Forest Hills political junkie's dreams cut short before voting age (Teen dies before having the chance to vote for Hillary)

[mountaineer]

Forest Hills political junkie's dreams cut short before voting age
 By Ben Schmitt | Tuesday, April 5, 2016, 11:20 p.m.
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Caileigh McDowell wanted only one thing for her 18th birthday: to register for the upcoming presidential election so she could vote for Hillary Clinton.

A full-blown political junkie, feminist and equal rights proponent by age 8, Caileigh once shook the hand of President Bill Clinton during a Pittsburgh rally, attended a 2008 Hillary Clinton town hall meeting and penned a letter to President Obama.

“Most kids do not care about politics,” she wrote Obama at age 11 while a student at Edgewood Elementary School. “I do. I've realized that I can be anything that I want to be. You have helped me realize that.”

Caileigh's birthday would have been April 11. She died Saturday of Crohn's disease, discovered, her family said, after an intestinal blockage led to her hospitalization in February at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC.

She was 17, lived in Forest Hills and attended Woodland Hills High School, where she was a cheerleader.

“I think kids will probably say this about Caileigh: She was the spirit of Woodland Hills. This is devastating to all of us,” said her aunt, Lynn Banaszak.

Her dedication to the high school and district was so strong that Superintendent Alan Johnson, on learning of her death, approved early dismissals Thursday to allow faculty members and students to attend her 1 p.m. funeral at St. Maurice Catholic Church in Forest Hills. The school district sent a letter home to parents that included phone numbers for grief counseling services.

“It's so hard for me to let go of this human being,” said Lisa Silverman, an English teacher. “I think she was really going to make an impact and do good things with her life.”

In school, Caileigh took an interest in fellow students who felt like outcasts or were treated unfairly by others, teacher Lesley McDonough said.

“She made it her mission to seek out justice and make the world a better place,” said McDonough, a social studies teacher who had Caileigh in an elective Legal Issues course. “She was my most active student in class. She was a spitfire. I could have seen her becoming an attorney.”

Caileigh had been accepted into several colleges and planned to study political science as an undergraduate and enter law school.

“Advocacy and policymaking were her passions,” Banaszak said. “She wanted to follow in the footsteps of Hillary Clinton's career.”

Banaszak, who works as executive director of the Disruptive Health Technology Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, recalled that she pulled a few strings to get a ticket for Caileigh to attend Hillary Clinton's 2008 summit at the IBEW Conference Center on the South Side.

“She kept saying, ‘I have to be there,' ” Banaszak recalled. “She just wanted to see her in person.”

In 2014, Caileigh missed school to see President Bill Clinton speak at the IBEW union hall in Pittsburgh.

“I think she was one of the first to shake his hand that day,” she said.

At 8, Caileigh was chosen by a teacher to make a speech about inclusion and diversity in education during a rally at the Hill District's Freedom Corner.

“That's Caileigh,” McDonough said. “That is absolutely her.”

Caileigh mysteriously became sick at the beginning of the school year, her family said, and they searched for the proper diagnosis into her senior year. She lost weight and worsened to the point that she did not return to school after the holiday break in December.

On Feb. 20, she was rushed to Children's Hospital for emergency surgery because of an intestinal blockage, her family said, and doctors diagnosed Crohn's disease, a chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. She remained at Children's and underwent six additional surgeries, according to her aunt.

“She fought like a warrior,” Banaszak said. “I know she heard us tell her how proud of her we were, how strong she was fighting and how much we loved her, because she responded and acknowledged us.”

Johnson said he didn't hesitate in calling for early dismissal Thursday.

“We don't like to arbitrarily close school, but it was clear that so many people wanted to reach out to her,” the superintendent said. ...

Sad - in many ways.

[Sanguine]

Sad story on several levels.

[mountaineer]

“She wanted to follow in the footsteps of Hillary Clinton's career.”

*sigh*

[Wingnut]

*sigh*

She's a Democrat.  Even Death never prohibits a vote being cast.

[jmyrlefuller]

While that's a brutal way to die, and so quickly... how pathetic is it that this "news" outlet found it newsworthy to use a dead teenager to pimp Senator Clinton's campaign?

Richard Mellon Scaife is rolling in his grave.

[mountaineer]

Her parents mentioned her devotion to Hillary in the child's obit (on the funeral home's websire). I guess they trained the poor kid well. 

[jmyrlefuller]

Her parents mentioned her devotion to Hillary in the child's obit (on the funeral home's websire). I guess they trained the poor kid well. 

I suspect so. But then again, we've seen plenty of guys who had dying wishes NOT to vote for Hillary, so I guess it's only fair. Of course, I never saw the newspaper articles about those last requests treated with such reverence in the press (instead, they were treated as jokes).