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UI junior's sudden death shocks family and friends
By Jeffrey Patch - The Daily Iowan
UI students Ryan Braheny and Dan Boysen look through a photo album in the room of UI junior Amber Huber. The 20-year-old Huber passed away Thursday morning of cancer.
The news that UI junior Amber Jo Huber succumbed to lymphoma at 6:30 a.m. Thursday at the UI Hospitals and Clinics after a six-month struggle stunned the 20-year-old's family and close friends.
A friend of Huber's, UI junior Angie Jahn, visited her on Wednesday. Jahn said she became worried when nurses moved Huber to the Intensive Care Unit.
"It seemed like once they moved her, she just couldn't settle back down," said Jahn, who attended high school with Huber in their home town of Byron, Ill. "When I left her last night [around 8], I had a feeling that I shouldn't have left her."
Doctors broke the news to Huber that she had non-Hodgkins' lymphoma on March 20 - while she was visiting Florida with her mother, cousin, and aunt during Spring Break.
Her parents, Jeffrey and Cathy Huber, said James Wooldridge, a UI assistant professor of internal medicine, told them that Huber had a 70 percent chance of survival. Huber, a communications major, was admitted to the UIHC on Aug. 27 for her final round of chemotherapy.
"Her body just couldn't handle it anymore," Jeffrey Huber said. "We were pretty shocked. We figured she had the thing whipped."
Her dad said she retained her sense of humor until the end. Unable to speak because of a tracheal tube, Huber wrote humorous stories about her cousin for her mother on a clipboard.
UI juniors Ryan Braheny and Dan Boysen, Huber's roommates, on Thursday evening leafed through photo albums containing photos of Huber partying with friends and cheerleading at football and basketball games.
Braheny and Boysen, both UI juniors, met Huber in 2001 - the trio's first year at the university - at UI cheerleading practice.
Huber worked on the student staff of the sports-marketing office of the Athletics Department for two years. She worked briefly in the spring before undergoing chemotherapy and dropped by the office last week.
"I just remember thinking how she was vibrant," said Rick Klatt, an associate athletics director.
Huber's friends said she wanted to be an event planner - a perfect career considering that she prided herself on her organization.
Braheny and Boysen visited Huber in the Intensive Care Unit on Aug. 30 as soon as they finished cheerleading at the Iowa football game against Miami of Ohio.
"She seemed fine to me," Boysen said. "She was coughing a little bit."
Her friends brought her pictures and photographs to place in her hospital room to give her a sense of comfort and familiarity.
"We spent a lot of time at the hospital," Braheny said. "We pretty much lived there."
Huber's apartment room appeared as she left it on Aug. 28. Her bright clothes still hung in her closet, sorority photos adorned her white walls, and an Orange Bowl football signed by the 2002-03 Hawkeye football team sat atop her entertainment center.
Huber, who joined Gamma Phi Beta last fall, had planned on living in the sorority house next semester. The sorority spontaneously organized a memorial for Huber on Thursday.
This fall, Huber's sister April Huber began her first year at Kent State University; her other sister, Angie Huber, started her first year of high school in Byron.
Huber graduated from Port Byron High School, where she was a cheerleader and state track qualifier, in 2001.
Visitation will be held Saturday afternoon at Lensing Funeral & Cremation Service, 605 Kirkwood Ave., in Iowa City and then on Sept. 7 in her home town at Farrell-Holland-Gale Funeral Home. Services will be held Sept. 8 in Illinois.
E-mail DI reporter Jeffrey Patch at:
jeffrey-patch@uiowa.edu
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