I would like to tell you all about my beautiful daughter and her family.

Jennifer (Stephenson) Forgey was married to Kyle Forgey. They met each other many years ago when they both worked at the Columbian newspaper in Vancouver. They both grew up in southwest Washington.

Jennifer trained as a chef and Kyle was training in the hospitality profession. The kids ended up moving to Yellowstone National Park where they both worked for a few years.

Eventually, they moved outside of the park to West Yellowstone, Mont., where Kyle became the general manager for Delaware North Corporation hotels and restaurants in that tourist community.

While in West Yellowstone, they “finally” got around to getting married. Also, having a few miscarriages, and being not even sure she would be able to have a baby, Jennifer became pregnant. Little Zayden was born in April 2013. They were the proudest parents you could ever imagine.

Jennifer began not feeling well the summer of 2014 and in August was diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer. She was only 33 years old and had a just over 1-year-old son. In the ensuing months, Jennifer came back home, so to speak, and began cancer treatment at the Oregon Health Sciences University hospital in Portland, Ore. Also during that time, Kyle sought, obtained and accepted a work transfer to Kalaloch Lodge where he is now the general manager.

In April 2015, the kids purchase their first home in Forks. They were both so excited and happy and loved their new place. Jennifer’s treatment was going exceptionally well. Even her doctors kept saying that they almost never saw the kind of positive progress she was making in someone with her kind of cancer.

It went so well that she got to the point that they were willing to do potential curative surgery to remove her cancer.

She went in for surgery on Oct. 23. The surgery failed because they found that her cancer had spread beyond her pancreas. After the previous few months of temporarily staying down south for her treatment, coming “home” to Forks when she could for short stays, she came home to Forks permanently.

She loved her new home. She loved Forks. Zayden started pre-school.

On Dec. 18, 2015, at about 10:25 p.m., at less than a month past her 35th birthday, my baby girl, wife to Kyle, mother to little Zayden, now not quite 3 years old, lost her battle with cancer.

I wanted the Forks Community to know a little about an angel who never really got the chance to become a true part of your beautiful area. She was a newbie but truly loved it there.

I also wanted to offer my sincere thanks and appreciation to the Forks Ambulance crew and especially the nurses and doctors at the Forks Hospital who all took such wonderful care of my baby in her final hours.

As you can imagine, the loss to our family, and especially Kyle and little Zayden, is immeasurable. What you might not imagine is how much of a loss this is for Forks.

Thank you.

Rob Stephenson

Woodland