Tanner Smith of the Clemson basketball team,

Dana O'Neil: From childhood wish to lasting legacy, Tanner Smith's charity specializes in smiles - ESPN

CLEMSON, S.C. -- It was a typically frantic Monday morning and, hurrying to get out the door, Kathy Smith started to scratch her name on her son's homework assignment when she stopped to read what he had written.

The fourth-grade creative assignment was pretty straightforward: If I Had Three Wishes.

Kathy smiled as she read the first item on her son's bucket list: a golden retriever. Ever since he met a slobbering canine friend across the street, Tanner had been hounding his parents for a puppy. But with the holidays closing in, his parents already had warned him: Don't bother asking Santa for a dog.

His second wish was to play professional basketball, hardly a surprise for a young jock like Tanner, who spent his time shuffling between the football fields, baseball diamonds and basketball courts in his Alpharetta, Ga., community.

[+] EnlargeTanner Smith
Smith familyGriffey and the tote bags in the background represent two of the three wishes made by a 9-year-old Tanner Smith.

It was the third item that made Kathy stop.

"To make kids with cancer laugh," Tanner wrote in his 9-year-old scrawl.

Kathy showed the paper to her husband, Craig.

"Well, he's getting a dog," Craig Smith said.

And indeed, that Christmas a big pile of blonde fur who would be christened Griffey bounded into the family living room. Also among the wrappings were a Sacramento Kings locker and a red clown nose.

"The locker was to represent basketball and the nose was to make kids with cancer laugh," Kathy said. "We figured that would be the end of it."

For two years, that was the end of it. And then as part of a sixth-grade homework assignment, Tanner reiterated his wish to help kids with cancer.

"I wanted to make sure my parents got the message," said Tanner, now a freshman guard for No. 13 Clemson.

Plenty of people would have dashed off a check to the American Cancer Society or found a fundraiser for their son to join and been done with it.

The Smiths turned their son's dream into a reality, stuffing smiles and kindness alongside toys and trinkets into Tanner's Totes, the grab bags of goodies the family's nonprofit company delivers to preteens and teenagers battling cancer and other long-term ailments.

In seven years the family has delivered more than 1,200 totes.

"Plenty of people are affected by cancer, but not everyone is spurred to action by it," said Clemson coach Oliver Purnell. "That's what makes Tanner and his parents extraordinary. They did something about it."

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