11-year-old racing fan overwhelmed by response to request for stickers to cover his casket

About three weeks ago, Caleb Hammond and his family accepted a difficult realization: Cancer treatments weren't working for the 11-year-old anymore. Caleb left the hospital where he had been receiving treatments for his two-year battle with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia and returned to his home in Oskaloosa, Iowa, to live the rest of his life away from painful procedures, and to spend time with his family. But he had one request that has reverberated across NASCAR and social media: He wanted to gather as many racing stickers as possible to cover his casket. NASCAR drivers and teams have answered the call -- and the Hammond family has been overwhelmed with the response. Caleb has been a racing fan since age 2, when he visited his uncle, Chris Playle, at Playle's house across from Southern Iowa Speedway in Oskaloosa.

According to the Des Moines Register, drivers would park their cars on the streets before the pits opened, and Playle would bring Caleb outside to see them. Once cars started racing, Playle and Caleb would pull up lawn chairs and watch the action.

"He’s my racing buddy. It was kind of our deal," Playle told the Des Moines Register. "I probably had just as much fun as he did."

It was there that Caleb once met Kasey Kahne, who was at the track for the Front Row Challenge.

"He was all smiles. Enjoyed it quite a bit," Playle told the newspaper. "Just being able to go, it was a good time."

On Saturday, Caleb had a taste of what being a driver is like when he donned a fire suit and sped around a dirt track in a stock car as a 12-year-old sat beside him to help work the stick shift and navigate the track.

"A goal of his was to be able to drive a race car when he got older," his father, John Hammond, told The Oskaloosa Herald. "It's like a dream come true."

In mere weeks, Caleb has been embraced by the NASCAR family, which was quick to respond to his request for stickers.

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