AMERICAN FORK — When she was 5 years old, Heather Christensen scrawled in pencil on a torn piece of notebook paper: "Sin all youv given to me I give you all I have."
She taped her only nickel to the paper and presented it to her parents, who have kept it for the past 28 years.
Today, Christensen will be honored for giving all she had throughout her life during funeral services at 11 a.m. in the Alpine Tabernacle, 100 E. Main. Later this afternoon, her body will be interred at the Delta City Cemetery.
On the evening of Oct. 10, Christensen lost her life trying to save a busload of high school band members returning from a competition they had won at Idaho State University in Pocatello. Students who were on the bus said they saw Christensen, 33, reach for the wheel after the bus driver blacked out, but the bus veered off I-15 about 50 miles north of the Idaho-Utah border, near McCammon, Idaho, and tipped over. Several students and the bus driver suffered minor injuries; Christensen was the only fatality.
Today the student musicians who were on that bus will join the rest of the American Fork High School Marching Band in performing at the funeral and grave-side services. The event will cap a week filled with sorrow and surprise at the outpouring of support for members of Heather's family.
"It's incredible — I am shocked every time I get another phone call, every honor they are doing for her," Annette Tippetts, Christensen's mother, told the Deseret News about the flood of e-mails and condolences that have followed her daughter'sdeath.
"I think the tears being shed now are just tears of joy for her life," said her sister, Jana Hogenson. "It's made all the difference in getting through this."
"We knew she was great. We just didn't know how great," added her stepfather, Paul Tippetts.
Family members remember Christensen as a tomboy who embraced music in junior high school and never looked back. At first they thought she'd be a singer. The fourth of six children, Heather Christensen followed her sister, Kara, into the clarinet section of the school band.
For a while she juggled sports and music, playing on the basketball team at American Fork Junior High and as a sophomore at American Fork High School. After that, it was music full time.
She was drum major during her senior year for the marching band and student director for the school's a capella choir. And although she continued helping with band after graduation, she couldn't wait to leave her hometown.
"The day she graduated from high school, she headed for Salt Lake," said Hogenson.
"She loved people, congestion and city life," said Paul Tippetts.
Christensen became drum major of the University of Utah marching band before graduating with a bachelor's and a master's degree in music and music education, then she went to work immediately as Riverton High School's first director of bands before becoming the first director of fine arts and marching band at the American Leadership Academy, a charter school in Spanish Fork, where her students presented their energetic teacher with an IV bag with a Dr Pepper logo printed on it.
"Spanish Fork was just a little too stifling for her," Hogenson said. After two years, Christensen returned a year ago to a full-time position at American Fork and moved back to Salt Lake City. This year, in the wake of budget cuts, the position was cut to part time, but that didn't slow her down.
At the time of her death, Christensen was an assistant director of bands at American Fork High School; a part-time teacher at American Fork Junior High School; an adviser for Wasatch Academy; an adviser for Edge, the color guard unit at ALA; a director for Up with Kids, a youth music theater program, in American Fork and Cedar Hills; and an executive board member for the Utah Winter Guard Association.
"I could call her at 6:30 in the morning and she'd be on the road. And I'd call her at 9:30 at night and she'd just be getting home," said Annette Tippetts. "I kept telling her to slow down and smell the roses."
"She did smell the roses, just at Heather's pace, not our pace." added Lara Christensen.
Earlier this week, family members spent two hours clearing out her Salt Lake apartment.
"She lived very simply," said Jana Hogenson. "Clothes were not important to her. She didn't wear makeup."
She did love music, electronics, old movies and travel. It didn't hurt that her mother is a professional travel agent and visits to St. Petersburg, Athens and Israel were highlights. She loved to go to New York to see Broadway musicals and to Hawaii to spend time with her older sister, Kara Higginson, and her family.
She was the favorite aunt of her 42 nieces and nephews, with a reputation for taking the older ones shopping at 4 a.m. on Black Friday after Thanksgiving.
She didn't like being cold. An entry on her Facebook page made two weeks before her death reads: "I hope in heaven they have heated seats and lettuce wraps."
Annette Tippetts said Heather found time this summer to help out at her office.
"And we were able to spend the last two weekends of her life with her. That's been therapeutic, looking back," Annette Tippetts said.
"I don't know how she did it all. She just lived life at double time, but for half as long."
e-mail: mhaddock@desnews.com