Marial Yak, 25, of Atlanta, a Lost Boy of Sudan, died in car wreck

By By Rick Badie

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Marial Yak called his guardian nearly everyday.

“How are you?” he’d ask.

“How’s your dog?”

“That was about all the English he knew at the time,” said Dee Massengale of Buckhead. “He never called for anything or wanted anything. Just to say hello.”

Their lives intersected in 2001, the year roughly 150 young men — known as The Lost Boys of Sudan — were resettled in Atlanta. Mr. Yak, and other refugees, settled in Clarkston. Ms. Massengale, a volunteer for the International Rescue Committee, a resettlement agency, helped them adapt. Function, too.

She tapped contacts and friends to secure clothes, lamps and other items. She mentored. Showed love.

“They were kind of like my babies for a while,” Ms. Massengale said.

With Mr. Yak, she became his legal guardian. He moved in with her, settling in a bedroom decorated in African motifs. He helped Ms. Massengale care for her elderly mother. They became family.

“He was my son,” Ms. Massengale said. “He was my best friend. He was my brother.”

On Saturday, Mr. Yak returned to Atlanta from Tulsa, Okla., where he was a college junior. Ms. Massengale paid for the trip. Her mother was ill. She wanted Mr. Yak home.

On Saturday night, he borrowed Ms. Massengale’s car to visit his nephew, James Deng in Clarkston.

On Sunday while Mr. Yak was returning to Ms. Massengale’s house, he apparently lost control of the car while navigating an I-285 entry ramp. He died at the scene, a day after his 25th birthday.

The funeral for Marial Monyjok Yak, of Atlanta, will be noon Saturday at St. Michael’s and All Angels Episcopal Church in Stone Mountain. Friends and family plan to gather 5 to 8 p.m. today at the Massengale residence. Wages & Sons Funeral Homes and Crematories, Stone Mountain chapel, is handling arrangements.

As kids, the Lost Boys of Sudan were separated from their families during the turmoil of a war in East Africa. They survived months of wandering and lived in refugee camps.

Like many Sudanese refugees, Mr. Yak’s age was unclear. Immigration papers put him at an age too old for high school. Ms. Massengale fixed that.

“I took him to a doctor who x-rayed his mouth and determined that he was younger,” she recalled. “He had to have a guardian, so I got the legal papers and he came to live with me in 2002.”

Mr. Yak was a 2006 graduate of North Atlanta High. There, he won awards for literature and English. After high school, he spent two years at Oxford of Emory. Then he entered Sparton College of Aeronautics and Technology in Tulsa.

“He wanted to be a pilot or astronaut or something,” Mr. Deng said. “He was going into one of those fields.”

Ms. Massengale considers herself Mr. Yak’s mom, even though his biological mother, Nyandeng Atem, lives in Sudan. Now she has to travel to Tulsa to get his clothes and car. “I don’t even know if his car is at the airport,” she said. “I flew him home for the weekend to be with me ‘cause I thought I was going to lose my momma.”

Instead, she lost a son.

Additional survivors include a brother, Deng Monyjok Yak and a sister, Nyantiop Monyjok Yak, both of Sudan.