Widow of man who died in honeymoon hiking accident speaks out: 'This life is temporary'
The widow of a man who died in a hiking accident on their honeymoon says social media is helping her cope.
After Jeffanie and Stephen Kramar’s Sept. 8 wedding in Falls Church, Va., the two embarked on a Hawaiian honeymoon. On Sept. 17, Stephen, 27, an avid hiker and a former military member, went on a solo hike to check out the trails for his less experienced wife, reports Washington, D.C., ABC affiliate WJLA. “He’s hiked 14,000-foot mountains in Colorado. It’s nothing to him,” Jeffanie told the outlet. “I wasn’t worried about his ability to hike or survive.”
She added, “I got a text from him saying travel is slow, but I’m on my way back. And that was the last text I got from him.”
When Stephen failed to return from his outing, Jeffanie called the police, who the next morning launched a search. On Sept. 21, four days after Stephen left for his hike, his body was found in Pia Gulch, about half a mile from the Wavecrest Resort in Kaunakakai where the couple stayed, according to the Maui News.
“He said they found him at the bottom of a 150-foot drop off a cliff. And next to him was a freshly fallen boulder,” Jeffanie told WJLA. “And the detective said it doesn’t look like the boulder fell on him, because there were other rocks still crumbling from the top of the cliff. What they suspected was that he was peering over the edge, leaning on the large boulder, but the rocks underneath the boulder were unstable, and they crumbled and fell.”
Jeffanie, who did not return Yahoo Lifestyle’s request for comment, is waiting for autopsy results. “This life is temporary,” she told WJLA. “We really don’t know when our time is up. We don’t know if it’s going to be nine days after you’re married or 20 years after you’re married, or 50. No one knows.”
The bride also told WJLA that the compassion of strangers is pulling her through her grief. “Just the love that people keep showing me. From strangers knocking on my door and asking can I hug you, can I just pray for you, here’s a meal for you,” she said. “And the overwhelming amount of love people showed on social media, everyone who tried to send volunteers or said let me come to Hawaii to look for him with you.”
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