Shaktoolik boy whose last wish was for another Christmas with family dies

[The Straight Story]

Shaktoolik boy whose last wish was for another Christmas with family dies




ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Jacob Takak, the 4-year-old Shaktoolik boy whose dying wish for one last Christmas with his family was granted in February, died Friday, just two days shy of his fifth birthday.

Jacob died in Shaktoolik surrounded by his family. He suffered from muscular dystrophy and cancer.

Reporter Jason Lamb and photographer Dan Carpenter told Jacob's story in March. Read the story and watch the video here. Funeral plans are pending.

Jacob's grandmother, Ethel Fuller, read a prepared statement from Shaktoolik on behalf of the Takak family:

In this hour of remembrance, we -- Charles, Charmaine, Brad, Amber and Maia Takak -- would like to thank you all from far and near for prayers and thoughts of sorrow for our dear baby, baby brother and son.

Sorry we can't name you all, for we feel if we leave anyone out, it makes for a bad feeling. So we, the family of Jacob Takak, thank you all.

Every prayer was a difference. They eased every feeling we had during our last days with baby Jacob.

http://www.ktuu.com/Global/story.asp?S=12418075

[Blue_In_AK]

1. I'm not normally an emotional person,

but this story made me cry when I watched it last week on KTUU. It was so sweet what the community did for him and his family in February.

Not a soul in Shaktoolik missed the only February Christmas dinner the village has ever thrown.

"For me to have everybody around us is something that only in a village you can see," Rosemary Otton said.

"I just think he's a strong, very, very strong boy," Lydia Evan said.

"He's one of the people that you get to love, just by being around him," Melvin Otton said.

Support is a feeling words just can't express sometimes.

The community sang Christmas carols.

"It was awesome. Really awesome, something we had been waiting for for a long time," Jacob's aunt Agnes Takak said.

But in a small village of Western Alaska where solitude is a way of life, the people of Shaktoolik couldn't be closer together.

"Thank you so much for giving our baby his Christmas wish," Charm Takak said to the crowd.

Friday was also a special occasion for Jacob's parents: It was their 10th anniversary and Jacob's older brother Brad's birthday.

[malaise]

2. Too sad

:cry: