Cooper Stock wanted to be a basketball player. But at nine years old, his NBA eligibility was a ways off. So he settled for watching his favorite team, the Knicks, play at Madison Square Garden.

“He’d get so excited,” his mom Dana Lerner said about Cooper at The Garden, watching games. “Not only would he high-five my husband, he would turn to high-five the next guy.”

Cooper’s interests ranged beyond sports: he was curious about subjects such as the civil rights movement and Abraham Lincoln. “Whenever he learned something, he wanted to know everything about it,” Lerner said. “He was wise beyond his years.”

Cooper was a fan of classic rock, and his favorite song was “Little Wing” by Jimmy Hendrix. “Now I see him as a little wing,” Lerner said. “He’s flying on somewhere out there because he had such an incredible presence in the world.”