Child who dies of cancer leaves playground legacy

ELLISVILLE, Mo. -- Battling a brain tumor that left him without sight and with time running out, 9-year-old Mak Shulist made a dying wish that had nothing to do with spending time with a celebrity, shaking a president's hand or going to Walt Disney World.

Helped by the Make-A-Wish Foundation, the third-grader left something behind for his friends as he lost his bout with cancer.

Mak died Friday, his legacy -- a 7-foot climbing wall -- already gracing the playground at his old grade school in the St. Louis suburb of Ellisville.

"It says a lot about the family and the type of person he was -- selfless, thoughtful and caring. Mak brought out the best in us," Dave Knes, the principal at Ellisville Elementary, said Saturday night. "We learned a lesson from a 9-year-old -- that even when we're going through tough times we should be thinking of other people and not ourselves."

The gift surprised some of the 600 other students at the school.

"I thought he was going to wish that there was a medicine or something, and he just wished for that," schoolmate Will Randall told St. Louis' KSDK-TV. "And I was like, 'Whoa, he's nice.'"

The gesture seemed fitting, Knes said, because Mak himself had been "just all boy."

"I think his hands would become raw playing on the monkey bars," Knes said.

Mak's health worsened about a year ago, Knes said, when physical education teachers noticed him losing his balance and falling while he ran around the track. The school told Mak's parents, who had him examined and tested.

That was when doctors found the tumor.

Chemotherapy and radiation treatments seemed to make the invading growth disappear, but it came back last fall about the time Mak was starting third grade, Knes said.

Three months after that, the cancer forced Mak out of school for good.

A basket that appeared outside the family's home became a drop-off spot for well-wishers.

"People would put a gift in there every day," Knes said.

A teddy bear here, a SpongeBob SquarePants item there. Cards and letters, some scrawled by children, urged him to keep fighting.

Over his final days, as Mak grew progressively worse and eventually went blind, the Make-a-Wish Foundation hurried to fulfill his dream.

"From the time the wish was granted to the time they were playing on it was less than two weeks," Knes said.

The foundation paid for the wall itself, which Knes estimated cost between $10,000 and $15,000. Volunteer crews installed it at the school.

Could hear the joy

On Thursday, as Mak's condition turned grave, Knes videotaped students scaling the wall and proudly detailing its every crag and crevice. Knes rushed the tape to Mak's parents so the boy could hear the joy he could not see.

"We tried to hit the audio really big for him," the principal said. "His mom said he did hear it."

Mak died the next day, surrounded by family.

Today, Knes said, teachers will be told to tell the other children that Mak is gone. Counselors will be available for students who struggle with the news.

The towering addition to the playground might offer the best therapy of all, he said.

"Every time I'm going to get on this wall," one of Mak's friends, Michael Stafford, told KSDK, "I think about him and what he did for us."

On the Net

Make-A-Wish Foundation of Metro St. Louis: stlouis.wish.org