Make-A-Wish Helps Local Boy Become Cowboy For A Day
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Family and friends cheer as 7-year-old Noah Keith steps from a limousine.
He always wanted to be a cowboy. Now, he's getting his wish.
"Ready to get dressed and be a cowboy?" asks horse owner Amy Pritchard. After Noah is dressed in chaps and a cowboy hat, she leads him into the stable in Elizabeth.
Noah has a cancerous brain tumor. This experience is provided by Make-a-Wish.
"When our volunteers went out to meet Noah and his family, they learned he was a cowboy fanatic," says Dana Antkowiak of Make-a-Wish of western Pennsylvania. "We learned that he would really like riding lessons. And so from that we are giving him a year of riding lessons and we're turning him into a cowboy today."
With Amy Pritchard's help, the little cowboy saddles up for lesson number one. There will be many more visits to this stable, but he'll never forget that first ride.
Amy says Noah is a natural.
"No fear," she said. "He's excited to run down into the pasture like a real cowboy."
In a survey of medical specialists, 89 percent say a Wish experience can favorably influence a child's health. And in Noah's case, it seems to be working.
"He looks so happy," says his mother, Crystal Nesmith. "He loves the whole cowboy persona, with the chaps and everything. He loves it."
After all, he got to meet a horse, "And I got to ride one," Noah said with a smile.
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