Three days before his death, Samuel Ruben Owen became a Bar Mitzvah. Sam, who turned 13 on Oct. 11, died Oct. 21. He had been diagnosed with Burkitt’s lymphoma in February of this year.
“He was just a very sweet child, and always wanting to do good and to do the right thing,” said Rivy Poupko Kletenik, head of school at the Seattle Hebrew Academy, where Sam would have been an 8th grader this year.
Before he fell ill, Sam had played electric guitar and loved to hike, camp and fish. He participated in cross country and basketball for SHA and his baseball team won the Rainier District Little League Minors Championship in 2007.
Sam was a huge sports fan, and during his illness he had made friends with several players on both the University of Washington and Seattle Seahawks football teams. A video of his ad-hoc Bar Mitzvah posted on the YouTube online video site showed his hospital room with an ESPN banner hanging on the wall while Sam lay on his bed, wrapped in a Huskies flag. A signed Huskies football sat just above his pillow.
Even while he was sick, Sam had studiously prepared for his Bar Mitzvah, and was adamant about having the ceremony, according to a blog written by his mother, Jodilyn Owen, that documented her son’s cancer. Friends read his Torah portion for the ceremony that had been scheduled for the following Shabbat, Oct. 24, while the rabbis of Seattle’s two Sephardic synagogues, Simon Benzaquen and Salomon Cohen-Scali, led the Torah service and presented Sam with gifts.
“Today is a day that Hashem made and we’re going to celebrate and rejoice in Hashem on this day of your Bar Mitzvah, Sam,” said his father, Rabbi Benjy Owen, on the video.
Sam, whose family on both parents’ sides extends back in Seattle four generations, was well-known and well-loved. As his mother wrote on the blog, his friends champed at the bit to visit him during his stay at Seattle Children’s. These were friends who stuck with Sam before his illness and all the way through.
“There is something very unique about Sam and the handful of friends who he has been with essentially since they were all in diapers,” Jodilyn Owen wrote. “They all have an enthusiasm about participating in their community and enjoying each other within the context of who they are as Jewish boys and as friends who enjoy sports, learning, and hanging out.”
Just as much as she had appreciation for the friends and family who spent so much of their time reaching out, Jodilyn Owen also expressed frustration at her inability to do anything for her son, even as she and her husband realized time was running out.
“There are moments where I just get so aggravated that his body is not cooperating with the rest of him and that we do not have any medical tools to help him fight this,” she wrote. “What I wouldn’t give.”
Still, she told JTNews in an e-mail, “Sam had a sharp wit, was an empathetic young man, and refused to ever give up his goal of beating cancer.”
The sanctuary at Congregation Ezra Bessaroth, where the funeral was held, was standing room only with even more people standing in the lobby. The procession to the cemetery had more than 100 cars.
Sam leaves behind his parents Benjy and Jodilyn Owen; older sister Julia and younger brother Jeff; four grandparents, a great-grandmother, and many aunts, uncles, and cousins.
Samuel Ruben Owen: October 11, 1996—October 21, 2009
