Luke Bryan and the popular fast food restaurant Raising Cane’s are teaming up to help support a cause near and dear to Bryan’s heart. Bryan and Raising Cane’s owner Todd Graves were onsite at a Raising Cane’s in Franklin, Tennessee, located just outside of Nashville, to reveal plans for a $1,000,000 donation from the popular restaurant chain for the Brett Boyer Foundation.
The Brett Boyer Foundation was created in memory of Sadie Brett Boyer, Bryan and his wife Caroline’s niece, who had Down syndrome and a congenital heart defect. She tragically passed away when she was just seven months old. After her death, Bryan and Caroline vowed to do all they could to support others in similar situations.
“The Brett Boyer Foundation and all of this is really a family entity for us,” Bryan explains at a media event announcing the donation. “So we really as a family make a lot of time to dedicate time to do this. A few years ago, I met Todd, and he has just been amazingly over the moon to us and the Brett Boyer Foundation. I think when you look at the blessings in country music that I’ve been given, and as a family we always just try to do what we can to give back, and make time for it. We miss out on some sleep, but at the end of the day it feels good to do the right stuff.”
Graves is the leader of a large empire of restaurants, but for him, success is not at all determined by how much money he makes in his business, but instead by something much more altruistic.
“Real success is measured by what you give back,” Graves says. “Luke and I became friends, and he said, ‘Hey, come out to my farm. We’re doing a fundraiser for the Brett Boyer Foundation …. Really seeing how much care that they turned so very tragic into something so very beautiful, and to help not only kids in this area but nationally with congenital heart defects. Could you imagine having a child with that?”
“For me, it’s a natural fit that I knew my crew would get behind,” he adds. “I’ve got 75,000 crew members. This is national, raising funds, at all of our locations.”
Bryan has learned far too much about children that deal with Down syndrome and congenital heart defects. But the Georgia native vows to use his celebrity status to help other families dealing with what his niece and her family also did.
“What it’s taught me is that congenital heart disease in children is something that doesn’t really get talked about as much,” Bryan shares. “And then, as we’ve brought awareness … You learn that this is more prevalent, and it’s something that is certainly more prevalent in the Down syndrome community.”
Bryan knows exactly what he would tell his niece, if she was still alive today.
“If I could tell Brett anything today, it would be, ‘We love you. We miss you, and your legacy lives on,'” Bryan says. “Watching what her mother and father do in her name, and watching her name get to live on and do so much good for kids. This is a heavy answer. It’s getting heavier by the minute. With me, it’s just the fact that we can make sure kids never get the diagnosis that she got. And I think it’s really important that in years to come we can change the narrative on what CHD is.”
Find out more about the Brett Boyer Foundation here.