What Little Boy Doesn’t Love Tractors?

A little boy dying of cancer is too sick to go see the factory where tractors are made. So the local townsfolk get together and give the little boy a tractor parade complete with firetrucks and a snowplow.

From the TelegraphJournal here:

Jacob Vanderlaan loves tractors. So much so that the nine-year-old, who is dying of cancer, told the Children’s Wish Foundation he wanted to visit the John Deere factory in Moline, Ill. to see the tractors and other farm implements there.

But the boy everyone knows as ‘Jake’ is too ill to travel, so the tractors came to him Friday as the extended family that is the farming community around Sussex organized a parade past the boy’s home as he lay on a folded-down seat at the living room window.

Wrapped in a fleece, farm-themed blanket, a stuffed cow on his lap, Jake shielded his eyes from the sun with a black cap in one hand, waving excitedly with the other at the familiar faces behind the wheels of the passing farm vehicles.

On Jan. 5, Jake was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a terminal cancer, and every day the fast-growing, highly malignant tumours spread more rapidly throughout his tiny body.  For one afternoon, the family was able to forget the cancer that mom Julie Vanderlaan described as “extremely aggressive”, which has left her son heavily medicated to fight through the pain. “We know what’s coming,” Julie said, smiling bravely as her eyes showed her pain.

When nearly 50 area farmers made the slow trek on their tractors and other farm machinery of every description to add a bright spot to Jake’s life on Friday, Julie said they offered her son the best medicine anyone could receive. There were also fire trucks, a Department of Transportation snowplow and tractor trailers.  “Look at the balloons on this one,” Julie said, cuddling Jake and pointing out the window. Some equipment was draped in balloons, one grill held a sign saying Jake is #1, others came directly from the barn.

Fourteen hours after the reporter wrote this article little Jake succumbed to his cancer and died.