Bob CollinsJenna Langer Vancura, who died on Saturday, wrote her own obituary, which has just been published as the final entry on her blog, The Redhead Report, which documented her 12-year battle with cancer.
Jenna Catherine Langer Vancura, 28, passed away January 3rd 2015 surrounded by her close family after a 12-year battle with osteosarcoma, a pediatric cancer. She was born in Edina, Minnesota but moved to New Ulm at the age of seven. Early on she twirled her dresses, parasols and red hair, and she invited the good in people.
Despite treatments for her first bout with cancer her entire senior year of high school, Jenna graduated from Cathedral High School with her class in 2004. She left, bald, for the University of Minnesota, from which she graduated magna cum laude in 2008. She lived her dream of hastening to work in a crisp business suit at agencies in Washington, DC and Chicago. In between, she would need a bone marrow transplant, the marrow donated by an incredible college sophomore in Boston, Maxine.
Jenna met the love of her life, Jimmy Vancura, when she played Anne and Jimmy, Gilbert in a middle school production of Anne of Green Gables. The teasing line “CARROTS” was probably the most descriptive of their relationship until both had graduated college, and Jimmy couldn’t resist Jenna in a dirndl. They married September 28, 2013 amid a church-full of family and friends.
Jenna is survived by her husband Jimmy, her mother Lisa Langer, her father Kurt Langer, her brother Jack Langer, and a bounty of extended family and friends. The first people she’ll greet in heaven are her grandpa Kurt Domeier and his sister, Sr. Anna Domeier.
Jenna loved to laugh at Jimmy’s playful sense of humor, explore the side roads with her dad, joke with her smart aleck brother and just be with her mom, her caregiver for 12 years, in any shape.
-Jenna Catherine Langer Vancura
In lieu of flowers please select from the following to send memorials to:
Jenna Langer Vancura Memorial Scholarship- This scholarship will be awarded to students at New Ulm Area Catholic Schools. Memorial can be made out to New Ulm Area Catholic Schools.
Baldrick’s Foundation – They work to fill the enormous gap to fund research that impacts childhood cancer. Only 4 percent of the National Cancer Institute’s budget is directed toward childhood cancer research, while the average number of years of life lost to cancer among adults is only 15. For kids it’s 71.
Doctors Without Borders– They deliver emergency medical aid to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters or exclusion from health care.
Arrangements:
Visitation Friday the 9th of January 2015 from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Minnesota Valley Funeral Home: 218 North Broadway Street, New Ulm, MN 56073
Saturday the 10th of January 2015 at 11 a.m.: Mass at Cathedral of the Holy Trinity followed by an afterglow party at New Ulm Community Center
Church: 605 North State Street, New Ulm, MN 56073
Community Center: 600 North German Street, New Ulm, MN 56073
