This spring, Charles Huizar opened a fortune cookie and read the message inside: “Your dearest wish will come true.”
Weeks earlier, the architectural engineering student learned that he would visit Fallingwater, his favorite Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building.
He so enjoyed the irony that he carries the small slip of paper to this day, tucked inside a travel folder detailing his visit on Tuesday to the National Historic Landmark in Fayette County.
Huizar, 21, is a sophomore studying architectural engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.
He’s certainly leapt tall buildings in more ways than one for Haley and her siblings, providing a base for his children to grow socially and educationally.
And, despite Gracey’s kryptonite-like medical diagnosis, Haley, her brother Nathan, and those close to the family said he remains a high-flying ball of energy and a source of comfort and support for all who know him.
“He fights so hard, he is Superman to me,” said Haley, a Lock Haven University junior. “He’s one of my best friends, and it hurts my heart to think about life without him.”
Jon Gracey always has been a Pittsburgh Pirates fan.
His images of his grandfather are of the old man smoking a pipe, dropping matches that left marks on the linoleum floor while drinking Iron City beer and listening to the Pirates on the radio.
Jon Gracey of Hampden Twp. relaxes with his dog, Reily. The Dream Foundation dropped off gifts to fulfill Gracey’s wish of attending a Pirates game with his son and twin daughters. Gracey has an incurable form of cancer.
Gracey saw the team in person maybe 10 to 15 times while growing up in Shippensburg. He remembers the first time he saw the late Roberto Clemente. But it wasn’t so much the games or plays that stand out, as how being at the ballpark was a family affair.
“My mom would roast a turkey and make sandwiches” whenever the Graceys went to Pittsburgh for a game. “If I have a turkey sandwich now, those are the flashbacks I have,” Gracey said.
Diagnosed with third-stage multiple myeloma — an incurable cancer of the plasma cells — in early 2007, Gracey was given 15 months to live.
The disease has slowed him, but the expiration date hasn’t run out yet. Gracey passed the five-year mark in January.
Gracey, 49, is a Pirates lifer. A Pirates magnet is centered on the back of his black Dodge Durango. He knows the team like the back of his hand.
Automotive-technology students at Corona del Sol High School brought a measure of kindness—and some desperately needed convenience—to a terminally ill woman whose final days were becoming an even larger battle because she lacked a running vehicle to make doctors’ visits or run even short errands.
Tapping into the students’ auto-repair skills, Hospice of Arizona and Dream Foundation collaborated with Corona auto-technology teacher Larry Huff to undertake repairs to patient Vickie Hull’s van, which was returned to her on May 22 in full running order, including its transmission and the previously inoperable AC unit.