'Something behind that costume gives him life.' Avon's Oriole spreads his wings

AVON -- The home basketball crowd is roaring from packed bleachers to the Oriole's right, but the roar isn't all that loud from inside the costume of the furry, black bird with giant, yellow flat feet plunking down the baseline behind the basket. The roars are more of a muffled buzz.

The Oriole is nearly deaf in his right ear.

The cheerleaders are to his left, their arms up high in the air, their feet kicking out in front of them as they yell "defense," "take that ball away." But the Oriole can't really see the moves they're making when he looks left to try to imitate them.

The Oriole is blind in his left eye.

For the past four years, Avon High's oriole mascot Big O, played by Owen Carr, has thrilled fans at this school 14 miles west of Indianapolis. He has filled crisp, fall Friday nights with electrifying devotion and warmed up gymnasiums on chilly, winter evenings.

He has done somersaults center court, signed sports programs, shaken his tail feathers to taunt opposing teams and posed for photos with the kind of confidence that makes his fans swoon.

He has become the idol of elementary kids who brag that they've actually gotten to meet Big O, touch Big O's sharp orange beak, given Big O a high five or gotten a hug from Big O when he showed up at their school for an appearance.

"When Owen is the mascot, he's in the center of that orbit that he's usually on the outside of. He's still the same person, still with the same heart and same actions," said Owen's dad, Kevin Carr. "But he is completely accepted and completely embraced."

Inside the costume, inside those fuzzy walls behind the facade, Owen's high school street cred is undeniable.

Outside of the costume, it is virtually nonexistent.

Of course, Owen's classmates love him, smile at him, think he's a "sweet kid." But when he texts them, after networking post-game all season to get their phone numbers, he usually doesn't get a response. When he does, sometimes the responses are written in language fit for a toddler.

Owen doesn't get the invitations he desperately wants to join the guys at Buffalo Wild Wings to eat his favorite sauce, the hottest one on the menu, the "wild sauce," a boastful feat of conquering the blistering heat packed with chili peppers and spices.

Instead, on his 18th birthday in December, Owen went for those wings with his parents then came home to eat the hot fudge cake his mom made, a knock-off version of the one Owen loves at Frisch's with whipped cream and a cherry on top.

Owen never complains about his life. He never complains that, as his mom puts it, "the true friends, true peer friends have been few and far between." He wishes he had more friends, but it doesn't stop him from continuing to try. Owen is the sweetest, most caring human. He is loyal and God-loving and unpretentious, and he is always asking what he can do to make the lives of others better.

He has his own dog-sitting business, Pupcation, and a list of 70 clients he makes dog treats for. He recently starred as Bruce, the great white shark, in a theater version of "Finding Nemo." He works at Mama Bird Bakery and is set to graduate from high school this spring with an alternate diploma.

Owen has so many special needs diagnoses that he's typed them into the notes app on his cell phone just to make sure, if someone asks, he doesn't forget. Autism, cerebral palsy, obsessive compulsive disorder, nonverbal learning disorder, asthma, Coats' disease, specific antibody deficiency, among many more. He also had a feeding tube until he was 12 years old.

But after Owen got his feeding tube removed, one day at lunch completely out of the blue, Owen called his middle school principal over to the table and asked if he could be the school's mascot. The principal said yes.

And the incredible, transformative journey of Owen began.

"I will tell this to anyone; Owen has to work really, really hard to be a mascot. He's nearly deaf in one ear, he's blind in the other eye. He has sensory issues with certain loud sounds. It doesn't faze him," said his mom, Kelly Carr. "He's like, 'I'm here for the crowd. I'm here because I love Avon schools.' He shows up and he works hard, and he sweats and he's digging deep."

And the deeper he digs, the more of the real Owen the world gets to see.

"There's something behind that costume," said Kelly, "that gives him life."

Life. That's all Kelly and Kevin ever wanted for their only son. For Owen to be filled with life. And if not, they were OK with letting him go. They were OK with letting him die.

'There's something wrong with your baby'

Kelly will never forget that beautiful, sunny September morning, the Friday of Labor Day weekend 2005. She and Kevin were heading to the doctor for an 18-week anatomy check and they were ecstatic to find out the gender of their first baby.

Kevin, a pastor at the time, had taken the day off work so that, after the appointment, he and Kelly could go to a park, have a picnic of Subway sandwiches and celebrate the blessing of their baby boy or girl. They wanted to take some time to themselves to revel in the news before calling their families.

This baby was a big deal, the first grandbaby on both sides of the family.

Hidden in the trunk of the car that day were two baby gifts, one blue, one pink. Kevin had secretly bought them to surprise Kelly after the ultrasound.

Nearly 20 years later, Kelly said she can still see the brilliance of the blue sky that day as they drove to the appointment. She was so excited to find out what they were having. She wanted to be a boy mom.

Kelly had been blessed with an easy pregnancy, not much morning sickness, and life seemed pretty perfect. This pregnancy seemed pretty perfect. Still, for some reason, Kelly had gotten an edge of nervousness the night before.

"I said, 'Kevin, we could find out that something is wrong with the baby,'" Kelly recalls. "I feel like God was just giving (my) heart the ability to just stop and pray." So, the Carrs did pray. They prayed that night, "God let us enjoy this time and your will be done."

The next morning, as Kelly laid in the dimly-lit office getting her ultrasound, she noticed the tech leaned toward the monitor to look closer.

"She was scanning my belly and she stopped. And I said, 'Is everything OK?' And she didn't answer. And then I said, 'Is everything OK?' I got a bit more firm," said Kelly. "And she leaned in and she took off her gloves.

"And she said, 'I need to go get the doctor. Something is wrong with your baby.'"

Kelly turned to Kevin. "Something's wrong? I can't do this." She loved her job being a teacher to children with special needs but, in that moment, she didn't think she could be a mom to a child with special needs.

Kevin immediately took Kelly's hand and started praying. They prayed until the doctor came in and told them in a very matter-of-fact manner. "OK, here is what's going on. There's a hole in your baby's stomach."

They heard the words, but they didn't understand. Everything that followed was one big blur. More testing needs to be done. We are sending you to another site. We will know more about your baby's health after that.

Kevin didn't give Kelly a blue or pink gift that sunny September day. Instead, they were escorted out a back door so the hopeful, excited pregnant mothers in the waiting room wouldn't see their tear-stained faces as they left.

They left not knowing whether their baby was a boy or a girl, only that something was terribly wrong.

'He's ours. He is ours.'

The drive to their next appointment that day was supposed to take 30 minutes. Kevin and Kelly made that drive in 18 minutes, wondering the entire time what was happening. What did this mean?

Internet on cell phones didn't exist in 2005. There was no way to search what a hole in a baby's stomach meant, but the Carrs knew it couldn't be good.

Inside the waiting room, two of their good friends met Kevin and Kelly and sat with them, holding their hands as they cried.

Once back with the doctor, after a second ultrasound, the Carrs learned the official, scientific name of what their baby had. It was an omphalocele, a birth defect of the abdominal (belly) wall in which the baby's intestines, liver or other organs stick outside of the body through the belly button. The organs are covered in a thin, nearly transparent sac.

"I want to do an amniocentesis right away," the doctor said. Kelly was terrified.

"Listen, you're braver than you think, Kelly," the doctor said to her. "I want you to lay on this table. I want you to look straight up when it happens. I want you to look in your husband's eyes and know that you're going to be OK. You're braver than you think, Kelly."

During the amniocentesis, the doctor used a needle to remove a small amount of amniotic fluid from Kelly's uterus to be tested for certain conditions, such as Down syndrome and spina bifida.

As she laid there, her world spinning, it dawned on Kelly that she and Kevin still didn't know the gender of their baby. Finally, Kelly spoke up. "I just want to know. Is it a boy or girl? That's all I want to know."

It was a boy, the doctors told her. The Carrs would be having a son. Kelly would be a boy mom, just like she had always wanted. But would her baby boy be OK?

Kevin and Kelly were immediately sent to a genetic counselor in the office who told them that about 70% of babies with an omphalocele die because it is linked to other chromosomal conditions. She told them an omphalocele could also be linked to spina bifida, heart defects, brain anomalies, cleft palate ... the list seemed to never end.

Kevin looked at Kelly, the word abortion never entering their heads, and simply said, "He's ours. He is ours." As they left the office, they stopped in the lobby and stood, holding each other in a long embrace.

Then Kelly whispered to Kevin, "His name is Owen."

'We could lose him'

That night Kevin and Kelly forced themselves to eat dinner, though neither was hungry. They stopped at Pizza Hut and Kevin got a personal pan pizza and Kelly got some breadsticks. It was a somber dinner.

Because it was Labor Day weekend, the labs were closed until Tuesday, and testing was delayed. It would be a long wait, the entire weekend, for the amniocentesis results to come back.

"We were just in a haze the whole weekend," said Kevin. "We didn't have a clue what to do or what to say or to think, so I remember walking around the canal, parks in Plainfield, just trying to stay busy."

Kevin's parents drove up from Cincinnati for the weekend for support. The results were better than the Carrs expected. The amniocentesis ruled out all the chromosomal conditions and the serious birth defects. And, after a scan of Owen's heart, the doctor said, "Your baby has a very, very strong heart. He will do well."

Finally, there was some hope.

Kevin and Kelly spent the fall months setting up the nursery, but it wasn't easy. The joy of picking out the decor was hindered by the reality of Owen's condition. Kelly finally settled on a quilt and bumper set decorated with airplanes and, as the winter days ticked by, she prayed that her baby would live to use that nursery.

On Dec 12, 2005, the morning of her baby shower at the preschool where she taught, Kelly woke up and her back was hurting. It wasn't terrible pain, more of a dull ache, and she was in the third trimester. She expected to be a little uncomfortable.

After the baby shower, Kelly came home and took a nap then sat down for a dinner of poppyseed chicken casserole, mashed potatoes and salad with Kevin.

They talked about the birth of Owen, just seven weeks away. They talked about how they should get a bag packed for the hospital stay. They talked about the paper chain they had made with prayers on each link for each of the 50 days leading up to her due date January 31.

They never got to tear off even one of those chain links. Later that night, as Kelly laid in bed, while Kevin was at CVS picking up a prescription, her water broke.

"I'm holding onto my bed frame and I'm screaming, 'He's coming. He is coming,'" Kelly said. Kevin called 9-1-1 and the ambulance arrived. Kelly screamed again.

"Oh my goodness. He's coming."

'There was Owen, just beautiful'

Kevin threw their insurance card, a hairbrush and a robe into a bag, jumped into his car and followed the ambulance to the hospital. Inside the ambulance, as it arrived at the entrance of the hospital, Kelly heard a nurse say, "Mom's crowning."

Kelly was bordering on hysterical. Her baby was already fighting against dire odds and now he was being born at barely 33 weeks gestation. "I'm thinking, 'Am I going to die? Is he going to die? Where's Kevin?"

Kevin arrived just in time to be at Kelly's bedside for the final push. "And there he was. There was Owen," Kevin said, "just beautiful."

Owen was born 12 minutes before 12 a.m. on 12/12/2005. He weighed four pounds and 11 ounces, had a full head of dark hair and a very thin membrane covering his livers and intestines on the outside of his body.

Owen didn't just have an omphalocele. He had what's called a giant omphalocele which meant more internal organs were outside within the membrane. The way the surgeon explained what needed to happen next -- getting Owen's organs on the inside -- was like trying to pack too many clothes into a suitcase.

Just 12 hours after he was born, Owen had his first surgery. Kevin and Kelly were put into a parents' waiting room where they could hear healthy babies crying next door.

"I mourned to have him back and protected," said Kelly. "I would have stayed pregnant with him my entire life to know that he was safe and protected."

For the next 66 days, Owen stayed in the neonatal intensive care unit. The photos taken there bring Kelly to tears to this day, especially the one of Owen's hands clenched so tightly that his tiny knuckles are white.

"His fingers are gripping at the board because he was already stuck with IVs," said Kelly. "And this is him at 33 weeks, just hours old and having such invasive things having to happen to him."

The Carrs didn't leave Owen's side in the NICU, except for at night when they were forced to make the drive home, leaving the hospital in the rearview mirror, wishing desperately they could stay with him.

They sat there hour after hour with Owen, day after day, bringing him his first Christmas gift, rubbing lotion on his feet and playing calming music.

One day, as Kelly sat staring at a clock on the wall, a young nurse who was administering medicine to Owen turned to her and said, "So, do you think you're going to have more?" Without ever taking her eyes off of the clock, she answered that nurse. "No. No I don't."

Before Owen was born, the Carrs always thought they would have two or three biological children and then adopt.

"When God blessed us with Owen, we knew that we wanted to give everything to Owen," said Kelly. "His needs were so great. We wanted to be able to provide him with the best of us."

'Fill him with life'

As the Carrs sat on their couch in December, a week before Owen's birthday, Kelly looked straight into her son's eyes and told him, "You are the bravest, strongest individual I've ever known. And when there are days when mommy wants to give up, I think 'No.' Owen didn't give up."

There's no way to fully describe the medical journey Owen has been through. There have been too many sleepless nights to count, too many weeks in the hospital, too many near-fatal seizures, a prosthetic eye, an immune deficiency, an autism diagnosis, deafness, a tracheotomy, ventilators, chemical paralysis and a feeding tube for the first 12 years of his life.

The incredible journey to get to where Owen is today was not only hard. Sometimes it was pure torture.

In his life, Owen has been under anesthesia more than 30 times and had six abdominal surgeries. He once nearly died when his nasal oxygen tube was accidentally removed. Kevin stood as paramedics worked on his son and looked down at Owen. He was blue, dusky all around his lips and gasping for air.

There were times the only hope the Carrs had left were to have elders from their church come pray over Owen. Eventually, Kevin and Kelly had just one prayer, and it wasn't that Owen would live.

"We got to a point where we knew we could probably keep him alive, but we didn't want that for him," said Kevin. "So, we stopped praying for God to make him live and started praying for God to fill him with life."

Whether Owen lived for three months or for 90 years, they wanted him to have a full life. And so, when Owen told his parents he wanted to be a school mascot, there was no other answer than yes.

Big O is born

At first, Owen was horrified of mascots. But he has always faced his fears head on, just like he did with the scary vacuum cleaners that buzzed. Instead of hiding, Owen would ask to go to Lowe's with his dad and they would walk the sweeper aisle as a tiny Owen pointed at each model, saying, "That's a Dyson," 'That's a Hoover," "That's a Dust Devil."

Owen was in fifth grade when his fear of mascots set in. He was at vacation bible school when he spotted this giant, furry dog walking his way. He had never seen a mascot before. Owen started to rub his hands together, constantly, every time he saw that dog.

He was so scared of that mascot that, by the end of the week, Owen had blisters on the palms of his hands.

At home each night, Kevin and Kelly would try to alleviate his fears, telling Owen that dog was actually just a costume with a human inside of it. Owen again faced the fear head on. He wanted to know what human. He eventually found out it was a staff member at the church, Mr. Todd.

Owen set a goal. By the end of vacation bible school, he was going to touch the dog, and he did.

When he came back to bible school in sixth grade, Owen was fist bumping the mascot. At home, he was learning all about sports teams and their mascots with Kevin. He was filling out March Madness brackets based on the school's logo, colors and mascot.

Eventually, after studying only mascots during his free iPad time, it got to the point where his dad would name a college -- almost any college -- and Owen could name the mascot. When he found out about Florida State, Owen became obsessed.

"So, my favorite college team is actually the Florida State Seminoles because I like their mascot. Well, I like their players, too, but I like their mascot a lot because it rides a horse onto the field and does like this cool spear thing," Owen said. It is at the top of his bucket list to one day meet that mascot.

When Owen was in seventh grade, he came up with an idea. Maybe he could be a mascot. Maybe he could be his school's mascot, an idea that was unbeknownst to Kevin and Kelly. Owen took matters into his own hands. As he was in the office eating lunch with his dad, the principal walked by.

Owen waved her over. "Could you have the athletic director approach me about being the mascot?" Kevin could not believe what he was hearing. He looked at the principal and she looked at him. Then she looked at Owen and said yes.

The school didn't have a mascot uniform, but it did have an Angry Birds mask in the athletic director's office. Owen could wear that, the principal said.

Kevin put his foot down. All those dreams he had dreamed for his son before he was born -- that Owen would play baseball and basketball, that they would pass a football in the back yard -- hadn't come true.

And Kevin realized in that moment he was getting to ride the coattails of an even more amazing experience being Owen's dad. He went to Kelly and told her. "He is not wearing an Angry Birds mask. We are going to do this right."

Kevin and Kelly started researching and they ordered Owen a really nice, high-quality oriole mascot costume with an oversized Avon jersey.

And Big O was born.

'We didn't have to teach him. He just knew'

The Carrs have to admit, they were a bit nervous at first. They had no mascot training in their background. They told Owen, "Go stand next to the cheerleaders and don't get in their way."

In the beginning, Kevin and Kelly sat just two rows up at the games so they could rescue Owen should he need them, should he run onto the court in the middle of a play or have sensory issues when the scoreboard blared.

A couple games into his seventh-grade career, Kevin and Kelly realized Owen would be just fine. A few cheerleaders were doing a tumbling pass at half court and Kevin noticed Owen kept looking up at him in the bleachers.

"And I was like, 'What's he thinking?' I knew he was thinking something," said Kevin, now the communication coordinator at Avon Schools. "So, the last girl does hers and Owen goes running out and just kind of flops and does this barrel role and everybody just laughs. And we're like, 'OK, he gets it.'"

It might sound silly to other parents, but that flop almost brought Kevin and Kelly to tears. Here was their baby boy, their son, completely full of life.

"We've had to teach him everything else. We've had to teach him how to eat, how to breathe how to, how to, how to," Kelly said. "But when he put that mascot costume on, we didn't have to teach him. He just knew."

Six years later, the thrill of being a mascot hasn't waned. Every single day he has an appearance, Owen wakes up and yells out from his bedroom, "It's mascot day."

"I'm most proud of making family, friends, babies, toddlers, you name it, I really like making them happy," Owen said, "and making them smile."

It's Jan. 11, halftime of Avon's home basketball game against Mt. Vernon, and Owen is taking a water break in the closet outside the gym. This is his space, his "locker room," his little corner of the world where everything is right.

"So, what's it like out there?" Owen is asked.

"It's easy, very easy," he says. "I just have a passion for it. I just think it is really, really fun. It makes me happy because I get to make kids happy, and I just feel like I have a good passion for that."

Standing outside the closet, Avon High's principal Matt Shockley talks about what Owen has meant to his school.

"Owen is just full of school pride and spirit all the time and I know he just loves being out there. It's evident every game," he said. "He's just a great, constant, spirited figure that we have at our school."

Standing near the baseline at the start of the second half where Owen is back doing his mascot duties, Carson Foxen smiles. He met Owen in eighth grade, and he is one of those classmates who texts with Owen and doesn't talk to him like he's a baby.

"Me and him are always chatting it up. He's just a fun person to be around. He's always had a good attitude," said Carson, who was a linebacker on Avon's football team and will play at Wabash in the fall. "It was just awesome to see him when I was playing the game, I would look over, and he'd just be having fun, cheering."

And that inspired Carson more than Owen will ever know.

Let him fly: The end of an era

Owen's time as Big O can be measured in hours. This is the final chapter of his mascot journey, a journey that Owen says he will miss, but he is practical.

Owen is graduating from Avon High, and he says it is time for somebody else to take a turn. And it's time for him to become a regular fan, sitting on bleachers in one of those comfortable cushion-backed chairs and eating concessions.

That makes Kelly happy. That tells her Owen is ready to move on.

As Kelly talked last month after one of Owen's basketball games, he emerged from the closet, walked into the gym and yelled up to his mom in the bleachers. "I'm going to go check something," he said, pointing at the doors.

Kelly knows what that means. Owen does it after every game. He goes to the halls to mingle with students, to see if he can get some more contacts for his phone. He also waits for the team to come out of the locker room.

"Good game today," he says to the Avon players as they pass by. When a player from the opposing team walks by, a team that just beat Avon, Owen gives him a high five and says, "Good game, though, I'm proud of you."

"He's not afraid to talk to anyone," said Kelly, who co-owns and teaches at Hearts and Hands Preschool in Brownsburg. Owen just wishes they would talk to him first every once in a while. Kevin and Kelly do, too.

That is their biggest wish for Owen. Now that he has been filled with life, they want him to one day find someone to share that life with. His classmates are going to go on to college, they are going to get married, they are going to have kids.

"We're at the edge of what does this look like and how do we adjust to this? We have thoughts and conversations about the future and what that's going to look like for him," said Kevin. "I pray for somebody who can be a close companion to him. I think he's got a lot to give in a relationship and I pray he finds a friend and somebody he can love who will love him back for who he is."

As Owen puts it so perfectly, he is who he is.

"All those diagnoses don't matter because I'm still me," he said. "Just try the best and be the best you can be. If you want to succeed, succeed. You can be anything you can be and don't let your disability take control of who you are. You're perfect in God's image. Like however you may be. You're perfect either way."

Whether you're behind a costume or not.

Follow IndyStar sports reporter Dana Benbow on X: @DanaBenbow. Reach her via email: dbenbow@indystar.com.