Kilgore High School student Lynzee Ford died in 2014 from Acute Myeloid Leukemia. The Lynzee Ford Award for Heart and Desire is handed out at the annual Best Preps Awards.

Imagine being 17, a two-sport athlete in high school, insanely popular and in possession of a smile God only gave a few people — because too many of those smiles would put the sun he created to shame.

Then, one day at a January 2014 warm-up softball tournament with your Kilgore High School teammates, you develop a rash. You love the game and your team, so you keep playing — six total games in one day.

The rash spreads and covers most of your body, but you still show up for tryouts a week later despite the fact your clothes stick to the rash and every movement you make is painful.

Twelve days after the rash first appeared, you are flown by helicopter to Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, and the doctors drop the hideous words “Acute Myeloid Leukemia” on you.

Four months later, family and friends surprise you in Dallas with a special prom, and a month after that you receive a bone marrow transplant in hopes of stopping, or at least slowing down, the disease that’s trying to take that smile away from the world.

It doesn’t work, and in September — less than nine months after that damn rash showed up — doctors walk into your room with the news that you might live another four months.

So, at 17, you decide to come home and be a high school student again. You fight so hard, but the disease progresses quickly and now doctors say you’ll be gone in a week.

You’re 17 and have just been told you won’t make it to 18, but instead of some elaborate last wish you surely deserve, you simply want to graduate from high school.

Your school comes through in a big way, and on Oct. 20, 2014 — in a gymnasium full of classmates, friends, family and faculty — you do just that.

Three days later, the world lost that smile.

Or did it?

On my desk at work, I have a photo of Lynzee Ford — the owner of that incredible smile.

She’s wearing a graduation cap and gown, holding a softball bat and is flanked by her home and away No. 20 softball jerseys that the school retired after her death.

And, she’s smiling.

Through unspeakable physical pain and the knowledge she would be gone before most people even saw that photo, Lynzee Ford is lighting up another room with that smile.

Full disclosure here.

I never met Lynzee, but I feel like I knew her thanks to a bunch of people who loved her and were inspired by her battle to live.

That’s what I took away the most from Lynzee. It wasn’t just a fight to beat Leukemia — a battle she eventually lost. It was a fight to live out whatever time she had left on her terms, and she won that battle in convincing fashion.

Shortly after Lynzee died, my newspaper began hosting the annual Best Preps Awards, and I decided to name one of our biggest awards in her honor — The Lynzee Ford Award for Heart and Desire.

A few days after the banquet, her mama brought me the photo of Lynzee, and that photo has a prominent spot on my desk. That smile, in spite of all she had been through and what she knew was coming, inspires me to try and do something daily to honor her memory.

If you would like to do the same, go watch the Kilgore High School softball team take on Gilmer on April 14 at Stream-Flo Field in Kilgore. First pitch is set for 6 p.m., and it’s the team’s annual “Orange Out” game to honor the memory of Lynzee.

This year, the team is asking for donations of canned goods to benefit Kilgore Helping Hands. You can bring the items to the game, but if you can’t make it, there are several drop-off spots in Kilgore, Longview and Tyler. Just email me, and I’ll send you the information.

I think it’s a great way to honor Lynzee and to keep her memory alive, but I really don’t need help with that.

I’ll never forget the young lady I never met.