MACI COSMORE
Special to The Leader
As holiday and new year festivities wrapped up and students and staff began to return back to campus for the Spring semester, heartbreak struck the Fredonia campus.
Stephanie Handschu, 21, of Plainview, Long Island and a Fredonia student, passed away suddenly on Jan. 9.
Handschu was a senior music education major who had a passion for teaching music.
Breanna Bryce, a friend of Handschu’s said, “She was already an educator—she just didn’t have the degree for it.”
Handschu was very active in the Fredonia Opera scene, Ring Road Singers, Fredonia Hillel and was a sister of Sigma Alpha Iota.
Word of her passing spread quickly through phone calls and social media after her mother, Jill Flomberg-Handschu, posted to Stephanie’s Facebook page on Jan. 11.
“This is the hardest thing . . . I have ever had to say. Stephanie, who was [full] of love and ambitions, has been cruelly taken from us.”
Handschu is remembered by her friends, colleagues and mentors as a bubbly, selfless, dedicated, radiant, funny, professional and compassionate person.
“She always put others above herself. She would literally be the kind of person that would drop everything and come to you if you needed her,” said Amanda Gribbin, another friend and colleague of Handschu’s.
According to her friends, Handschu was always very positive and appreciative.
“She was just a bundle of energy. No matter where she went, she just entered the room and there was a light in the room. It could be the darkest room and she’d come in and light it up somehow,” Gribbon said.
Allison Nicole, a long-time close friend said, “She showed people the good in things and the good in others.”
Bryce continued, “She was literally my ray of sunshine.”
On top of Handschu’s social life, she was very dedicated to her school work.
According to Vernon Huff, an assistant professor of choral music education, “Stephanie was a shining light. She was loved by her peers and would have been a wonderful music teacher,” he said in a Facebook post.
Gribbon said, “She was one of the only music majors that [Sigma Alpha Iota] ever met that didn’t complain and was always genuinely excited to do the things that she had to do.”
The School of Music is currently planning an on campus memorial in honor of Stephanie and will be announced in the near future.
At the request of the Handschu family, those wishing to make donations in Stephanie’s memory may contribute to an existing Fredonia music scholarship.