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Shane Hayes Hackbart
April 23, 1994 - October 15, 2008
by E. Gail Hackbart
Shane was born April 23, 1994 at Lakewood Regional Hospital, Long Beach, CA. He was my blue eyed, blonde haired baby boy, born to an African-American mother and a German-American father. We left the hospital when he was 3 days old. He lived the first 11 months of his life in the family's home on Walnut Avenue in Long Beach with me, his mother, Gail (Reid) Hackbart. His father, Michael Hackbart, was on assignment with his company in Tulsa, OK. His fraternal grandmother, Sally Hackbart, who lived in Long Beach, was big part of his life at that time.
About 6 weeks before Shane's first birthday he and I relocated to Griffin, GA, where we lived with his maternal grandmother, Jean Reid, and grandfather, Gary Reid. Shane and his maternal grandfather had an instant connection from the day they met. That was the day Shane came home from the hospital. So it was not surprising that he and his "grand-daddy" became instant running buddies.
Shane's father joined us for a short time working for the Postal Service. He was unhappy with the job and returned to his previous employment moving to various areas of the country. Shane and I remained with his maternal grandparents until our new house was completed in September 1997.
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The last time Shane saw his father was for his fourth birthday, April 1998. His father and I were divorced in February 1999. Shane and I made our little house a home, from the plastered hole in the wall in the bathroom from Shane playing Tarzan with the towel rack to the marks on his bedroom door marking his growth through the years.
As I toddler, I called Shane the "Wild Child". A name he earned doing such dare devil things as riding a big wheeler down the hill that was my parent's driveway, dodging the cars parked in it. I had to make him start wearing a helmet. I am still amused watching the video of him riding down that driveway.
Like most children his age, Shane attended day care. He started at the age of two. He attended the day care at my office. When he started there his father was with us and worked in the same area where I worked. He, Shane and I car pooled together. His father's hours required that we be at my office about a half hour before the day care opened. So Shane would spend that half hour in my office.
All the early morning people got to know Shane, because he would never stay put in my cubicle and he always got lost walking around to take a look at things. So you could hear him calling "mommy" when he didn't know where he was. It became a familiar sound in my office.
I decided I needed to control his movement in the office and when we were out, for instance shopping in a store, because he had a tendency to wander. I got Shane a child lease. He proceeded to embarrass me at the office by barking in front of my co-workers when the lease was on him.
Eventually, I moved him to a day care closer to home, in Griffin. So that his grandparents [could] help attend to him. He attended private pre-k and then went on to kindergarten in public school in Griffin.
He started playing T-ball I think when he was around 5 years old. He played baseball for a couple of seasons, but it was really not that exciting. But it wasn't a total loss. Playing baseball made us familiar with the baseball fields. And we knew that on Sunday mornings there was no one at the fields. So when it was time for Shane to learn to ride a bicycle. I would pack up his bicycle and take him out to the baseball fields before church on Sunday morning so he could ride around the diamond. The dirt was hard enough to ride on but soft enough that it won't hurt him very much if he fell. I got the idea from one of my co-workers. It's how he taught his daughters to ride. It worked out great. Shane was riding like an expert in just a few visits to the baseball field.
When he went to the 2nd grade his teacher suggested that he try soccer because of his size. He was a little smaller than other kids his age. The first couple of seasons were kind of rough, but he liked the sport and so did I. Thus began Shane's love of soccer. It was fueled by the fact that his God-brother, Reid, who was five years older than Shane, also played soccer. Many years during the summer Shane would spend a week or two with his God-brother and God-sisters at his God-parents house near Washington, D.C. He had many wonderful adventures at some great camps and made a lot of friends.
Shane spent a lot to time on the ground those first couple of soccer seasons. We couldn't understand why, but eventually we learned that he was trying to perfect a slide kick. And he did. By his U-14 spring season he had it down to an art and he wasn't spending a lot of time on the ground anymore.
Shane attended his first private school, Griffin Christian Academy (GCA) from the third to sixth grade. However, the summer before third grade he experienced a terrible loss. His beloved "Grand-daddy" died. We were away that weekend visiting with Shane's God-parents. Shane did not believe his Grandfather was gone until he saw and touch his body in the coffin.
His seventh and eight grade years were spent at Faith Christian Academy (FCA). He played soccer for GCA during sixth grade and for FCA during seventh grade. FCA didn't have a team during his eighth grade year. So Shane played in the Griffin city soccer league during the spring of 2008. The team did very well and went to tournament that season.
FCA had classes from Monday through Thursday. So Shane would spend his Friday's at his maternal Grandmother's house. Living up to his nickname, "Wild Child", he managed to get into a few antics at her house. Like the time he took the bayonet that I had played with as a child. It was quite dull then, so there was no way for me to get hurt. Eventually when I left home, Daddy did sharpen it and used it to cut down weeds. Shane took the bayonet and went down through the woods, chopping down and karate kicking trees. Well he unfortunately karate kicked and chopped a tree at the same time and the blade of the bayonet made contact with his boot and went right through the seam and about a " into his foot. With a reflex action he pulled the bayonet back and it flew into a nearby stream. He looked for it later, but we never saw it again.
At any rate Shane now had blood gushing through the seam of his boot. He ran back to his Grand-mother's house, but she had already left for an appointment. So he called 911. Then he called me at work and told me he was dying.
By the time the ambulance and the sheriff's department were on the scene the bleeding had stopped. The sheriff's deputy had a hard time believing Shane had done that to himself. My mother assured him that it was just like Shane to do something like this. Momma was up-set and she told Shane to stay out of the woods. The sheriff's deputy told her it was better for him to hang around the woods than to be hanging on the street corner doing drugs. But drugs never were and issue with Shane. He thought they were stupid and so were the people who used them.
Of course as a teenager, Shane loved to flirt with the girls. Sometimes he could be very shy and sometimes he could quite funny and get their attention that way. It wasn't hard for him to get the attention of girls. Those blonde curls and blue eyes were enough of an eye catcher for him. He also had to have his on unique style of dressing. That made him that much more interesting.
Shane was baptized in the Episcopal Church where I grew up when he was one year old. When he was 8 years old he chose to be baptized on his on at our new congregation. It was a wonderful non-denominational church, Church on Fire. In this way he showed his willingness to submit the following of the Messiah.
We loved the church and its members but I began to feel that there was more to it then what we were experiencing. Around January 2005 Shane and I became attending Messianic Congregations. These are congregations of Jews and Gentile who know that Yeshua (Jesus) is Messiah (Christ). Even though he missed his friend from Church on Fire, he stepped up to the new adventure and considered it pretty cool and made many wonderful friends in our new faith.
Shane was wonderfully unique and different in many ways and he loved it. When I decided to send him to public high school in 9th grade, he was wearing tight jeans while most of the other boys were "sagging". This just added to the quirkiness that made this high school freshman popular. He was famous for his running hugs and he could always find a way to put a small on someone's face. He was a real cut up and he also believed in standing up for what was right.
Shane had an iPod Nano that he brought with money he had earned or collected as gifts. That iPod had a rough time. It got to the point where Shane had to hold it together with a clip to get it to play. He had a habit of taking it to school and one day some kid made the mistake of lifting it out of Shane's pocket. One of the girls in class witnessed this and told Shane who had done it. Shane went to the school officials and he told me. Everyday for about weeks following the theft he confronted the kid with the threat of sending him to jail and everyday he complained to the school officials until they called the kid's mother and told her to make him bring it back. You would have thought that the kid would have been more than happy to bring it back when he saw how bad a condition it was in. And you would also wonder why Shane would want it back. He never asked me to replace it. He was just determined that he wouldn't be ripped off.
Another time Shane had a substitute teacher in one of his classes. She was Asian and had a bit of an accent. One of the boys in the class was making fun of the way she spoke. Shane turned to the boy and said "shut up". He got up and was in Shane face right there in class. Shane told him to "sit down, your breath stinks". The class got a laugh out of that and the boy was embarrassed. Of course the teacher could not allow this behavior in her class. So she sent the boy to the principal's office. She started to send Shane until she found out he was defending her. Later Shane found out that the boy had just learned that his mother had cancer and he felt really bad about embarrassing him.
Shane had a unique collection of friends. You couldn't necessarily put them all together in one room and expect them to have anything in common but Shane. But they were loyal to him and he to them. Each provided Shane with a different type of adventure. Most called him brother as well as friend and there were girls as friends as well as boys.
Around Christmas of 2005, when we were still celebrating Christmas, I brought a dirt bike. Of course he loved the dirt bike. What eleven year old boy wouldn't? We lived in the city. So there wasn't much room to ride the dirt bike. So I eventually took it to his grand-mother's house, outside the city limits. He had all the gear for riding,-helmet, pads, and gloves and he started out wearing them. The kids in the neighborhood would make fun of him because of the gear. They said he looked like something out of "Star Wars". Little by little he stopped wearing the gear. So when he went out riding his bike on October 15, 2008, he was wearing none of his bike gear and he was hit by an SUV. It was some hours later, a helicopter trip to the local hospital and another to the children's hospital in Atlanta that Shane passed away. I am at least happy that his uncle, my brother, an emergency medical technician was in the emergency room with him. So he didn't die in a room full of strangers. My blonde haired, blue eyed, baby boy was gone from this world.
However he was seen by the world, friend, brother, enemy, he always left an impression on the people he crossed his paths with. To that end there were 700 to 900 people at his funeral. I wish I could speak to every one of them and find how he affected their lives. I have a collection of cards and banners from students at the high school and other who knew him or of him. They speak volumes about how people saw him. I am proud and pleased to say that he was not only a blessing to me, but also to the many whose lives he affected.
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