Kathy ‘Kat’ Maria Hubbard

She danced, she fell, she fought

— Kathy “Kat” Maria Hubbard was young at heart, despite battling cancer for years.

“I remember one particular incident where we were at a park at a birthday party, and she actually climbed onto the slide and slid down, and she fell and we were laughing about it,” said her 14-year-old stepdaughter, Kara Hubbard.

“She got up dancing and wiped herself off,” added her husband, Brad Hubbard.

Hubbard of Carlisle died Saturday at UAMS Medical Center in Little Rock from breast cancer complications.

She was 47.

Hubbard, who grew up in Norwich, Conn., was full of life as a teenager.

“She was very active, a baton twirler at her school,” her husband said. “She started off as a cheerleader and that wasn’t fulfilling enough.”

After graduating high school in 1984, Hubbard served four years in the U.S. Army as a secretary in Germany. While overseas, she saw everything from the Egyptian pyramids to the Eiffel Tower.

“She wanted to travel,” Brad Hubbard said. “She talked about the Eiffel Tower, how big it was and how small she felt standing next to it.”

After serving four more years in the U.S. Army Reserve in Connecticut, she moved with her second husband to Arkansas. The two later divorced.

Around 2000, Hubbard became an administrative assistant at the Arkansas School for the Deaf.

“She took pride in her work, she was very organized,” her husband said, adding that she retired last year. “She tried to make everyone either smile or laugh.”

In 2008, Hubbard’s coworker told her she had found her a “cowboy” and passed along Brad Hubbard’s number.

“Kathy called me two days later,” her husband said. “She told me, ‘I don’t normally do this, I don’t even know why I’m doing this,’ and we talked for two hours.”

When they met, she was told by doctors that her cancer had come back.

“She said, ‘I want to be up front ... and let you know what you’re getting into,’” Brad Hubbard said. “‘If you want to run now, you better go.’ I said I’m not the running kind.”

They were married Nov. 13, 2010.

“She was always there for me and good to talk to,” Kara Hubbard said. “She’d do my nails and fix my hair. I couldn’t have asked for a better mom.”

Though Hubbard was faithful and prayed daily, she struggled as the cancer kept returning with vengeance.

“[The cancer] spread lesions in her brain, she beat that with radiation, on top of her skull, she beat that,” her husband said. “Her shoulder, her hip, her spine, her legs, her liver, her lungs. It’s easier to say where it wasn’t. She fought all of it.”

Despite her constant illness, Hubbard enjoyed family time and listening to her favorite country or ’80s rock hits. In May, she saw the country group Little Big Town perform at Riverfest.

“We sat down on the blanket,” Brad Hubbard said. “I could tell she wasn’t feeling good, but she was still making me smile.”

She never saw Tim McGraw, her favorite country singer, Brad Hubbard said, but he and his daughter plan to honor her by attending the Country Music Association Music Festival Fan Fair in Nashville, Tenn., in June.

“What I had in mind was having T-shirts made ... with her face on the front and on the back, ‘In loving memory of Kathy Maria Hubbard,’” her husband said. “I want to take one to Tim McGraw and have him sign it.”

Arkansas, Pages 8 on 11/27/2012

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