He’ll charm you with his kindness and his smiles. He’ll ask how you’re doing and he’ll never, ever complain to you about his plight in life, which is often unbearable.

Fifty-eight-year old Tony Taylor of Jim Thorpe was born with Down syndrome. At the age of 5, his parents both died within a year of each other, and so his brother Robert became his caregiver along with Debra, Robert’s wife.

In 1995, he had surgery on his leg that went wrong, causing doctors to fuse a metal rod into his leg. He lived for years with chronic daily pain and infections that brought upon numerous visits to the hospital.

A month ago, Tony had perhaps his greatest setback. He experienced a violent grand mal seizure that fractured his femur in his bad leg, the longest and strongest bone in the human thigh that is necessary for standing and moving. Due to the rod in his leg, hip replacement to restore mobility was determined to be surgically impractical. Besides that issue, doctors had to remove the ball that forms his hip joint.

“Before his surgery, he gave me a salute and the thumbs-up sign that he learned from Fonzie in the TV show, ‘Happy Days,’?” said his niece, Melissa Baker. “He has such a good spirit about him.”

Tony has suffered many other problems as well. “He can’t bend his leg,” Baker said. “He’s had toes amputated because of infections and he has a condition that sends electrical charges of unbearable pain through his whole body.

“Then, while he was in Good Shepherd Hospital, he contracted pneumonia,” she said. “His oxygen level dropped and he had to be intubated. We thought he wasn’t going to make it, but he’s a fighter. He couldn’t speak for a while, but when he finally could talk and he saw me crying, he said, ‘It’s OK.’ Then he pulled through enough to bring him home.”

Tony is beloved by his entire family. Baker recalls when she was just 5 years old and he would bounce her on his knee.

“He’s still a big kid at heart,” Baker said. “He loves Christmas and his birthday which is on June 8. He gets really excited. This year he wanted vanilla and chocolate cake, clothes, music, pizza and $20,” she said with a laugh.

Tony’s inability to stand and walk has brought new and more difficult issues upon his brother and wife, who have been dealing with their own health problems.

“They have trouble getting Tony into their car for his trips to the doctor and just to take him anywhere.”

Baker has never known anyone to have more compassion and concern for everyone else than her uncle.

“He’s been to hell and back,” she said. “He tries to understand his limitations and sometimes he gets very sad, but he never makes it about him. He’s always concerned about how everyone else is doing.”

She has begun a GoFundMe page in the name of her mother to raise money to purchase a used van that insurance won’t pay for.

“Handicap accessible vans are far too expensive,” Baker said. “We’ll be happy to get one that we can have a ramp installed so Tony can be lifted inside with his wheelchair. Then we can easily get him to his doctor’s appointments.

“My parents would never ask for anything, that’s why I am,” she said. “We’re trying to raise money for this beautiful man so that we can take better care of him by taking him where he needs to go. I am humbly asking for anyone to either donate if they are able or share this story to as many people as possible. I cannot begin to describe what this would mean for my family.”

Donations can be made at https://www.gofundme.com/tonys-new-van.