RIVERTON - One of her baby pictures shows an apple-cheeked girl with soft pigtails - and a black eye.

"She was the sweetest, most loving thing you ever saw," her dad said.

"And yet," said her mom, "she was just tough as nails."

Amy Stahl died Jan. 27 at her parents' home in Riverton from abdominal cancer.

She was 28 years old, a wife, a sister to three brothers, a treasured daughter to her parents, Karen and Willie Peden.

More than 500 people came to her funeral.

"It's hard to go to a funeral for a young person," said Larry Chouinard, Amy's social studies teacher at Riverton High School. "I was just missing a real neat person, a special person, who had a very kind heart."

Amy stood out among the thousands of students he's taught, but not because she was the best student.

"She just had this drive that you don't see in students," Chouinard said. "Her papers were always done on time, always done to the best of her ability."

In high school Amy followed her passion for music. She played clarinet in the band and sang and played piano with the chorus.

She was fun to be around, telling jokes and riddles, and fit in easily with different groups of students.

She was a Girls State delegate, and graduated in 1996.

Chouinard saw her grow from a quiet freshman to a senior who asked hard questions and wanted to know the answers - someone who listened to others and respected their opinions, even if they differed from her politically conservative views, he said.

Another teacher, Bill Kilmer, wasn't surprised Amy grew up to be a memorable woman.

She was a memorable little girl in his P.E. class. Children in P.E. don't always have good manners, but Amy was a delight, he said.

"She was very aware that other people could use encouragement," he said.

Amy gave her all in an after-school job, too. As a teenager she cleaned the office of a Riverton radio station, KTRZ.

Amy rode her bike in on weekends from her parents' country home, let herself in, and worked away.

"When Amy cleaned for us, then we knew what clean was," said Cindy Browall, who with her husband Kurt owned the station.

After high school, Amy earned a degree from Central Wyoming College in Riverton, and went on to Chadron State College.

At church in Chadron, she met Eldon Stahl, a tall young man with dark hair.

"When I met Amy, I knew she was a special person," he said.

They wrote letters back and forth during the year and a half Amy was a missionary in Tennessee. When Amy returned, she transferred to Brigham Young University, where he was a student.

She took him home to meet her family. She wanted everything to go perfectly, Eldon said. On the way they made a pit stop at a gas station. She came out with a ribbon of toilet paper stuck to her foot. She cringed, but he didn't care. He just thought she was cute, and funny.

They were married May 18, 2002, a sunny spring day, in the Denver temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"It was a special feeling," Eldon said. "We both knew we married the right person at the right time. Whatever happened, things would be OK."

They lived a simple life, Eldon said, without a lot of money to spend. They took walks in the park and fed the ducks, traveled to museums and heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

In Provo, Amy earned a history degree and also studied education. She wanted to be a teacher.

She and Eldon dreamed of having a family and a home. Amy wanted a piano in that house.

"She wanted to accomplish a lot in life," Eldon said.

Amy was diagnosed with cancer when she was still in school. A bout with salmonella as a teenager had led to years of serious stomach problems and eventually cancer, her parents said. She finished her degree while on chemotherapy, and even continued to volunteer and tutor disabled students.

Amy faced cancer, her father said, with the same courage and attitude she showed as a child, whether steering her bike down a steep hill, or playing on the all-boys Little League team.

She wasn't angry or bitter. She didn't complain about the pain.

Willie Peden was sitting on her hospital bed the day three doctors came in to tell them there was nothing more they could do for her.

"She reached up and put her arms around me, and was patting me on the back," he said.

With her stubborn nature, her parents said, what bothered her most was that she had to quit, that there was nothing left she could do.

She'd been staying in Provo, but finally wanted to come home to Riverton. A family friend helped out and picked her up in his plane; her parents said she was so weak she might not have made the long drive home.

Her father held her hand, and put on some music, and he felt Amy's fingers playing along, like on the piano.

"She didn't want to die," he said, "but she wasn't afraid of it, either."

Her mother said she finds herself thinking of Amy as a role model, hoping to be the person she was.

"In our faith," her mother said, "when you die, your body dies, but your spirit stays. When the resurrection comes, you pick up your body, and it's made perfect. For me, I had to find out if I really believed that. And she really did believe it."

Reach Barbara Nordby at (307) 266-0633 or at barbara.nordby@casperstartribune.net.