Grieving friends, family try to make sense of loss

Couple described as active, devoted to their twins

A makeshift memorial for Tuesday's plane crash victims was placed outside police tape in Easton. Federal investigators can be seen examining the wreckage in the top of the photo. (ROBERT E. KLEIN FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE)

In the end, it was not leukemia but a terrible twist of fate that claimed the life of Robert Gregory.

Nearly seven years after his diagnosis, the 43-year-old Long Island man died with his wife, Donna, in a fiery plane crash on his way to routine treatment in Boston.

"Just the day before he took the flight, he was in my office," said his internist, Dr. Afzal Butt, in Riverhead, N.Y. "He had a little cold, congestion symptoms. . . . He was fine. He was much better. Of course, he has this chronic condition which can take a dip to the worse anytime down the road. But so far, he wasn't looking bad."

Yesterday, friends and neighbors were trying to make sense of Tuesday's devastating crash. A relative who answered the phone last night at the Gregorys' house on Long Island was not ready to comment or to talk about who would care for the couple's 4-year-old twins, Robert and Amanda.

Joyce Podlas, a high school friend of Donna Gregory, said: "I can't even fathom it. I look at their picture on the news or in the newspaper. It's just disgusting. To take two people, one that was sick to begin with and just - I don't know. It's not right. It's just not right."

The Gregorys were en route to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston on a flight arranged by Angel Flight New England, a nonprofit group.

"They went through a lot," said neighbor Robert Kirschner. "It's just a horrible twist, a horrible thing - and kind of ironic that it was a volunteer organization and this would happen. They're trying to do a good thing."

Kirschner described the Gregorys as devoted and active, camping and biking with the children or playing in the yard and watching the children on the trampoline. Robert Gregory, a marine technician, was handy around the house they bought and fixed up about eight years ago, even building his own garage doors, Kirschner said.

"He was very mechanical; he was good at doing his own work around the house," Kirschner said. "They kept everything really immaculate."

Robert Gregory's cousin, Todd Gregory of Coram, N.Y., said last night that the family had not yet told the twins about the plane crash and were trying to decide how best to inform them. The twins were staying with other family members, he said.

"They're in good hands right now," he said.

He said the family was considering whether to have the children see a counselor, but will wait until all family members can meet. He said the accident has brought sides of the family closer.

"Everybody's kind of spread out across the country, but we're all very close," he said.

Robert Gregory worked 21 years for Larry's Lighthouse Marina, a 180-slip marina in Aquebogue, N.Y., The owners issued a statement calling the couple "modern-day warriors" for the way they confronted Robert's illness.

"His no-nonsense, tenacious, and do-it-right-the-first-time approach led by example," said a statement from the marina's owners, the Galasso family.

Friends and neighbors described Donna Gregory, 37, as a devoted stay-at-home mother who shouldered a heavy burden in caring for her ill husband and the twins.

"She never complained," Podlas said. "Her husband, her kids were her life. That was it. She's a great, great person."

Donna Gregory chronicled the family's health struggle in a blog at www.healthtalk.com. In her first entry in 2007, she explained that as the wife of a cancer patient, she handled all of his care, medications, doctor appointments, and doctors' correspondence, as well as all the cooking, cleaning, shopping, and child care. She jokingly called herself a "super mom."

"I know you say, 'For better or worse, in sickness and in health' when you get married, but I didn't expect to have to live it at age 35," she wrote. "But that is life, and I'm his partner no matter how hard it gets."

Robert Gregory was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in December 2001, four years after they married, according to his wife's blog. The disease is one of four main types of leukemia and typically strikes people over 50, according to The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

Symptoms include tiring easily and inflamed lymph nodes. While many people can live for years with the form of leukemia without severe symptoms, the disease progresses quickly in others, for whom treatment is recommended.

Robert Gregory started chemotherapy in September 2003 but did not respond to treatment, according to his wife's blog. He was referred to Dana-Farber for a stem cell transplant, which he received in 2004. He continued periodic follow-up visits there though his leukemia was stable, Dr. Butt said.

After his diagnosis, the couple carried on with life. They had put off parenthood, planning to save money and get a bigger house, she wrote on her blog. "Then Bob was diagnosed so we felt like this was it now or never," she wrote. They pressed forward with fertility treatments and had the twins.

By last summer, they were considering having another baby, and Robert Gregory was feeling well enough to resume one of his favorite activities, restoring cars. He brought a VW Beetle out of storage and set to for work.

A pet lover who had a Bichon Frisé dog, Donna Gregory previously worked at an East Hampton veterinary clinic as a technician and office manager. But she left for a job at Verizon, saying that dealing with injured and dying animals was wearing on her, said the owner, Dr. Jonathan Turetsky.

Last year, as she struggled with health issues in her own family, she brought a pragmatic optimism to blog readers.

"I think Bob and I thought after a year of recovery he would be like he was before and this would all be over, life would continue as if it never happened," she wrote in April 2007. "With that said, I do believe everything happens for a reason and our situation makes us a better person, if that makes sense!"

Milton J. Valencia of the Globe Staff contributed to this report. Stephanie Ebbert can be reached at ebbert@globe.com.