After a year of undergoing and recovering from risky surgery, then incomprehensibly difficult radiation and chemotherapy treatments to rid his brain of the cancerous tumor that threatened to shorten his young life, running the Olympic torch along four blocks in Brooklyn, N.Y., was a dream come true for Jason Black.
But during this past week in Utah, the 13-year-old says he has realized an even more unimaginable dream ? watching athletes from around the globe realize their own.
"Just being able to watch them up close and live, just watching the athletes realize their own dreams of making it to the Olympics and competing, was incredibly great," said Jason, who lives on Long Island and was in Utah this week for the Games as a guest of the nonprofit Make a Wish Foundation.
After running the torch in December and meeting New York Yankees' manager Joe Torre, the Olympic events ? from the speedskating competition to the men's figure skating and the luge ? turned into a life-altering experience, a week Jason said he never will forget.
"These are moments, just like when I was running the torch, that I wish didn't have to end," Jason said. "I'll never forget them. I never will. I never will ? ever!"
Jason, mother Christine, father Andy, and his 9-year-old sister Kim, as well as 15-year-old brother Keith, arrived in Utah on Tuesday and were escorted, and chauffeured, around by employees from torch-relay sponsor General Motors on behalf of the charitable Make a Wish Foundation, which makes dreams come true for children diagnosed with a terminal illness.
"It has really been unbelievable," said Jason's father, Andy Black. "We've been with all the General Motors (guests) that they've brought in. We've been on buses with them, to dinners with them, to downtown as their guests," he said.
The pending trip was inaugurated by those most special to Jason, those who stood along Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn cheering him on ? not just his family, but four of his middle school teachers, half of his soccer team, his coach, the soccer-team mother, and friends and cousins and grandparents and their siblings ? all the people whom Jason has made so proud, including the Make a Wish Foundation volunteers who came for the event and held up signs reading, "Go Jason!" along the short torch route.
The moment also was not lost on his co-patient/pals at the Institute for Neurology and Neurosurgery (dubbed the INN) at the Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City where Jason was hospitalized during this past year of treatment.
"They were so proud of him, they are so proud of him. He's one of the favorite kids here," said Lois Harrison, a volunteer at the children's section of the hospital who shows them how to create art. "He's always been the one who looks out for the smaller kids in the hospital, who, when we decide to do projects, says 'Let's do it this way instead! Why don't we make scary eyeball soup together instead?'
"He's always the one," she added, "that shows the other kids how to do it."
E-MAIL: nwagner@desnews.com