Mauer and friends

That special day came for the Nordby family on Saturday, June 17th, 2016, when they were treated like royalty at Target Field.

Mauer Nordby was born on March 27th, 2013. Since then, he has spent a lot of time in and out of hospitals because he was born with a cleft lip and palate. Cleft lip and palate occur when tissues in a baby’s face and mouth don’t fuse properly. 

To date, Mauer has had three separate surgeries. He had his lip repaired when he was 3 months of age, along with PE Tube placements, and had his palate repaired in January, 2014, when he was 9 months, along with a replacement of tubes. He had his tubes replaced again in October of that year.

He is scheduled to have another procedure on July 21st of this year, which is a Pharyngeal Flap surgery. His parents are unsure at this point how many more surgeries Mauer will need, but when he is older, there will be one to fix the Alveolar Cleft (cleft in the gum tissue).

Mauer has struggled with hearing since he was born. His mom, Tera, says he didn’t pass a hearing test until approximately 2 years old, and has still shown problems in his right ear. He has had multiple PE Tube placement/replacement surgeries and will more than likely have another one soon.   

Because of the cleft palate, Mauer has also developed a significant speech articulation disorder. He has been going to speech therapy since he was 1.5 years and has come a long way in his speech development, but, as mentioned, he is scheduled for another surgery on July 21st to create a Pharyngeal Flap; this will block the airway to his nose when he says certain sounds. “We will continue with speech and hopefully this upcoming surgery will help, but we won’t know until down the road. We hope he is able to develop better communicating skills. He gets really frustrated when he can’t express his wants and needs right now, so I hope it gets easier for him,” Tera said. “He will start school in the fall. This will help his social and communicative skills as well.  He tends to accelerate these skills when he is surrounded by peers similar to his age,” she added. 

Gavin and Tera have been fortunate to doctor in Thief River Falls for Mauer’s audiology and hearing, but the rest of the appointments and surgeries are all at Gillette Children’s Hospital in St. Paul; they travel there every 6 months for appointments. It was because of Gillette’s, that the Nordby’s were chosen for a once in a lifetime experience.

Having gone down for Mauer’s latest appointment at the children’s hospital back in April, Gavin and Tera were in the Speech Therapy waiting room. They ended up visiting with an event coordinator for Gillette, named Greta. “She noticed that Mauer had on a Joe Mauer Jersey and asked if we had put the jersey on him that day because it was Joe Mauer’s birthday (April 19th),” says Tera. “We told her that we didn’t have it on because of that, but because Mauer was his first name and we are big fans of the MN Twins.”

Greta took down the Nord-by’s contact information and told them she’d like to contact them in the near future for an event they were putting on with the Minnesota Twins baseball team. 

Around the beginning of May, Greta called and asked if Gavin and Tera, along with their kids, would be available for a Twins event on June 17th. She couldn’t give them many details at that point, but said they’d be participating in the Mauer & Friends Kids Classic and promised it would be a memorable weekend for their family. 

Gillette Children’s Hospital has approximately 20,000 patients that are being treated. Out of these patients, twenty were selected to be a part of the Mauer & Friends Kids Classic. Out of these twenty kids, six families were then selected as ambassadors for Gillette, and would be invited on stage to tell their Gillette story in front of hundreds of guests. The Nordbys were selected as one of the six families. “It was a great honor,” Tera stated. 

“This was the first inaugural Mauer & Friend’s Kids Classic. He had hosted something similar to this prior, but not to this scale! Mauer’s wife, Maddie, worked at Gillette Children’s so she was the heart and soul of the event,” she added.   

The big event and the game were both on June 17th. After asking to share some details about their day, Tera provided the following. “We had to be down on Thursday morning for dress rehearsal. We were able to go over our speech for the following day and go over what we could expect. Friday morning we arrived at Target Field a little after 10am. 

We entered VIP status! They made us feel like it was our day for sure! This event was all about the kids, not only the Gillette patients, but their siblings as well. They escorted the 20 families onto the field where they introduced all the players that came to participate one by one. They had games set up on the field for the kids to go to, batting the ball, playing catch, hockey, throwing a football!  It was a great time for the kids to have fun. 

After the field activities, we were escorted to the Champions Club where hundreds of sponsors, families, doctors, guests were in attendance for a luncheon. This is where we were introduced and brought up on stage to tell Mauer’s story. The day ended with Hailey, Landon and Mauer getting gifts for being a part of the day; they each received an autographed baseball from Joe Mauer!”

After the day on the field, Gavin, Tera, and their kids, were able to attend the game that evening VIP style; they were set up in a suite for the game! It didn’t even matter that the Twins got beat by the Yankees 8-2 that night, because the experience was unforgettable for the Grygla family.

Some of the stand out players the family got to meet that day included Joe Mauer and a few other notable players - current and former Twins players Torii Hunter, Tony Oliva, Trevor Plouffe, Kyle Gibson, Kurt Suzuski, Tyler Duffy, Glen Perkins, Paul Molitor, Corey Koskie, Tom Brunansky and Eddie Guardado. Hockey players, Zach Parise and Ryan Mcdonagh and football player Ryan Harris.

Of the sports figures, Tera said, “They were all so down to earth and they really were great interacting with all the children! You can tell they all have a love for them!” 

The Nordbys also added that through this experience, they have developed relationships with a few other families of Gillette children and hope to keep in touch with them.

Tera offered, “This was something we will never forget! They gave us a check off on our bucket list for sure. It was not only a dream for Gavin and I, but it was a dream for the kids. Landon is probably one of the biggest Twins fans out there and just to hear him say “this is the best day of my life” was worth it! Hailey had a permanent smile the entire time! We are so grateful for the friendships we developed those days we were down there and grateful for the chance to tell everyone how important Gillette is to us. We just feel so lucky that we got the opportunity of a lifetime.”

Gavin added, “That day was unbelievable. The looks on my kids’ faces were priceless. More than once, the kids stated that it was “the best day ever”. Seeing the professional athletes visit, shake hands, pitch, play catch, and take pictures with the kids was amazing.  

Even though our son, Mauer, has gone through some difficult times already in his early life, this was a once in a lifetime experience for all of us and something that he’ll never forget. 

They treated us like royalty. For all the things that families have to go through down at Gillette, the hospital, along with Joe and Maddie Mauer, really gave back to us and the other 19 families. It’s something that Mauer and us will be able to talk about for the rest of our lives.”