Alec Ingram spent four years fighting a rare type of bone cancer that ultimately took his life at the age of 14 — just a few years before he would have gotten his driver’s licence.
Nevertheless, the Missouri teenager got a send-off fit for a true car lover over the weekend, when more than 4,000 sports cars lined up for his funeral procession.
There were dozens of Camaros, Lamborghinis, Challengers, Mustangs and Corvettes among the procession on Sunday in Washington, Mo., where Alec’s remains were laid to rest. One drone-recorded video shows hundreds of cars in bumper-to-bumper lines before the event.
It would have been a dream come true for young Alec, who told his family before he died that he wanted a supercar escort for his last goodbye.
“He wants race cars and sports cars to take him to his final resting place,” Alec’s mom, Jen Ingram, wrote on a Facebook page dedicated to his fight with cancer last week. She wrote the post after Alec died on Nov. 7.
The boy’s cancer battle dates back to April 2015, when he suffered a broken arm. Tests revealed that the injury was caused by osteosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer.
Alec would spend the rest of his life in and out of hospital. The boy never gave up his love for fast cars, and the people around him were always looking for ways to brighten his days by exposing him to the vehicles he admired. He went to car shows, rode home from the hospital once in a Lamborghini and even got to steer a race car.
“Alec was into supercars and sports cars, so we put out a feeler on Facebook to try to get as many as we could,” said Dana Manley, who runs the support group Sydney’s Soldiers Always. Manley lost her own daughter to cancer a year ago, and she spends much of her time trying to help others who are going through the same process.
Manley helped organize the massive procession for Alec’s funeral.
“All of us cancer families know each other and stick together,” she told local station KMOV. “We tried to get a bucket list for him sooner, and it was just too late.”
She says she expected between 500 and 1,000 cars at the funeral, but the turnout surpassed all of her expectations.
Nearly 4,500 cars showed up for Alec’s final send-off, prompting local police to shut down and reroute several roads for the funeral procession in Washington.
A Camaro limo carried Alec’s remains from the church to the cemetery.
“Today was the saddest and proudest thing I’ve ever been a part of,” car enthusiast Ken McNulty wrote in Sports Cars for Alec, a private Facebook group dedicated to organizing the boy’s funeral procession.
McNulty described a “never-ending line of cars” for Alec, with supporters on “every bridge, overpass, driveway, front yard intersection and shoulder.”
User Mike Novak hailed all the car enthusiasts who came together to celebrate Alec.
“We were truly honoured to be part of it,” he said. “It’s still giving me chills.”
Comments