Seven-year-old Boston Pace of Dry Prong, Louisiana, was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor. Now Central Louisiana is turning out for a multi-act benefit concert in Alexandria to support his family as he undergoes treatment at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
The benefit concert takes place Saturday, October 3, from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Lagniappe Event Center in Alexandria, according to WGNO. Tickets cost $25 each and are available at the door or prepaid online, the station reports. The event is presented by Buckshot Records LLC and Artist Development and features Nashville country singer Jake Whyatt, Alexandria's Heads or Tails Band, Thomas Tibbs of Jena, Pat Waters of Longview, Texas, and Jason Aldean tribute act Big Green Tractor, according to the Rapides Parish Journal.
A Diagnosis That Followed a Season of Strep Throat
Before he got sick, Boston Pace was an active youth baseball player in Grant Parish, per the Grant Parish Journal. He initially showed routine symptoms of strep throat, WGNO notes, which he caught alongside his two brothers in March 2026. The same report from the Rapides Parish Journal details that persistent headaches and vomiting that followed were initially misattributed by doctors to a sinus virus and heat dehydration, until an emergency room CT scan on June 14, 2026 revealed a mass and doctors suspected diffuse midline glioma; a later biopsy confirmed the diagnosis.
Pace was diagnosed with diffuse midline glioma, an aggressive brain tumor, WGNO reports. He now receives care at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and participates in clinical trials, according to the station's report. Diffuse midline glioma is a Grade IV pediatric brain tumor affecting 200 to 300 children in the United States annually, with a median survival of 9 to 11 months and a 5-year survival rate below 2%, per the National Center for Childhood Cancer.
Community Support for the Pace Family
The October concert is not the first show of local support for the Pace family. Central Louisiana residents and agencies had organized a Grant Parish Sheriff's Office pancake breakfast and planned a Boston's Battle IncrediBALL tournament for July 11, according to the same Grant Parish Journal account.
That local momentum reflects a broader financial reality facing families of children with serious illness. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital operates under a policy where families never receive a bill for treatment, housing, travel, or food, covering accommodations for pediatric patients living over 35 miles away along with up to two caregivers. Still, long-term stays away from home, lost family income, and other supplemental needs can strain families even when direct medical costs are covered.
Emerging Treatments Offer a Narrow Path Forward
Pace's participation in clinical trials comes amid recent shifts in how diffuse midline glioma is treated and understood. In August 2025, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted accelerated approval to dordaviprone, marketed as Modeyso, marking the first-ever FDA-approved medication specifically for adult and pediatric patients age one and older with recurrent H3 K27M-mutant diffuse midline glioma, according to the FDA.
More recently, St. Jude researchers published a study in Nature Communications in August 2026 showing that specific brain cells respond differently to H3.3 K27M mutations depending on their location in the developing brain, helping explain why the disease forms almost exclusively in central regions like the brainstem and thalamus, according to St. Jude. The disease's severity is compounded by a persistent funding gap: historically only about 4% of total federal cancer research funding from the National Cancer Institute goes toward all pediatric cancers combined, as Hoodline has previously reported.
For now, the fight for Boston Pace continues on two fronts: in the clinical trials underway at St. Jude, and in the community filling seats at the Lagniappe Event Center to help carry his family through it.
