Bradley Zankel '06, a gifted mathematics and computer science student, died Friday after an 11-month battle with glioblastoma, the most severe kind of brain cancer. He was 20.
Friends and family mourned Zankel, an operations research and financial engineering major from Port Washington, N.Y., at a funeral service Monday near his home. He died at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y.
Four of the five speakers at the funeral were among Zankel's closest friends at Princeton. The other was his uncle.
They and others who knew him described him as selfless, intellectually curious and staggeringly brilliant.
He could solve a Rubik's Cube, a puzzle that challenges visual and analytical skills, in less than 10 minutes and loved numbers, once calculating the number of ski lift chairs that had to reach the top of a mountain before he and his parents reached the peak, his father Jeffrey Zankel recalled. "Brad was incredibly inquisitive, constantly teaching himself math and computer programming. He was always searching for answers."
Along with his sharp mind, friends and family remembered Zankel's soft heart. "He was someone who put other people first no matter what," his father said. "He apologized to some of his friends for being sick when they might have needed him."
Though he could apologize for his illness, Zankel and his family could do little to stop it. Within days of the discovery of his tumor, he checked into a hospital and stayed there for more than seven weeks before he could return home.
During the months that followed, Zankel lost his ability to speak in complete sentences and his motor skills eroded.
He had once loved skiing –– he was a member of the University's ski team –– but his cancer made it impossible for him to walk or stand. He loved computers but could no longer use his fingers to type.
"The illness seemed so unfair," friend Katie Fiorella '06 said. "[He was] knowledgeable about pretty much everything, he was inquisitive and had a refreshing desire to learn. He was upbeat and fun to be around, always energetic and enthusiastic."
The diagnosis
Zankel was diagnosed with advanced glioblastoma last July after he lost his balance and fell while reaching for a book on a high shelf.
Doctors thought he might have injured his spleen, and he drove himself to the hospital for tests that showed evidence of a brain tumor. He and his parents consulted doctors from local Long Island hospitals and from New York University Medical Center. They all said his tumor was inoperable.
But when Zankel's brain began to hemorrhage, his parents had no choice but to agree to the emergency surgery they'd been resistant to before. The surgery caused damage to his brain and, his father said, "Brad was never the same."
After 52 days in North Shore University Hospital, Zankel returned home in late August, just days before his classmates converged on campus to start their junior year.
Unlike his friends, he did not spend hours packing, loading boxes into his car and carrying his possessions up steep steps in the Junior Slums. Instead, Zankel was confined largely to his bed and couch, recovering from two months of treatment for a disease that had seemed to come out of nowhere.
"Brad was such a 'don't worry about me' kind of person" that when he started feeling weaker on the left side of his body than on his right last spring, he dismissed the problems as temporary, friend Liz Rutledge '06 said.
But when he visited a doctor for treatment of his leg injury, his mother asked the physician to test her son for fatigue illness since he had been sleeping more than 12 hours a night. The tests spiraled out of control, revealing a full-fledged illness.
Even as cancer ravaged him, Zankel stayed upbeat. Soon after his diagnosis, Zankel wrote an email to friends "talking about how everything was going to be okay and not to worry and that he was hoping to come back to school before too long," Rutledge said. "One of his big things was that he never wanted anyone to worry about him."
"Everyone I've talked to in his family would always talk about how anytime anyone was sick, whether his aunt with some type of liver or kidney thing or even a cold, he would make a point of asking how they were and if they were going to be O.K.," she added. "Meanwhile, he could barely speak."
The decline
When Jennie Dean '06 visited Zankel at home last winter the two sat beside each other and watched "Jeopardy!" on television. Zankel's motor function had declined and he struggled to combine words into sentences, but Dean was shocked to hear her ailing friend shout out correct responses she would not have expected from him before his diagnosis, let alone afterward.
But even as he recalled trivia, Zankel lost the ability to use a computer and to speak beyond responding to the questions of visitors. "Things were not good," Dean said. "He was alive but not really living. Friends visited him, but he was stuck at home and could barely do anything there."
Zankel's condition remained consistently fair from last fall until May. His parents observed him sleeping more, talking less and getting weaker. After returning home from the hospital late last summer, Zankel had to return a few times when his conditioned worsened.
His last emergency trip to the hospital began early on the morning of June 12 when his parents found him incapacitated from brain swelling and rushed to the hospital, his father said. The following day, Zankel was taken off medication and doctors waited for this brain to swell until it shut down his brain stem, which controlled his breathing, his father said.
By Friday Zankel was dead. The funeral was held Monday and the University is planning a memorial service for the fall, Dean of Undergraduate Students Kathleen Deignan said in an email to the Class of 2006 earlier this week.
At Princeton
Zankel's life at Princeton focused on three things: academics, his friends and the ski team.
Teammate and computer science classmate Rob Hazan '06 called Zankel "a really gentle and caring guy who was always watching out for the team and the teammates."
Katie Fiorella, who was close friends with Zankel, said, "He was exceptionally caring and had a real knack for tuning into others' moods and [was] always great at connecting with people through long conversations."
Catie Cambria met Zankel through mutual friends who lived in Holder Hall in Rockefeller College. "We always stopped and talked when we passed each other," she said. "[But] if it hadn't been for the connections I had to some of his closest friends, I might not have known as much about his illness or death."
Cambria feels fortunate that she was able to keep track of his status and attend his funeral but is sure there are "a lot of people who knew nothing about his illness or that he had died."
"They might not have realized he was gone," she said. "They might have thought their schedules didn't intersect anymore."
Zankel, whose parents are both lawyers, was not sure what he wanted to do after Princeton. Like many ORFE majors, he was torn between pursuing a career in computers or in consulting or investment banking. He was also considering pursuing a Ph.D. so he could teach because "he loved the academic world," his father said.
"He had his future ahead of him and the must frustrating thing for me is that he lost his future," his father added. "He's been deprived of his chance. He had great opportunities ahead of him just like all the other students at Princeton, but now he has lost it all."
In addition to his parents, Zankel is survived by his sister, Julie Zankel '03.
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