A dying teenager’s last wish for a sports car funeral procession was fulfilled by his community and rank strangers.
14-year-old, Alec Ingram, from Washington, Missouri, died on November 7 from cancer after a four year struggle with it.
Alec was diagnosed in 2015 with a rare form of cancer of the bones, osteosarcoma.
“Our sweet boy lived more life in his 14 years then a lot of us could ever imagine,” Alec’s mom, Jenny Ingram, posted on their official Facebook page. “We are beyond blessed to have been chosen to be Alec’s parents even for a short time. It gives me so much peace knowing how loved our sweet boy was and will always be.”
The event, “Sports Cars for Alec,” was arranged by Sydney’s Soldiers Always, an organization led by Dana Christian Manley who lost her daughter Sydney to cancer at age 8.
“All of the local cancer families become family to each other,” Manley said, Sydney was diagnosed with cancer only two months before Alec.
Manley’s organization, provides bucket lists for kids suffering from terminal illnesses. She reached out to the Ingram family asking them if there was something Alec wanted to do.
Alec was too sick by that time to do anything, and so they saved one special idea for later.
“When Sydney passed, she had a motorcycle escort like this one but with 3,500 motorcycles,” Manley said. “When Alec saw Sydney’s escort, he said, ‘That’s really cool, but it would be even better with sports cars,’ and that’s why we organized it.”
Manley arranged for thousands of sports and exotic cars to escort Alec to his funeral service at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Washington.
Some drivers had to travel to Missouri from states across the country — including California, Indiana, Michigan, Florida, and New York — to drive in Alec’s funeral procession.
There were thousands of people with signs lining the procession route to support Alec’s family. The huge number of people and cars which showed up caused that part of the city to be shut down 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 said.
This Sports Car funeral service was fit for a fighter like Alec, who loved cars so much.
