Family, friends mourn loss of gutsy young boy Mass, memorial service to be held Friday for 12-year-old Austin Troy Call BY PATRICIA A. MILLER Staff Writer Austin Troy Call Austin Troy Call’s short life wasn’t easy.He was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis shortly after he was born in Idaho in August 1993. He spent the first six weeks of his life in the hospital. By the time he was 3, he had already undergone numerous surgeries. But you would never have known it, his mother, Dominique Call, said. “He was always happy, always smiling, always eager to help,” his mother said Monday. “He was very active right up until the end.” Austin died on Dec. 21, at Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah, from complications following a stroke after cranio-facial surgery. Austin moved back to his birthplace in Idaho in late October 2006 with his mother and two sisters. But he packed a full life into the eight years his family lived in Brick. The boy played baseball, basketball, soccer, bowled, fished and went horseback riding with the Brick Township chapter of the New Jersey Challenger League for disabled children. He played golf with the Junior Blind Golf Association and earned a brown belt in karate. He was a student at Veterans Middle School until the family moved back to Idaho. “Everyone that Austin met was touched and inspired,” his mother said. “He never knew the words, ‘I can’t.’ He loved everyone. He was a very giving soul right up to the end of his life here on earth by attempting to donate his organs so someone else could live. Unfortunately, he was unable to give that gift.” Austin was buried in Idaho last Saturday. But friends of the family can attend a Mass and memorial service for him at 6 p.m. on Dec. 29 at St. Raphael’s Episcopal Church on Route 88 in Brick. A visitation with his brother Adam Behr and loved ones will begin at 5 p.m. “He was brilliant,” his mother said. “He was the minimayor of Brick Township. Everybody knew him, all of Brick recreation.” Dominique Call is haunted by something that happened shortly before her son went into surgery at 1 p.m. on Dec. 14. “Austin is still with me,” she said Monday. “I pulled his watch out of my suitcase last night. His watch is stopped on the date and time he took it off for the last time.” Survivors include his mother: Dominique Call, sisters: Amanda Behr and Kathryn Call, Idaho Falls, Idaho; his father Troy Call, Twin Falls, Idaho; a brother, Adam Behr, Brick, and his special “dad” William Behr, Brick. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Make-A-Wish Foundation or to the Austin Call Memorial Fund at any Key Bank. “She is struggling to pay for the headstone out there,” said family friend Diane Crumrine, her next-door neighbor in Brick.