How Cooper Flagg’s family tragedy — and triumph — made one particular charity effort personal
Try as she might, the tears still prove unrelenting for Kelly Flagg.
“I said I wasn’t going to cry today, so I won’t be the one to tell it, and still I get choked up,” she said before pausing to compose herself.
Speaking to families, young patients, employees and volunteers at Durham’s Ronald McDonald House on Dec. 12, the Flagg family shared the backstory for why they donated $10,000 to the facility.
Yes, Kelly’s youngest son, Cooper, is the reason they are blessed with the funds to make such a donation. He’s a 6-9 freshman forward at Duke this season, making a seven-figure income through NIL deals with companies including New Balance and Gatorade, ahead of next summer when he’s projected to be the NBA Draft’s No. 1 pick.
The Ronald McDonald House program, though, is special to the entire Flagg family. The story of why remains raw, particularly to Kelly, even 20 years after it began with her oldest sons.
Ronald McDonald House a second home
In 2004, Kelly Flagg and her husband, Ralph, started their family when she became pregnant with twin boys.
The plan went awry in August, however, when she went into premature labor. Just 24 weeks into the pregnancy, Hunter and Ryder Flagg arrived by cesarean section delivery on Aug. 4 at Maine Medical Center in Portland, Maine.
Hunter weighed 1 pound, 10 ounces; Ryder was two ounces lighter. Those dangerously low birth weights jeopardized their lives, just as they were beginning.
Ryder Alan Flagg died on Aug. 6.
Hunter clung to life in the neonatal intensive care unit, gradually gaining strength while facing multiple obstacles, one of which includes blindness in his right eye as a result of his retinas being exposed to oxygen before they were fully formed.
The Flaggs’ home in Newport, Maine, was about 90 minutes from the hospital, so Portland’s Ronald McDonald House became home — for 109 days.
“I never left Portland,” Kelly said. “After Hunter was born, I said, ‘I’m not leaving without him,’ and so to have the house and to be able to stay close by….There were times that were sort of perilous during his journey, and I get a call at any time of day and night that I needed to get over there to the hospital. Being three minutes away instead of an hour and a half was huge.”
As jarring as that experience was, Kelly and Ralph did not want Hunter to be an only child. So they went through IVF treatments, intent on producing a sibling. Doctors advised them to implant two embryos, simply to increase the odds of success.
The IVF found its ultimate success, though, because she became pregnant with twins once again.
Because of the complications in her earlier pregnancy, doctors deemed this second pregnancy “high-risk,” so they admitted Kelly to Maine Medical Center in early December 2006 for closer monitoring. Ralph and Hunter Flagg stayed at the Ronald McDonald House.
Cooper and Ace Flagg were born — prematurely — in the wee hours of Dec. 21, 2006. Fortunately, their arrival date was 35 weeks into the pregnancy, so their birth weights were in a safer zone with Ace at 6 pounds, 2 ounces and Cooper at 5 pounds, 9 ounces.
This time, the family’s hospital stay lasted just a few days — they were healthy enough to go home for Christmas.
Return to Portland
Growing up in Newport — a town of about 3,200 people and 37 square miles some 29 miles west of Bangor — Cooper worked hard to hone his game, slowly becoming one of the nation’s top basketball players. Eventually, he said, he and Ace — older by minutes — learned of his family’s health journey.
“I don’t really remember a moment when I was told or anything like that,” Cooper said. “It’s just been something that has always meant a lot in our family. We’ve talked about it very generally for my whole life. It’s kind of just been something terrible that my parents went through, and Hunter.”
From those early, perilous days, Hunter, Cooper and Ace grew into sports-loving, competitive brothers. Basketball on the family’s driveway hoop became events.
“They would have these nasty, 1-on-1 games,” Kelly said. “They wanted us to referee, which is a no-win situation as parents. So we just said, `No, you guys figure it out. You call your own foul,’ which meant nobody’s gonna call the foul. So then they just start beating on each other. And we knew it. We gave it about 30 minutes, and someone would come in with a bloody lip or nose.”
All three brothers played basketball at their parents’ high school alma mater, Nokomis Regional High School in Newport. In March 2022, the family created another memory in Portland, with this one far happier.
With Ace and Cooper playing as freshmen and Hunter a senior, Nokomis won the Maine Class B championship game at Cross Insurance Arena. It’s the only state basketball championship in the school’s history.
“That was a pretty spectacular moment in time,” Kelly said.
‘A great partnership’
Ace and Cooper left Maine to play at Montverde Academy in Florida the following season, before Cooper reclassified to start his college career at Duke this season. The family now lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, where Ace is playing his senior high school season at Greensboro Day before heading to the University of Maine for college basketball next season.
Despite all of that transition, in addition to attending all of Cooper’s games at Duke, their year in North Carolina had to include the Ronald McDonald House.
“We’re feeling very fortunate to be in this position where we can give back,” Kelly said. “When we think about what we want to do, this is a great partnership for us to be able to give back to. Something like this that we personally have benefited from.”
The Flaggs hosted a holiday event on Dec. 12, where they met families staying at the Durham location. They provided gifts and holiday sweet treats and posed for photos. Cooper even played some mini-basketball with a young patient named Eli, who is scheduled for open-heart surgery at Duke Children’s Hospital this month.
“That’s obviously terrible for anybody that young to have to go through that,” Cooper said. “But just to see him smiling, being able to put a smile on (Eli’s) face for a little bit, hopefully he had some fun, it means the world to me. I’m just glad to spend time with him.”
Kelly said she wants as many families as possible to benefit from the services her family received from the Ronald McDonald House program
“There are millions of families who may benefit from staying at the Ronald McDonald House,” Kelly said. “We just want to make sure that that continues.”
On Saturday, the younger twins celebrated their 18th birthdays. Kelly Flagg traveled to Atlanta to watch Cooper Flagg and Duke play Georgia Tech. Later that day, she and Cooper flew back to North Carolina so they, along with Ralph Flagg, could watch Ace play for Greensboro Day that night.
It’s a whirlwind but one she’s grateful to be making because it took, in her words, “a miracle”, to make it possible.
“It makes us appreciate all this even more,” Kelly Flagg said, “knowing there was a high probability that it wouldn’t happen.”
This story was originally published December 23, 2024 at 5:00 AM.