Local News - April 2003

Community says good-bye to brave little girl

 By JACOB RUDOLPH, Staff Writer

The Denver community gathered last Wednesday to say good-bye to a little girl who touched its collective heart.

McKenzie Fay Schoenleb died on March 21 from complications arising from her bout with leukemia. She was three-years-old.

Although most people in Denver never met the young girl, financial and emotional support for the Schoenlebs poured from the community when it heard her story last year.

McKenzie was born Oct. 25, 1999 in Parkersburg, W.Va. to Rick and Christina Schoenleb.

The family, including McKenzie’s siblings — Dustin, Brandon, Candice and Morgan — moved to Denver last spring.

On April 1, 2002, just five days after moving to east Lincoln, McKenzie was diagnosed with Acute Megakaryocytic Leukemia, or AML (M-7).

After being treated for a few months at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, McKenzie was admitted to Duke University Hospital in Durham on July 30.

After two cord blood cell transplants failed to usurp the cancer cells in her body, McKenzie became the first person in the world to receive a third such transplant.

That third attempt was successful, but her body — battered by almost a year of intense chemotherapy and radiation treatment — could not recover.

At 3:25 p.m., she died in the arms of her father–overcome, in the end, by pneumonia.

McKenzie’s unwavering strength throughout her nine-month fight against the bone marrow disease was inspiration for the Denver community.

More than 110,000 people have visited her web site: www.caringbridge.org/nc/mckenziefay/. It has been a place where family and friends — their only connection, a girl most of them have never met —could offer prayers and well-wishes to the Schoenleb family.

On the day McKenzie died, the web site read: “No more suffering for little Kenzie. She was such a little fighter, and she never gave up.”

McKenzie was laid to rest Wednesday in the Westport Baptist Church cemetery.

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Staff Writer Jacob Rudolph can be reached at 704-735-3031 or jacobrudolph@ltnews.com

© 2001 Lincoln Times-News  

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