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Hart kept posting videos, until one day, his class caught the eye of a woman all the way in Montana.
“One day I was just scrolling through Facebook and I came across a video that he had recorded with his first graders” Kristal Leonard said. “I just kept watching it over and over again.”
Leonard couldn’t help but think of her son Ryan when she watched each video. He passed away in 2020. Ryan was just 18-months-old.
“[He] would be going into kindergarten this year,” said Leonard. “We’re a very musical family, so I always pictured one day he would be singing and stuff.”
“Kristal let me know that unfortunately the night that he passed, she sang ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ to him.”
With that in mind, Mr. Hart’s class sang the Guns N’ Roses classic in a video dedicated to Kristal and Ryan.
“I just couldn’t believe that these kids that I had been watching for like a month were now singing my favorite song that I had sang to my son,” Leonard said. “I just sobbed for a good 15 minutes.”
What started as Hart sharing his passion for music with his kids, led to more than 3 million views and connections with people like Kristal all across the country.
“Certainly nothing I could ever anticipate, but if it’s a biproduct of me sitting here with these kids and recording it,” said Hart. “What can be greater than that?”
Ryan passed away from a sudden and unexplained death.
Kristal says her family leaned on the Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood Foundation (SUDC) after Ryan passed. Their mission is to promote awareness and advocate for research for children affected by sudden unexplained deaths. You can learn more about them by clicking HERE.
You can view more of Matt Hart’s TikToks by clicking HERE.
