Mrs. Shepherd, who helped evacuate residents in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and US citizens in Beirut during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah conflict, died of complications of esophageal cancer on Saturday at the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center. She was 31.
The cancer diagnosis, which came a few days after Thanksgiving last year, was a shock to her family and her doctors. Esophageal cancer is most common in men, in people over 60, and in smokers.
Mrs. Shepherd, who did not smoke, had given birth to a son, Keegan, four months before her diagnosis. She then experienced back pain, throat soreness, trouble swallowing, and acid reflux, her family said. Doctors initially dismissed the ailments as postpregnancy symptoms.
After she was diagnosed with cancer, Mrs. Shepherd soon replaced any self-pity with stubborn determination to fight the disease, her family said.
“She just said, ‘OK, let’s do it. Let’s saddle up and fight this,’ ’’ her husband said.
Described as a natural leader, she always strived to push herself to be the best she could be, her family said. While a student at Lexington High School, she helped organize the school’s first girls’ hockey team because she wanted to play, said her father, Edward Buckley of Londonderry, N.H. She graduated from the school in 1998.
Mrs. Shepherd attended Duquesne University in Pittsburgh before transferring to Northeastern University to study international relations, her family said. She graduated in 2002 and earned a master’s degree in international relations from Webster University in 2010, they said.
She enlisted with the Marines in 2003 and was assigned to a squadron based in North Carolina until 2008. She deployed with the unit to Iraq twice, serving as a crew chief aboard a heavy-lift Marine airplane, as well as to Lebanon, the Gulf Coast, Pakistan, Kuwait, and various countries in Europe.
In the Marines, she met her husband, a door gunner who served in the same squadron. They both worked in the back of the airplane, spending 12-hour days together, he said.
