Jennifer Wood did not have to be a teacher to be involved in children’s lives.
She has dedicated her life to children by helping out in a group called the “glitter gliders,” in which she and her fiance Travis Gober coached fourth- and fifth-grade students.
All of her dreams and aspirations were never put on standby, and she lived her dreams and acted in the present, Gober said.
“One of the glitter gliders who was kind of shy and reserved wrote that Jennifer made her a braver person. She really did make an impact on her,” he said.
However, Wood, a junior education major, died in Dallas, Jan. 2 from Hodgkin’s disease, which she was diagnosed with in December.
“We didn’t think she was dying or anything; the doctors didn’t expect it,” Gober said.
The diagnosis came as a tremendous shock to Wood’s friends and family as there was never a time when she had shown any visible signs of grave illness.
She became sick after Thanksgiving when she contracted a viral infection that seemed to never go away, said Jared Briggs, a childhood friend.
“We thought maybe she just had a bad case of the flu,” he said.
Wood and Gober shared an interest in spending time with children and helping them in physical as well as mental aspects.
In her time as an Aggie, Wood and her best friends brought Destination Imagination, an organization similar to Odyssey of the Mind to Texas A&M.
“Aside from teaching, she wanted to be a D.I. coordinator for a school where she could be the person who organizes the teams and gets them to the tournament,” Gober said.
As the fall semester ended, Wood became sick constantly. Her condition became evident when after rushing through her last final exam she was unable to walk back to her dorm. Her parents drove from their home in Terrell, Texas, to pick up their daughter and admit her into Baylor Hospital in Dallas.
Several operations and biopsies later revealed that she had several growths in her body, and doctors diagnosed her with Hodgkin’s disease.
According to the National Cancer Institute, Hodgkin’s Disease accounts for less than 1 percent of all cancer cases in this country.
After these various procedures, Wood was released from the hospital and allowed to go home for Christmas.
“It was nice because all of her family got to come in and be with her,” Gober said. “So she got to see everyone before she died.”
On Jan. 2, she was to be transferred to a different intensive care unit because doctors had told friends and family that she was doing a million times better than how she was just two days earlier, Gober said.
“Being generally 95 percent curable, we thought we were dealing with ‘good’ cancer,'” he said.
Wood was buried in a Texas A&M “Maroon Out” 2002 T-shirt, an A&M necklace and a maroon casket.
“She was all about A&M; she loved going here,” Gober said.