PERRYSBURG TOWNSHIP, OH (WTOL) - It was a special birthday party Friday night for a boy fighting for his life.
Ten year old Hunter Bute was made an honorary firefighter by the Perrysburg Township Fire Department. They gave him his own uniform, even rolled out all the department's equipment to Cedar Creek church.
Hunter had only one word to describe the night:
"Wow."
The birthday bash was thrown by Hospice of Northwest Ohio. Hunter is a hospice patient, the victim of Takayasu's Disease, a chronic, inflammatory, rare condition attacking the heart's aorta and it's major branches.
Hunter may not live to be eleven.
"Six months to a year. Less or more. They don't know for sure how long." says Hunter's mom Laura Roberts.
Hunter has a lifelong fascination with firefighting, and when the township department found out about the youngster, members knew they had to answer a special kind of call.
"How could you not want to do something like this. This is what we do. We help people." says Chief Tom Brice.
Help they did, posing for pictures with Hunter in front of a firetruck. He was even put in a ambulance and taken for a ride.
"Hunter is a special young boy. He's very playful at times, he's so worn out he acts like an old man. He's my little man." according to Hunter's step-dad Rob Roberts.
"I might be his step-dad but I'm his dad in his eyes. He's my son in my eyes to him."
On this night, a wide-eyed son with an uncertain future who made new friends for life he calls "amazing."
