The message on Thursday said goodbye to a friend:

“In Loving Memory of GENE. The Band,” squeezed onto the flat surface, a green “K” in the corner.

Charles Eugene Hines III — known to friends, teachers and school administrators as Gene — died Thursday morning after suffering a severe asthma attack more than a week earlier. He was a 14-year-old rising sophomore.

A.L. Brown band members learned of his death at band camp Thursday morning. Band directors called off the rest of the camp and some of Gene’s friends went to the rock, where they said goodbye in their own way.

Besides the message and the drumsticks, they left red roses and white carnations bundled in green wrapping paper and roses attached to a white-satin-covered heart.

“Everybody loved him, so it’s going to be kind of rough Monday,” when the teen’s funeral is held at Mount Calvary Lutheran Church on Little Texas Road, his father, Charles Eugene Hines Jr., said Thursday.

Gene was known as “Little Gene” to family. He lived on Beaumont Avenue with his father, “Big Gene,” directly behind the home of an aunt and uncle.

He had suffered from asthma for years, but his father said he always thought Gene would grow out of it. And he had never really had a severe attack until June 13, Hines said.

On that day, a Tuesday, the temperature soared, and ozone levels climbed dangerously high. So Gene stayed indoors most of the day, playing drums.

But when a friend came by to ask if he wanted to play basketball, Gene wanted to go, and he left on his bike. He was gone only about 15 minutes, his father said.

He came back wheezing and coughing, his worst attack ever.

“He took his breathing treatment and quit coughing. Then he passed out,” Hines said.

He rushed his son to NorthEast Medical Center in Concord, where doctors treated Gene for cardiac arrest before transferring him to Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte.

Gene remained in a coma until Wednesday. That day, he opened his eyes and squeezed the hands of people by him, his father said. Hines saw him again about 3 a.m. Thursday, and he seemed fine.

A couple of hours later, though, Gene’s liver failed. And that ultimately led to his death, his father said.

Family remembered Gene on Thursday as a loving, giving person. He was involved in the North Little Texas community watch program and was willing to do anything.

“If he needed to sell hot dogs, he would. If he needed to help pick up trash along the highway, he would,” said his uncle, Dr. Chalmer Bankhead. “Anything the community needed, he would volunteer his services.”

Gene never sought praise, and that spirit extended outside his community as well, Bankhead said.

He remembered that Gene would often wear three T-shirts to school, as he did once when it rained and he saw three girls who needed to get to their cars.

“So he took off all of his three T-shirts and gave them to those young ladies to put over their heads,” he said. “That day he came home without a shirt and really didn’t want to say why.”

School administrators know why. Janice Carty, A.L. Brown principal, and Julia Smith, an assistant principal, had known Gene since he was a student at Kannapolis Middle School and they worked there.

They remember him as a good student with a good sense of humor.

“He’s not someone you forgot very easily once you met him,” Carty said. “He was a great young man, and he just liked people in general.”

Gene also liked football, despite his asthma. His father remembers that as a younger player, Gene would simply take his medication and play, without any problems. Once, in sixth grade, he was the only running back on his team and played every down, running the ball on every play.

He had switched to the offensive line by last year, when he played on A.L. Brown’s junior varsity team. This year, he had decided to take a year off from football, his father said.

But Gene may be best remembered by friends for his skills as a drummer; his uncle said Gene wanted to build a career in music after college.

He not only played drums in his own church, Mount Calvary Lutheran, but when he visited his mother in Wilmington, he played at a church there, too, his father said.

After playing trombone and drums, he decided to concentrate on drums, said Mickey Driver, a band instructor at A.L. Brown and Kannapolis Middle.

He excelled, playing in the marching and jazz bands. He played solos in the school’s summer concert series, a rarity for a freshman, Driver said.

Gene recently entered a contest for drummers at Mars Music in Charlotte. It didn’t take the judges long to realize that he outclassed his competition.

“They wouldn’t let him compete in his age group, because he was so good,” his father said. “They made him compete with the adults.”

Even so, Gene was headed to this weekend’s finals. But, his father says wistfully, gazing off into nowhere, “He won’t be able to make it.”

The rock at A.L. Brown couldn’t contain the sentiment of Gene’s friends. They tied green and white ribbons nearby. On a large, white piece of paper lying folded on the ground, a student wrote “In loving memory of Gene Hines” and drew musical notes emanating from a drum.