Spurs fan Darren making dreams come true for Jackson

Spurs fan Darren Garwood admits he was at rock bottom when his son, Jackson, was diagnosed with Krabbe disease at the age of one.

Jackson was given a year to live with this very rare, terminal illness that damages the protective coating of nerve cells in the brain and throughout the nervous system.

“I’ve always been chatty, always got on with people, but when Jackson was diagnosed, I went downhill,” said Darren, a Spurs fan of over 30 years. “My wife told me to get myself together because Jackson needed me and I thought, ‘he’s my son, he needs me more than ever now’.”

Incredibly, Jackson is now six. “He can’t walk, can’t talk, he is fed through a tube, can only slightly see, but his hearing is excellent,” explained Darren.

“Day to day life is difficult. He can have good days and bad days. The good days are really good, we can get a beautiful smile out of him, but on terrible days he ends up in Great Ormond Street (hospital) not being able to breathe. That’s tough. We’re just happy that most days are good days.”

One night, a comment from his wife, Rebecca, sparked the idea of what is now a successful series of children’s books called Jackson Superhero, Jackson’s legacy.

“It all came around by accident, really,” reminisced Darren. “My wife just said to me one night, ‘I wonder what Jackson dreams of’ and we just thought if he hadn’t had a good day, we’d bring adventures to life at night.

“I started doing the Jackson Superhero books and I’ve had such great support, some really fantastic people reaching out, and we’re onto the fourth book now. Jackson is in bookshops and that means my other children can see them when they are older and say, ‘look, there’s my brother’. That’s the legacy I’m trying to leave.”

One dream certainly came true for the family in the summer of 2019, when Darren, Jackson and Darren’s brother, fellow Spurs fan Dean, met the squad on a special visit to our training base at Hotspur Way.

“It was amazing,” said Darren. “As we have to have someone else in the car to be with Jackson, I thought about who else to bring with me, brought my brother and we were like a couple of kids! I was blown away, buzzing for about a week afterwards! We took some lovely photos, and it’s all about making memories for Jackson. I’ll always remember that day, August 2nd, 2019.”

Darren will also always remember his first matches at White Hart Lane - no surprise when we learn they were 5-1 and 5-0 wins back in 1993!

Here’s his Spurs story. “My mum is from Forest Gate, which is West Ham territory. My dad is West Ham through and through. It’s a nightmare! But I’ve an older brother, Dean, and he started supporting Tottenham in the late 1980s, Hoddle, Waddle, Gazza and to be fair, where I live, Tottenham isn’t that much further than West Ham, so I followed my brother.

“It just so happened that we won the FA Cup in 1991, I remember listening to the semi-final against Arsenal on the radio in a little chip van on the estate! I was 10 at the time. I remember legging it home to watch the rest of it!

“My first two games as a ‘proper’ fan were Norwich at home (9 April 1993), we beat them 5-1, then Oldham (September 18 1993), and we beat them 5-0! First two games, 10 goals! I used to have a Popescu shirt, Dumitrescu, Klinsmann... those days! Myself and my older brother still go as much as we can, but obviously not as much now with Jackson.”

So one, obvious, final question - is there a football book in the pipeline? “Yes, I’ve done a football story,” Darren told us. “Basically, Jackson falls asleep, goes on superhero adventures and saves people, then he wakes up in his bed again and believes he’s been out on these adventures. I’ve a story where he flies over Wembley, sees there’s a football match on, and realises it’s Tottenham, and scores the winning goal in the final. It goes in off his bum!”

And we’d all take that, right?

Jackson Superhero

The Jackson Superhero series of books are as follows:

Jackson Saves an Owl
Jackson's Solution to Pollution
Jackson Saves the Moon

They are all available via Amazon or the official Jackson Superhero website, below...