News

Death of young bride devastates family, friends

Mark Huneycutt and his wife, Heather, and high school friend Lucas Onan celebrate after Heather finished as the top female runner in the 2013 Apple Festival 8K race. [PHOTO BY PAULA ROBERTS/Hendersonville Lightning]

By Bill Moss, Published: August 29, 2015

Heather Waterman Huneycutt, a captain in the U.S. Army Veterinary Corps and the wife of Hendersonville native Mark Huneycutt, died Sunday, Aug. 23, of injuries she suffered when her motorcycle ran off the road and hit a tree. She was 26.

An avid cross country runner, animal lover and top student, Heather was working as a rickshaw driver in downtown Raleigh when she met Huneycutt, a 2009 graduate of Hendersonville High School who was also driving a rickshaw. They fell in love and married, in August 2014, and had in the past month moved into their first home, in Bunnlevel, a small town outside of Fort Bragg, where both were stationed. Mark Huneycutt, a chief warrant officer, is a Blackhawk aviator in the U.S. Army.

"They were actually riding down the highway," said Don Huneycutt, Mark's father. "He’d been behind her the whole time. He pulled out in front of her and got a little ahead. He looked in the rearview mirror and didn't see her. We don’t really know what caused her to run off the road. We're looking into whether it was mechanical or a deer or something else because she was a pretty accomplished rider. She ran off the road and didn’t get far off the road before she hit a tree."

The death of Heather, a top student and star cross country runner in high school and college, stunned her family, friends and fellow soldiers.

"The Veterinary Corps is a very tight unit," said Julie Huneycutt, Mark's mother. "They just feel a huge gaping hole and a big loss. The dean of the veterinary school already did a memorial service for her. That was just stunning. We knew she was a spectacular gal. We just had no idea she had so many accolades because she was so humble. We never knew because she never told us."

Academic All-America

Born March 24, 1989, in Beech Grove, Ind., to John Lewis and Rebecca Sue “Becky” (Martin) Waterman, Heather graduated from Morristown High School in 2007, Franklin College in 2011 and North Carolina State University School of Veterinarian Medicine in May of this year. She was a member of Summit Church in Raleigh.

She was a cheerleader and ran cross country and track at Morristown High School and continued her distance running at Franklin College, setting records in high school and college.

In 2010, she competed in the NCAA Division III Women’s Cross-Country National Championship, placing 37th of 279 runners. In 2011, she was named to the Capital One Academic All-America second team in women’s cross-country and track and field and also earned All-America honors by placing fourth in the 5,000-meter run in the NCAA Division III Championships.

When she became interested in sled dog veterinary care, she traveled to Norway and Alaska to care for dogs in sled dog races. During her studies, she was also one of four students selected to travel to Africa to observe the agriculture and to Ontario, Canada to work on a dairy farm.

Associate professor of chemistry Edward Chikwana told the (Franklin, Ind.) Daily Journal that Heather Huneycutt had an extraordinary work ethic.

“Of all the students I have taught in higher education, I would rate her at the very top,” Chikwana told the newspaper. “What struck me most about her, and probably what stands out the most from working with her, was her dedication. She would set her experiments to automatically collect data while she went out to run and mapped her run so that she would come back to campus in the middle of her run and check if her data was collecting properly.”

Heather always set time aside to run and was a model student-athlete.

“Before we left on our winter term class to Belize, she asked about locations to run,” William Pohley, professor emeritus of biology, told the newspaper. “In spite of long days she never missed an opportunity to run. In spite of her dedication to her sport she was an exceptional student and a joy to have in class. It is hard to believe she is gone, such a tragic loss.”

'Nobody more perfect for our son'

Julie and Don Huneycutt have been with their son since they received a call about the motorcycle accident and drove down in the pouring rain on Sunday night. The couple had just celebrated their first anniversary a month ago.

"Nobody could have been more perfect for our son," Julie said. "They were so in love. They had talked about adding to their bucket list of 100 things to do and hiking the Appalachian Trail." Now Mark is talking about taking up the challenge in Heather's memory with two close friends from Hendersonville High School, Lucas Onan and Michael Vesely. "He went to Bridal Veil Falls, that’s where he proposed to her. He spent some time alone at DuPont, that’s how he’s coping."

Despite the heartbreaking loss, Mark was able to stand up and deliver a moving tribute to his wife during a memorial service at Forst Bragg last week. The loss of his wife followed the death of his sister, Anna, in May of 2010 of a drug overdose.

“It’s been a compound loss for this young man, who lost his sister and now he’s lost his wife," Julie Huneycutt said. "We can’t fix it. We wish we could make it go away but we can't."

Besides her parents and Mark and his family, Heather is survived by her paternal grandparents, Robert and Barb Waterman of Charlottesville, Ind.; and her maternal grandmother, Sylvia Martin of Carthage, Ind. She also leaves behind her dogs, Zaara and Tally; and her cat, Bodum.

Visitation is 4 to 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Carmony-Ewing Chapel, of Freeman Family Funeral Homes and Crematory, 819 S. Harrison St., Shelbyville, Ind. The funeral will be held at the chapel at 10 a.m. the following day. Burial will be at Hanover Cemetery in Shelby County. Contributions may be made to Heather Waterman Huneycutt Scholarship Fund, in care of the funeral home, or at memorial fund.

Information from Freeman Family Funeral Homes and Crematory and the (Franklin, Ind.) Daily Journal was used in this report.