By STEVE FREKER
MEDFORD — The spirit of “Gio” Maggiore remains strong in the Medford community, especially among the students and staff members at the local elementary schools whose lives he touched before his untimely passing this past spring.
Just before the end of the school last week, students and teachers from the Brooks Elementary School, where Gio Maggiore, 6, was a first-grade student and Columbus Elementary School, where his mother, Maya Maggiore, was a teacher, joined together in a fundraising event called “Kick For a Cause.”
Gio died on April 10 from a series of medical ailments associated with his congenital heart condition. His story made regional and even national news in April when “Gio” was one of the top 10 names in the nation under consideration for a newborn giraffe calf at upstate New York’s Animal Adventure Park.
Columbus students played a giant kickball game in school field on a sun-splashed day to combine goodwill with $877 raised and donated to It’s My Heart New England. The charity supports children with medical problems associated with the heart and their families.
The owners of Legoland in Assembly Square stepped up just last month and honored Gio by naming the 20-foot giraffe sculpture outside its doors after the Medford boy.
In an interview after her son’s death, Maya Maggiore said,”One of (Gio’s) biggest fears is he would not be remembered.”
His schoolmates and teachers aren’t going to let that happen.