Lisa Huntington - Brave To The End

If you count Lisa Huntington and/or her husband, John, among your friends, your heart had to feel heavy Monday morning when you opened The Gazette to see that Lisa had died after a four-year battle with cancer.

While I'd only met Lisa a couple of times, I've known John for 25 years, from his days working with the Godwin restaurant chain in Cedar Rapids. He was always a friendly guy, quick with a joking jab or a comeback to one of your one-liners. He also had dreams of true love, family and owning his own business, which he realized nine years ago when he opened Huntington's Restaurant in Marion.

I wrote about Lisa and John of Marion a couple of years ago when their good friends, Doug and Diann Chadima, spearheaded a golf tournament to raise funds for the Huntingtons. At that time Lisa had been fighting breast cancer for two years and John had had brain surgery for symptoms of epilepsy. (He's fine now.)

I called the Huntington home Monday morning to offer my condolenceses to John and was surprised when he answered the phone. I said I was so sorry to hear about Lisa. Since I hadn't talked to him for a  while, I added that I was sorry about the death last January of Doug, a good friend of John's since 1984.

When I told John I wanted to write about them for a followup column for the paper -- see tomorrow's Gazette, April 21, 2010 -- he said that was fine.  (Visitation for Lisa is 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. today at Murdoch Funeral Home & Cremation Center in Marion with services tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Marion.)

Lisa was 43, just two days shy of her 44th birthday. Doug was only 49.

"Our community, our family, our friends have been there every step of the way," John said. "We couldn't have done it without them."

He knows he can count on those people for support, just as Diann counted on many of the same friends after her husband died. I talked to Diann today.

"We can lean on each other," she said of John. "That's what we need to do."

That's what Diann and Lisa did for each other. Even though Lisa was undergoing chemotherapy for her cancer when Doug died, she made every effort possible to spend time with Diann, her best friend since seventh grade. They would have lunch when possible, talk on the telephone.

"Her smile, her bright eyes," Diann says of her friend, "just lit up a room. Her sense of humor, it was different. She always made you laugh."

Diann (left) and Lisa even took a trip to Chicago in late January, a couple of weeks after Doug's death, to see a taping of the Oprah Winfrey show.

"It was on Lisa's bucket list," Diann said. "To see Oprah and Celine Dion."

The trip was good for Lisa. It was good for Diann, too.

"That was the last time we really went anywhere together," Diann said. "She wanted to go. Nobody ever told her what to do. Lisa did what she wanted to do."

From childhood best friends forever to maids of honor at each other's weddings to dealing with death that just didn't seem fair, Lisa and Diann were inseparable.

"With Doug going in January and her now, about three months to the day . . ."

Diann Chadima, in such a short time, lost a husband and a best friend. She has children Courtney, 14, and Reece, 13.

John Huntington, in such a short time, lost a best friend and a wife. He has children Mitchell, 13, and Haley, 11.

Such tragedies shouldn't happen in such tight circles. When it does, those circles become tighter.

"She's got a lot of friends," John said. "She's going to take care of me and I'm going to take care of her."