Teen fighting cancer gets thousands of letters for his birthday

ESTILL COUNTY, Ky. (WTVQ)- An Estill County teen battling cancer got the surprise of a lifetime today when the entire county came together to throw him a special birthday parade.
16-year-old Aaron Stamper has been fighting leukemia for the past three years and this year for his birthday decided to ask people to send him letters of encouragement instead of gifts.

People responded in a big way sending him thousands of letters and organizing a special parade in front of his home as a birthday surprise.
Hundreds of first responders, friends and family paraded in front of Aaron Stamper’s home in Estill County Sunday afternoon as a special 16th birthday surprise for the teen fighting leukemia.

“It was amazing. It was better than I expected. There was so many awesome vehicles. It was nice, I liked it,” said Stamper.

Stamper had asked people to send him letters on his birthday instead of gifts and thousands responded, from people here in Kentucky to others from around the world.

“It feels absolutely amazing. I never thought I would get one from Australia, that’s like across the world and it’s just, it’s amazing,” said Stamper.

Stamper says he came up with the idea last Christmas as a way to help him get through the final months of his treatment.

“I wanted to see how many I could get. I did it for Christmas and it was really fun so I thought I would do it again and it completely blows out Christmas. It’s too many, too many to go through,” said Stamper.

Stamper says the parade and thousands of letters made this a birthday he will never forget but the most exciting thing is that he’s expected to go into remission in a few months.

“It’s just another year I’ve made it through having this disease and I’m almost done with it now so it’s just great,” said Stamper.
Stamper says he’s received more than ten-thousand letters from people across the world and so far has only opened around five-hundred.
But he says when he’s done reading them all he plans to put many of the letters on the walls of his bedroom.