On November 7, after a four-year battle with a rare form of bone cancer, Alec Ingram passed away at the age of 14.
Ingram, of Washington, Missouri, was diagnosed with osteosarcoma in 2015. His family documented his brave fight on Facebook, and his story touched the world.
With news of his passing, people all over the country rallied for the teen whose final wish was to have his funeral procession filled with sports cars. More than 2,100 sports cars and 70 motorcycles gathered in the Six Flags St. Louis parking lot on Sunday before making their journey towards Washington to fulfill Ingram’s last wish.
Hundreds of sports cars joined in the procession from the church to the cemetery, while hundreds more were parked along the route.
Dana Manley, coordinator for Sydney’s Soldiers Always, who lost her eight-year-old daughter Sydney to cancer, helped the Ingram family organize the procession.
“My daughter’s last wish was for us to start a foundation to grant bucket list wishes for kids who are terminal,” Manley told KSDK. “This family is going to hear these engines rev on these cars, it’s going to heal them a little, it’s going to make them feel good.”
Manley told CNN that she recruited thousands of sports and exotic cars to escort Ingram. Drivers came from as far away as California, Indiana, Michigan, Florida, and New York to join the funeral procession. Thousands more people with signs also lined the route, causing congestion that shut down most of the city for more than two hours.
“I spoke with Jen (Alec’s mother) at the dinner after the funeral, and she said, ‘I couldn’t keep it together trying to read those signs, it was so overwhelmingly good for me to see how much my boy was loved,'” Manley recalled.
Our hearts go out to the Ingram family and the entire community.
[“source=southernliving”]