ST. LOUIS — Ryan O’Reilly has learned much from his mother, the woman he calls his hero.
“My mom is an incredible woman, so selfless,” the St. Louis Blues forward said in March. “She’s a hero, she saved someone’s life. I’m just so proud of her. I’m so proud of having her as my mom. She makes me want to be a better person every day.”
Bonnie O’Reilly saved the life of Graham Nesbitt, a fixture at the local rink in Seaforth, Ontario.
She donated a kidney in March of 2021 to Nesbitt, who was facing total kidney failure. Nesbitt ran the town rink, the Seaforth & District Community Centre. According to Ryan’s dad, Brian, Nesbitt often woke up early to open the rink so Ryan and his brother, Cal, and other kids in the town could get in an early skate.
Those early practices helped deliver each boy to the NHL.
Ryan is the captain of the Blues and is 62 games from reaching 1,000 NHL regular-season games. Ryan brought the Stanley Cup to the town arena after winning it with the Blues in 2019. Cal played 145 NHL games for five NHL teams and finished the 2021-22 season with Lehigh Valley in the American Hockey League.
So, when Bonnie heard Graham was sick, she decided she would do everything to help, to return the kindnesses Nesbitt showed her family, even if that meant donating her kidney.
“She’s an amazing human being,” Brian O’Reilly said.
Today, Nesbitt says he feels great.
“There’s nothing you can say that is enough,” Nesbitt said in a Mother’s Day tribute video to Bonnie on NHL.com. “It’s just an incredible feeling to know you have life again.”
Bonnie O’Reilly has always been about others, her life mission to help those less fortunate. The O’Reilly family housed 47 foster children while raising their four biological children, Ryan Cal, Shannon and Tara.
“Family for us wasn’t just my parents and three biological siblings,” O’Reilly said in the tribute on NHL.com. “My mom and dad opened their homes and hearts to 47 foster children over the years.”
Those experiences helped shaped Ryan and developed him into the leader he is today.
“We’ve always had a passion for helping kids all through our years in social work,” Brian O’Reilly said. “To pass that on to our children, I think, if there is something you want to do as a parent is to get your kids off of thinking that they are really special and they deserve every happiness. Well, no.
“You are one person on the planet, and you have a job to be the best human being you can be. Be kind, be sensitive. We wanted to make sure that they grew up in an environment where they had to share and learn to earn what they wanted, and to be the best possible person they can be, and it’s not all about you. Life is vast and everyone is the same, everyone is just trying to get their needs met, and if you can do it in an unselfish way you are going to have a lot greater happiness in your life than being all about you.”
Ryan might be the most like Bonnie of the four biological children, according to Brian O’Reilly.
“I’d say the essence of their relationship is that they are kind of cut from the same cloth,” he said. “They are extremely, I would say, feisty. They lead with their heart and they have to win.
“They feel very intensely, the commit to what they are doing when they are doing it, and they are competitive as hell, but there is a line in them where they want to win, but they don’t want to win at any cost where it is going to destroy or hurt someone else.”
And they also know how to laugh.
Brian remembers a telling vignette from Ryan’s childhood.
A gaggle of kids had gathered in the kitchen, playing hockey on the long wooden floor that was varnished and gleamed like ice. Bonnie was at the stove, her back to the children, preparing the family supper.
“Ryan takes a shot and it goes right in the pot, and she turns around and she goes, ‘Goal!'” Brian O’Reilly said, his face breaking into a huge smile. “She takes the puck out of the pot and that was all there was about it. She said, ‘Great show!’ That’s the kind of environment we had when they were kids.”
It is an environment that has shaped Ryan O’Reilly‘s professional and personal life. It is an environment he remains grateful for to this day.
“You couldn’t find a more considerate, compassionate and caring person than my mom,” he said in the video. “Graham Nesbitt and my 50 brothers and sisters know it.”
Now the rest of the hockey world knows it as well.