This is a love story about a young man who battled cancer twice while in college and the young woman who helped him make it through.
On May 16 Stefan Zedlacher and Cassie Gregory will graduate from Lynchburg College with Cassie sporting Stefan's grandmother's diamond. Both communication studies majors, they will go out into a troubled economy in search of jobs together, but they have been through much worse.
Stefan and Cassie met as first-semester freshmen and for Stefan it was love at first sight. It took him a while to convince Cassie they should be more than friends, and in April their freshman year they started dating. In May, Stefan was diagnosed with Ewing's Sarcoma, a very rare, very aggressive cancer of the bone and soft tissue.
Sophomore year Stefan spent at home in Colorado, but Cassie was steadfast, visiting him when she could and providing moral support from afar. Stefan came back for their junior year determined to play catch-up and graduate in 2009.
He carried heavy academic loads, went to summer school, did an academic internship with LC's Public Relations Office, then went home to Colorado only to discover that the cancer had returned.
So last fall, his senior year just under way, Stefan carried 18 hours while receiving chemotherapy and radiation treatments in Lynchburg, and still managed to attain a 3.9 grade point average.
Cassie, who hails from Richmond and is editor of LC's student newspaper The Critograph, is no academic slouch either. She's an active member of Sigma Sigma Sigma, and both she and Stefan are members of Lambda Pi Eta, the communications honor society.
They are also both members of Phi Kappa Phi, the national honor society for academic excellence. At LC's annual academic awards banquet, Cassie received the Woody Greenberg Award for Public Relations/Journalism. Stefan received the Esther Cutler Thomas Outstanding Student in Speech Communication and the Communication Studies Award for Courage.
The courage award could have gone to both of them. Last summer they began talking about marriage, but Stefan's second round of cancer brought that discussion to a halt. Instead, the couple agreed to do a study abroad program in Rome over winter break and Stefan started scheming with professors Barbara Rothermel and Dr. Delane Karalow about how to pop the big question. It was to be the first engagement for LC's Study Abroad Program.
On Jan. 6 at the top of the Spanish Steps in Rome, Stefan asked Cassie if she would take the next step of the rest of her life with him. You already know the answer.
Stefan returned to Colorado for the remainder of winter break and the first day back home from Rome, he fractured his tibia in six places while skiing. He spent much of the spring semester on crutches and in a cast, carrying 19 credit hours, and still managed to keep a smile on his face.
Cassie and Stefan haven't set a wedding date because they don't know where they will land, but that's really a minor detail. "We've been together for so long and we've been through so much," Cassie said.
They said it would have been impossible to make it to graduation together without the help they found at LC. "I had so much support from the faculty and the communications department, especially," Stefan said. "The thing I love most about LC is the faculty," Cassie said. "I love the community of LC."