Jake Icenhour was putting the finishing touches to a memorial on his property for Zahra Baker. The heavy rains were on the way, but he wanted it done this week before Christmas.
“I needed this little girl to have something this year for the holidays,” he said.
Icenhour never asked for this privilege. Several of Baker’s remains were found on his property, including her prosthetic leg.
“This is my Christmas present to Zahra,” Icenhour said earlier this week. Icenhour has come to call Zahra “my little girl” since parts of her dismembered body were discovered on his property in Caldwell County. Zahra went to school there for a while.
“There were many sleepless nights,” he said about the tragedy that came about at the hands of Zahra’s stepmother. “But I had to do something.”
Icenhour started a memorial alongside Christy Road, but soon ran out of funds.
That’s when the local community in Caldwell County stopped by to help. One of them was Pam Teague.
“I would drive by the memorial taking my grandkids home and wonder why the work wasn’t finished,” she says. “No one knew the man who owned the property, and I didn’t know who I could call to help out.”
That’s when Teague drove past the memorial last week and found Icenhour tidying up around the area.
“He told me he needed a cement slab inside the pavilion,” she says. “I told him my husband Tony does cement.”
Teague called her husband, and the job was done in a day.
“I then asked what else he needed,” she said. Icenhour was looking for gutters for the pavilion around the site.
“You know, that gave me goose bumps,” says Teague. “God was in on this.”
Teague owns a company that installs gutters. She knew a supplier who donated the materials free of cost once he heard of the project.
The rain and melting snow will be carried off to a safe distance and not to disturb the memorial from now on.
“I had no money or skills to do this,” Icenhour said. “”But I’ve had so much help from countless businesses and churches around here you could not imagine. This would not be possible without them.”
He is especially grateful to Pam Teague for simply pulling over to the side of the road to ask what else he needed. The Teagues, who live in Alexander County, are known for lending helping hands in their community, especially at Christmas.
Icenhour admits it is too late to help little Zahra Baker. But he hopes her memorial will plant a seed in everyone’s minds to remember all the other children in the area who are crying for help.
“There are thousands of kids out there in the same boat she was in,” he said. “If we could just help only one of them, this place will be worth it.”
Icenhour said he is proud of how great the memorial has turned out. That it could be finished just before Christmas makes it all the more special.
“I sleep good now,” he said.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement