On the day she was diagnosed with a fatal, malignant brain tumor, Donna Lang was headed to her first day at her dream job.

She’d waited to get her education — both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in communication — until the kids were grown. As a child, she’d dreamed of being a teacher.

She was headed to her first class as an adjunct teacher at Boise State University when she stopped at the emergency room because she was dizzy and weak. The diagnosis was a malignant brain tumor.

The cancer claimed Lang’s life on Dec. 27. She was at home with her husband of 15 years, Bob Lang, and her family. She was 51.

As a child, Donna (Albertsen) would pretend to be a teacher. Her dolls and paper dolls were “highly educated,” her family said. She always wanted to play school with her siblings.

She was in the sixth grade when her family moved to Boise. She grew up and married and moved around the country with her then-husband and two small boys.

Bob Lang was acquainted with Donna in the 1980s at Walla Walla College, where her major was elementary education. When Donna came back to Boise in 1995 after years around the country and a divorce, she ran into Bob. Their kids went to the same private school. Things blossomed from there, Bob Lang said.

“She had beautiful eyes,” Bob Lang said. “ There are so many things about her. I thought she was the nicest person I’d ever met. She was just real friendly and outgoing.”

They were married in December 1996.

Donna decided to stay home and raise her two boys and Bob’s son and daughter.

She didn’t have hobbies, per se. Her hobby, Bob Lang said, was people.

“She was always organizing events,” he said. “She really didn’t make things, she made people.”

So she would work with kids at their church. And she would encourage other women to follow their passion and get an education. She carried pictures of those women around in her wallet.

When the kids were grown, Donna Lang had a dilemma.

“People that have dedicated themselves to being a mom, no matter how good they do, the kids grow up,” Bob Lang said. “She was faced with ‘Now what? I have a lot of life left.’ ”

With some encouragement, she enrolled at Boise State.

She taught communication courses as a graduate student. After she earned her master’s degree in 2010, she got a job teaching at Boise State. But then, the cancer.

It wasn’t Donna Lang’s first battle with the disease. She’d been diagnosed with and successfully fought breast cancer when she was 40.

“That one was scary because we still had young kids,” Bob Lang said.

So she missed her first semester as a teacher. But she later taught at both Boise State and College of Western Idaho. She had to use a cane to get around.

“She lived her dream, even though it was a short time,” Bob Lang said.

Donna Lang especially enjoyed waking a student’s mind in her entry-level communication classes, teaching them to think critically.

“She felt like college, no matter what degree you got, opened horizons, and opened your thinking,” Bob Lang said. “She liked trying to waken the parts of the students … She took that as a challenge to convince them they could do something they thought they couldn’t do.”

Donna Lang’s smile and laughter weren’t dimmed as her condition worsened. She had a real sense of humor, Bob Lang said, particularly when times were tough.

She’d recently fallen down the stairs, and firefighters were summoned to the couple’s Caldwell home to help her out of the stairwell.

“In between wincing in pain she was cracking jokes with them,” he said. “They just had the greatest time. … They just thought she was hilarious.”

Even near the end of her life, Donna Lang wasn’t done teaching. In a November essay, Donna Lang described how she had wanted to teach elementary school since before she started the first grade. After finishing her degrees, her plan was to teach.

“Cancer was not my plan; it is not something that I can fix,” she wrote. “I do believe that God has a plan. I don’t know what his plan is, but I believe he has one.”

To honor her love of teaching, friends and family have set up a scholarship in her name at Boise State. They are still raising money for students who will focus on education.

In Remembrance is a weekly profile on a Treasure Valley resident who has recently passed away. To recommend someone for In Remembrance, email newsroom@idahostatesman.com.