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Terminally ill 4-year-old gets wish to light signal, meet Batman.

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Lionel Mandrake

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Community spirit filled the stands at Boardman's football stadium Thursday night as family, friends and residents came out in support of Jayden Barber, 4.

Jayden suffers with terminal bone cancer. But on this special night, the darkness of disease was overshadowed by a bright light in the sky that thrilled the little boy.

"Jayden loves Batman. Ever since he seen the movie, he absolutely loves him," said Jayden's grandmother, JoAnne Barber.

Jayden's love for Batman is why "Jayden's Warriors" rallied to get the action figure to pay Jayden a visit. It happened about an hour after Spider-Man and other super heroes were ushered into the stadium to meet all the kids who had gathered.

With a helicopter zipping by and the Bat Signal lighting the sky, Batman made his appearance and Jayden was given a special meet and greet with the caped crusader.

Kelley Platt helped organize the event. She said her group is overwhelmed by the strength of the Barber family.

"They welcomed us into their family to follow their journey with open arms. I'm just ecstatic to be a part, an honor to be a part of Jayden's journey, an honor to be Jayden's warrior," said Platt.

Stephen Brown and his family also came out to support Jayden at the event. Brown said that he took the opportunity to talk with his children about what Jayden is going through.

"They had the chance to meet Jayden before, briefly, just enough to say hello and they understand that he's got a difficult road," said Brown.

A notebook that was on hand sums up Jayden as a courageous and strong young man. He has an honorary key to Boardman Township, a $200,000 Maserati Batmobile, and the mayor of Youngstown declared Aug. 23 as Jayden Barber Day.

"It's amazing, the community and areas who don't even know Jayden, people just connected with him," said JoAnne Barber. "You know what, Jayden is my hero. He is amazing. He never complains. He always has a smile on his face and he's very very strong."
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Update 1:
DMczaf said:
Real Batman answered the call

https://www.facebook.com/groups/BatSignal4Jayden/

Charlene Gillingham Barber
Finally can share!!! Christian sent us to LA and we had lunch at Disney club 33 on wed!! He and his family were so awesome and down to earth!!!
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539190_375806345821500_155418599_n.jpg
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Update 2:
Shadow2222 said:
MAJOR UPDATE (Just saw it on Facebook, cause the local news posted it):
A 4-year-old Boardman boy with terminal cancer and his family were flown to California this week to meet Batman.

Jayden Barber, who was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer, and his family spent Wednesday with superstar actor Christian Bale, according to a Facebook page post by the family.

“Finally can share!!! Christian sent us to LA and we had lunch at Disney club 33 on wed!! He and his family were so awesome and down to earth!!!,” said a post on Lighting the Batsignal for Jayden page.

The family also posted pictures of Bale posing with the family on the site.

Jayden’s favorite character is Batman, and on Aug. 23 the Caped Crusader visited Jayden at the Boardman football stadium. That day was declared Jayden Barber Day in Youngstown.

Last week, Barber’s family said Jayden was in remission.

The community first learned of Jayden and his family in February 2010. Jayden was at Akron Children's Hospital in Boardman battling bone cancer. One year later, Jayden's parents learned the chemotherapy for the first cancer had caused a second, different form of cancer called MDS leukemia and this time, it was attacking Jayden's blood and bone marrow.

Jayden got a bone marrow transplant in February from a female donor, but it was not working well enough. And July 19, doctors told Jayden's parents their son was terminally ill.

Then last week, new test results showed Jayden's blood is 99.6 percent donor T-cells, meaning he's in remission.

Jayden will celebrate his 5th birthday Sept. 17.
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Stories like this make me feel good about humanity but make me feel bad because these kids who have barely even begun their life have these awful illnesses.

In addition to this the story of Ezra Chatterton always sticks out in my mind. Really sad now.
 
I have an image of a helicoptor flitting by and Bats just LEAPING out of the chopper to glide to the ground in front of the kid.

"I'm Batman"
 
ryutaro's mama said:
Did I hear correct? They gave the kid a $200K Maserati Batmobile?
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I can understand giving the kid a ride in the Batmobile as Batman's sidekick, but this certainly seems a tad excessive.

Still it's nice to read a positive story for a change. Great that people came together to make this happen for him.
 
Can't click the link. So happy they did this for him though. His disease is so unfair though. Life is a bag of shit.
 
ryutaro's mama said:
Did I hear correct? They gave the kid a $200K Maserati Batmobile?
Click to expand...

That's got to be an error. There's no possible way they'd give a 4 year old a fancy car. Maybe he just got to ride around in it. Or it's a temporary loan deal and it goes back to the publicity company that does these things afterwards.

If not an error, then his family likely wanted it, because even if they DID give it to the kid there has got to be a legality that means his parents have ownership or at least control.
 
Awesomely inspiring story. It's amazing what a community can do for a family and even a single individual when united. It's a good day to be human.

The only thing that made me scratch my head is the fact his parents let him see a Batman movie. Unless it's a cartoon version or the 1966 Adam West movie, they're all PG-13.

Edit: Apparently, they're trying to get Christian Bale to meet Jayden, so I guess they might be talking about TDKR.
 
Makes me sad that I'm not doing more out there to help others.

We can all be very selfish sometimes when others are going through stuff like this.
 
Awesome story... sometimes faith in humanity can be restored :) Though for my own personal curiosity, how come it's always Batman? I've seen a number of Batman stories like this one, but are there any stories about requests for Superman, Spiderman, etc?
 
Trunchisholm said:
Awesomely inspiring story. It's amazing what a community can do for a family and even a single individual when united. It's a good day to be human.

The only thing that made me scratch my head is the fact his parents let him see a Batman movie. Unless it's a cartoon version or the 1966 Adam West movie, they're all PG-13.

Edit: Apparently, they're trying to get Christian Bale to meet Jayden, so I guess they might be talking about TDKR.
Click to expand...

If I had a terminally ill child, I'd probably let them watch whatever the hell they wanted.
 
I always like reading these stories. So nice that they do this for kids. Really a beatiful thing... reminds me of that one kid from the make a wish foundation who asked for hellboy. good stuff
 
The fact that this was community driven and not done by the Make-A-Wish folks makes this all the more inspiring.

Can't imagine what it would feel like to be visited by your superhero idol at 4 years old.
 
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