Cassandra Spratling

Detroit Free Press

Just this summer, Emmanuel Massaley had rejoiced that his daughter had graduated high school, completing an education that had been delayed when she gave birth to a boy she had named Emmanuel, in his honor.

Little Emmanuel, 2, died from Ebola in late September fueling his concerns that his daughter, too, had the deadly virus.

On Wednesday evening, Emmanuel Massaley got the call he most feared.

His 20-year-old daughter, Delphine Massaley, was also dead, stricken by the Ebola virus that just days earlier had taken her mother and 8-year-old sister.

Massaley, 40, who has lived in Michigan since 2011, was featured in a Detroit Free Press story Tuesday about the concerns of approximately 300 Liberians who live in metro Detroit.

The international news story about the deadly virus hits home because most of them have a friend or relative who has been visited by the killer virus.

Massaley had held out hope that his daughter would not be among the 4,500 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea who have been killed by the virus.

She had been quarantined in a hospital in Liberia since testing positive for Ebola last week.

Dad and daughter talked regularly by phone. She always tried to encourage and uplift him, he said.

"She told me to be strong, that she was going to be OK," said Massaley, who works as a caregiver in metro Detroit.

He last talked with her on Tuesday, for just about five minutes.

"She told me she was feeling a little weak and tired. She said, 'I need to rest.' I said, 'OK. I love you.' "

That was his last conversation with his daughter.

He will always remember her laughter, her hugs and her smile.

"I thought I was going to be able to hug her again, but that won't be" Massaley said of his daughter, whom he had last seen when he visited Liberia in November of 2012. "I thought we'd be able to say, 'We did it.' .. . Death has held its ground."