Hannah Rae Luna MacDonald was going places. Anybody who watched her grow up in her hometown of Orange, or met her however briefly, could see that.
The 22-year-old already had gone so far, living her dream in New York City.
She graduated May 2022 from The Hotel School at Cornell University – a proud “Hotelie” of the nation’s top hospitality school – and a month later started as a project coordinator for foodservice design firm Jacobs Doland Beer.
As busy as work and fun (somehow seeing 40 plays in the span of eight months) kept her, MacDonald still visited home, including just in March for a best friend’s bachelorette party.
That trip was the last time family members would see her alive, blowing a kiss to her parents as she passed through airport security. It was the last chance for neighbors on East Palmyra to say hello as she walked her beloved dog, Luna.
Two days after her flight back to New York, MacDonald died in her sleep on March 23 at her Eastside apartment. Her roommate, worried she hadn’t woken for work that morning, found her lifeless in her bed.
The shock has reverberated from her newly adopted town to her university town to her hometown. Her death, in their words, has “broken” her parents, Nancy Luna MacDonald and Brady MacDonald, both accomplished journalists based in Orange County.
An autopsy indicated MacDonald had an enlarged heart. There had been no prior hint of illness, nor clue of a genetic disorder. Her parents won’t get any clarity until the medical examiner’s tests are completed in two months. Or, maybe, never.
What they do know they shared on Facebook: “… preliminary results show she had a dilated heart. The poetic version of that is something we already knew – she’s got a BIG BIG heart. Perhaps too big for her body to sustain all the electrifying love she had to give …”
That heart.
It’s a constant in remembrances: “Heart of gold.” “Pure-hearted.” “Warm and open heart.”
She grew up both…
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