Junior marketing major Bill Donlon loved to joke around and pull pranks.

Donlon lost his leg to cancer and when people in public would stare at his prosthetic leg, Donlon always had a funny story to tell.

“There was one time, and I told him this was so evil, that a kid was staring really hard at his leg. He leaned down and told him, ‘You know at Disney World when they tell you to keep your hands and legs in the ride at all times? Listen to them,'” said Terry Donlon, Bill’s mother.

Bill’s sense of humor is what kept him going during his seven year fight, which he lost Jan. 8, with Ewing’s Sarcoma cancer.

“Through the seven years, his interest was in having fun and being with his friends,” Terry said. “At first he would feel sorry for himself, but then he thought, ‘what do we have to do to conquer this?'”

Even through his last weeks, which he spent in hospice care, Bill never let people feel sorry for him.

“He was horrible with the nurses,” Terry said. “He would pretend to fall on his crutches just to see them jump up to try to save him, and when they would try to put IVs or draw blood, he would twitch and move around like he was having a reaction to the medication, then he would pass out. We would freak, but he got a kick out of it.”

Bill was a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity at NIU and loved to ski and play paintball.

“The first time I met him I was amazed at how instead of being ashamed of his condition, he was proud and joked that he had lost his leg in a shark attack, when he had actually lost it to cancer only a few years ago,” said Jade Peterson, a senior public health major and fellow SAE member.

Bill loved his fraternity brothers and enjoyed making people laugh.

“He always hugged me whenever I saw him and always made all of us laugh, we actually referred to him as ‘one-legged Bill,'” said Mike Turano, a junior sociology major and fellow fraternity brother.

Despite his five relapses, Bill continued to enjoy school and being with his friends.

“Bill was a great guy and will serve as an inspiration to everyone who knew him,” Peterson said.