A Ball State senior fatally injured in the Indiana State Fair stage collapse was a small woman who impressed her fellow members of the campus grounds crew with her quick wit.
Jennifer Haskell's visitation will be from 4 to 8 p.m. Thursday, followed by a service at 3 p.m. Friday. Both will be held at Monroe Central High School.
Haskell was the sixth person to die after a gust of wind caused the stage to collapse before Sugarland performed Aug. 13. Haskell died as a result of her injuries on Friday.
To Carlos Garcia, landscape services supervisor and Haskell's boss, she was a quiet woman when she was initially hired. But she ended up charming her coworkers.
"We have an area here in front of our building that needed planting, and it wasn't a very big bed," Garcia said. "The only instruction I told [Haskell and co-worker Garret Creason] was to make it look nice," he said. "Well a few minutes later, I got a text, and there are flowers planted with my initials, CG, on it.
"And I knew it was Jenny."
Garcia said even though he only knew her for a year and a half, she had an impact on the people she met.
She was also strong-willed and independent, Garcia said. Haskell bought a house earlier in the summer and was determined to work on it herself.
"Everybody was asking her if she needed help doing this or needed help doing that, and she didn't," he said. "She wanted to do it herself. She bought this house to fix up herself, and she did. She worked on it, and that's the type of person she was.
"Even though she was little in stature, she was a big person as far as not shying away from a challenge."
Shannon Washburn, an Indiana State University student, said she lost two friends as a result of the State Fair accident.
Washburn was friends with Haskell and her best friend, Alina Bigjohny, who died instantly after the stage collapsed. Bigjohny was hired in July at Wilson Middle School and was set to be a teacher at the beginning of the school year.
Washburn said she was heartbroken when she heard the news that Bigjohny had died.
"I couldn't breathe," she said. "A few days later, after I saw Alina's family and how they were doing and how much faith they had, I was getting better.
"Then I just realized I had to be happy that Jenny was still here with us and trying to pull through."
Finding out about Haskell's death was another blow.
"Then I found out about Jenny, and I felt the same thing but just like 10 times harder because it was so unexpected."
Part of her pain stemmed from how loving Haskell was. Washburn said she once got in an argument with her, but Haskell was quick to shrug off the incident.
"The next day, she would call you up, and even if she wasn't wrong, she'd be the first person to apologize," she said. "If she was wrong or right, she didn't want to have any negativity between her and anyone else."
It was a quality, Washburn said, that she shared with Bigjohny.
Washburn said Bigjohny was always kind to people, even if they didn't deserve it.
One time they were out with friends, and a man was being disrespectful.
"She just looked at him and smiled and said ‘It's OK,'" Washburn said. "I never heard her say anything bad about him. She never let any negativity get at her."
Washburn said this sense of respect and humility is something she hopes to emulate some day.
"I will now work the rest of my life to become the kind of person that they both were," she said. "And by that, I mean a person who loves with all my heart, never gives up and smiles."
Garcia said he is fortunate Haskell was a part of his life.
"Once you got to know her," he said, "she was your best friend forever."
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