Boy’s wish comes true thanks to Montana Hope Project
Caleb M. Soptelean
Joel DuMontier receives a teddy bear and camera from Montana Highway Patrol Trooper Zach Miller as DuMontier’s parents, Linda and Brian, watch during a Montana Hope Project event at Polson Middle School on March 15.
Caleb M. Soptelean
Joel DuMontier
Caleb M. Soptelean
Joel and his classmate, sixth-grader Victoria Niblack, look over gifts DuMontier received.
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POLSON — Fulfilling a child’s wish is what the Montana Hope Project is all about.
One local child got his wish granted recently thanks to the project, which is funded through the Association of Montana Troopers.
Joel DuMontier, 11, a fifth-grader who receives homebound instruction from Anna Barrows five days a week and also attends Polson Middle School two hours a day for socialization, will travel to California this month.
DuMontier’s mother, Linda, said the family will ride Amtrak to Redding, where they love the worship music at the non-denominational charismatic Bethel Church. Then they will fly to Los Angeles for several days where they will visit Universal Studios. “He’s very excited,” she said of her son, who was born with a congenital heart defect, suffers from Addison’s disease that results in a lack of steroid hormones, and has had 13 surgeries.
“He’s not a kid. He’s a little adult because he’s spent so much time in hospitals,” she said.
Barrows, who began teaching DuMontier when he was in preschool, said she’s watched him go from not being able to move very well and being fed intravenously to become “this young man who’s grown so much.”
“It’s been funny, stressful, frustrating and just wonderful,” she said.
DuMontier said he was looking forward to riding on a train “for a really long time.”His mother said he has never ridden a train before and wanted to do so because his cousins travel that way when they come to visit him from Michigan.
“He’s a walking miracle. He’s always happy,” Linda said. “I’m pretty much in tears every time I think about (the trip). There’s no way we could afford it,” she said, noting that she hasn’t been able to work since Joel was born.
The Montana Hope Project was founded in 1984 and has made more than 430 wishes come true for youths with life-threatening diseases, Trooper Zach Miller said.
The project is different from the Make-A-Wish Foundation in that it hosts two-day reunions twice a year in the winterand summer at Fairmont Hot
