Trisha Mathias, Wadee’s teacher at Bonnie McBeth Early Learning Center in Plainfield, shared aspects of Wadee’s personality: He always wore his snow boots to school, always chose the red ball on the playground, loved graham crackers and goldfish crackers, and “was obsessed” with the planets.
“Wadee would have loved to play on this playground,” Mathias said.
Speakers included Sheikh Hassan Aly, imam and director of religious affairs at The Mecca Center in Willowbrook who delivered the opening prayer; Jane Ramsey, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy and Practice; and Soha Khatib of the Palestinian Youth Movement, who grew up in Bolingbrook.
Odai Alfayoumi, Wadee’s father, thanked everyone for not forgetting his son.
“For that, I am eternally thankful,” Rehab translated for Odai Alfayoumi.
