Kevin Joseph Smith Burke was known for helping people.
He sat with a friend who was going through chemotherapy for hours at a time, said his mother, Kathryn Burke of Wilmette.
He befriended a man who moved to Wilmette from Dubai, barely knew English and had no other friends, she said.
“Kevin was his first friend,” Burke said. “He helped people in ways he didn’t boast about. A lot of things we found out after the fact.”
Kevin died suddenly in July 2017 at the age of 23 of a rare heart condition. Longtime family friend Jeff Later, a blood donor for 25 years, knew just how to honor him.
It turns out that Burke, a big, strong athlete, was scared of blood. Later decided his friend would be thrilled to have an annual blood drive conducted in his honor.
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