Weymouth Toddler With Rare Disease Finally Sees His Hero, Alan Jackson

How sweet is this story between this brave toddler and Alan Jackson?

Weymouth's Stephen Squillante, aka, "Little Steve," was born with a rare liver disease called biliary atresia. He's only a toddler and for his entire life he has had to fight this disease. Biliary atresia is a condition in infants where the bile ducts outside and inside the liver are scarred and blocked. Bile can't flow into the intestine, so bile builds up in the liver and damages it. The damage leads to scarring, loss of liver tissue and function, and cirrhosis.

Little Steve had his first surgery at 5 weeks old. The hope was to prolong the use of his native liver. Unfortunately, that surgery was not as successful as they hoped so he had to be placed on the liver transplant waiting list.

While on the transplant list Little Steve had a long medical road of a lot of stays at Boston Children's (over 60 nights) in the first two years of his life. During this time, Alan Jackson, somehow became this two year old's favorite person to watch on YouTube for all his blood draws (over 160 blood draws in two years!) and medical procedures. Those medical procedures ranged from bile drains to a feeding tube he had for 14 months.

On August 2, 2023, Little Steve finally got his liver transplant after almost a year on the transplant list. Amazingly, his mother, Shannon, was his living donor. Wheeling him down to the operating room there was only one thing that his parents knew would keep Steve calm. That was watching Alan Jackson! In fact, Little Steve rocked out to an Alan Jackson music video while heading into surgery.

As fate would have it, exactly one year to the day, (August 2, 2024) Alan Jackson performed a show in Boston. Little Steve's parents truly think it's a sign from God because the odds of all of this have to be astronomical! They bought a suite at the TD Garden to celebrate with Steve, friends and family and Little Steve danced from that box all night long (especially when "Little Bity" was sung!)

This year, Little Steve's family created a 501(c)(3) called Tiny Transplant Titans. The mission of the organization Tiny Transplant Titans is to provide support to children who have received life-saving transplants, those waiting for their gift of life, those needing a transplant in the future - and their families! They also strive to raise awareness for organ donation. Consider donating to this wonderful cause.

Country stars travel all over the country throughout the year to play shows for fans, and many of them fly in their own private lets.

Chris Young, Jason Aldean, Brad Paisley, Reba McEntire, and many more have purchased their own planes to make the touring life easier for them and their families so they don't have to stay away for so long. Reba has been flying private since the early 1990s and even got some flak from her Music Row neighbors when she wanted to put a helipad on her office roof near downtown Nashville. Music Row tenants were concerned that the helicopter noise would disrupt recording studios.

Many country superstars are taking their love of private flying one step further, getting their pilot's licenses and flying themselves to and from shows.

Thomas Rhett has been thinking he would like to pilot his own plane for years but admits he has reservations. Rhett told us, "I could definitely see me still wantin' to do that. I have so many pilots in my family. My brother-in-law, Grayson, is a pilot, my father-in-law is a pilot, and a lot of my close friends are pilots. I think it would take a little more trust on my own end to trust that I could do it right. I'm not the most attention-to-detail person, and I feel like you really need to be detailed to be a pilot."

He added, "So, I don't know. Maybe I'll become a very detail-oriented person over the next five years and decide that getting my pilot's license is something I'd wanna do. If Dierks [Bentley] can do it, I can do it."

The FAA requirement to become a private plane pilot requires 40 hours of flight training time for the private pilot certificate. Many new pilots have 60-70 hours.  But many country stars have done it and now are able to fly their own airplanes.

Country Music Hall of Fame member Jackson was flying to and from gigs early in his career and learned how to fly by watching and learning from the pilot. He told us, "When I started flying to work, I got interested in watching the pilot who flew me, and he taught me. At that time, we had a farm with a pretty big grass strip, and I had a plane with amphibious gear so I could land on water, the lake. I just kind of flew around Nashville. I still have my license; I just don't fly. Denise (his wife) got tired of my flying and worrying about me."

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In August of 2022, Dustin revealed on Twitter that he got his pilot's license. He wrote in a post, "Set a goal, and when you get there…man, it always feels good! First solo flight today."

Lynch told us it was a new hobby. He said, "What really pushed me was we weren't touring. So, it was like, 'Let's pick up a new hobby.' I have some farms that are hard to get to – driving or flying commercially."

He posted a video of attending an air show with his friend Swiss to Instagram at the time.

Luke [inlink id="luke-bryan-helicopter-pilot" text="told us in 2021"] that his new passion is something he started to learn during the pandemic when he purchased a helicopter. And he is a licensed helicopter pilot. He said, "I think that was a big reason why I wanted to learn, and if I'm looking at all these gauges and I know everything is going smoothly, you know it's just something fun." Luke also can now compare flight logs with his buddy Dierks Bentley. He offered, "I've always had a little envy of Dierks Bentley. Dierks and I have this intellectual competition going on where he can't out-intellect me. Dierks is like savant smart, so I like to try and challenge my goofy savant smartness against his. So we're both aviators now, and he can't one-up me in the aviator game."

Tim is a trained pilot and flies to and from concert dates. His wife Faith Hill and he have a deal never to fly together privately in case something happens so their girls will not lose both parents. He's been flying for years. In a recent promo for Cirrus airplanes, McGraw says the thing he loves most about flying his own plane is the "relaxation of it." He added that he loves being up in the air, not having to think about work or "any of that stuff."

Dierks is one of country music's most well-known pilots. He flies his own Cessna plane to shows nationwide. His tourmate Jordan Davis recently told us that [inlink id="dierks-bentley-saved-jordan-davis-canadian-airport" text="Dierks saved him"] recently and helped him make a show.

Davis told us, "First show of the tour, I'm sitting on an Air Canada flight plane in Toronto. It's an hour delayed. So I was like, 'This flight is gonna get canceled; I'm gonna miss the first day of the Dierks tour.' Then I get a message from my manager that says, 'Hey, get off the plane; Dierks is gonna re-route and pick us up." Jordan continues, "True story. He swoops in and picks us up with caked-on sunscreen in his Dierks gear: flip-flops and shorts. I was like, 'Thanks, dude, for picking me up,' he says, 'Yeah man, hop in, we'll take off.' We fly to Canada going down to land; something's on the runway, and we have to pull back up. Dierks is flying the airplane, not like co-piloting; he's flying the airplane, goes down, pulls back up, circles back around, comes in, and in one of the smoothest landings I've ever had in a PJ (personal jet)."

A couple of years ago, Bentley did a flight safety video.