08/28/2026
Our hearts and prayers today are with the family, community and our kids, teachers and staff at Clay County Schools
Every school in Clay County, Tennessee will sit empty on Friday.
Not because of weather. Not because of a holiday. Because the district decided its students needed to be somewhere else that day.
They need to say goodbye to Mitchell Boles.
Mitchell was 17. A fisherman. A member of his high school's fishing team. A die-hard Auburn Tigers fan who had autism and a way of making people feel noticed.
In April of last year, after weeks of thinking it over with his parents, Mitchell was baptized.
Two months later, everything changed.
He noticed a bump near his left knee and showed his parents. What followed was an X-ray, then more testing, then the word no family wants to hear.
Osteosarcoma. Bone cancer.
Mitchell started chemotherapy at Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt. Surgeries followed. So did months of a life split between hospital rooms and home, between treatment and trying to just be a teenager.
His father said the community's response was something he never expected.
"It's not just money," Ray Boles said. "It's the fact that people care and love has been shown."
For a while, medication seemed to be slowing things down. Mitchell kept fishing when he could. He kept showing up. A blue T-shirt started appearing around Celina with the words "shine your light, do what's right," a quiet tribute to a kid who never once let his diagnosis define him.
Then the cancer reached his lungs.
Mitchell passed away at home this past Tuesday.
"He lived out his last days to the fullest," his mother Hanna said. "He was a special young man."
The school district's statement called him a bright light and an inspiration to everyone who knew him. They aren't just saying it. They're closing every campus in the county to prove it.
Mitchell Boles never got to grow old. But for one week in Celina, Tennessee, an entire community stopped everything to make sure he was never forgotten.
Please share this and keep the Boles family in your prayers.
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