,” Nina Boorstein said. “That’s what he always told us. ‘I’m going to change the world.’ And this is how he’s doing it. He’s letting us help him change the world.”
I happened to be reading Anne Lamott’s latest book, “Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage,” the same week I met the Boorstein family. Lamott has this to say, on Page 176, and it landed on me like a little ray of light, illuminating what Scott’s family and friends and supporters are doing in his honor:
“The facts of this world will never satisfy the human heart, but what we give each other can, when it holds love.”
