Four years ago, Grant Hagemeister was sleeping on a pull-out couch at a hospital where his 14-year-old son Jack was being treated for acute lymphocytic leukemia, a possible life-threatening cancer of the blood and bone marrow.
Fast forward to last Friday when Jack received his diploma after graduating from Redondo Union High School and waved it happily to his parents, Grant and Cara Hagemeister, and his younger brother, Charlie.
It was a special Father’s Day gift for Grant Hagemeister, a telecommunications consultant, who said later, “Jack’s graduation was a combination of joy, relief and excitement. Father’s Day will be extra special this year. I am blessed to have two healthy and happy sons who have grown from boys into men.”
Jack has since recovered from often intense treatment, which included regular intravenous chemotherapy and spinal taps at Miller Children’s Hospital in Long Beach. At the time, Jack said he battled through months of what he called “agonizing treatment, the hardest in my life.”
Last week Jack told me that his father’s devotion and love through his leukemia ordeal “made the experience infinitely more bearable. My dad sacrificed countless hours of his time to ensure that my treatment was the best it could be. My dad has always been that way.” Jack said there were some children at the hospital going through their treatment alone.
Jack’s mother, a school teacher, said Jack finished his treatment in September 2021 and goes back every month or so for checkups. “He’s extremely blessed to be healthy and like his old, normal self,” she said.
Jack was diagnosed when he was in the eighth grade at Adams Middle School in Redondo Beach. To give him support, the more than 1,000 students at the school, as well as teachers and administrators, went outside on the soccer field and spelled out with their bodies, “We got your back, Jack!”
Jack’s father said the best part of the last couple of years and what may be…
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