Distance didn’t keep Speech junior Gwendolyn Magurshak from keeping in touch with her father after her parents divorced seven years ago.

She would call him anytime with questions about schoolwork or just to talk.

“It was an easy friendship,” Dan Magurshak said.

When he heard she was sick Jan. 5, he drove 65 miles from Racine, Wis., to pick her up and take her home to recover.

After a weeklong hospital stay, Magurshak, 20, died Saturday at All Saints Medical Center in Racine from complications of pneumonia.

“This is the worst case a parent could be in – to lose a vibrant, young daughter,” he said. “She was a life affirmer.”

On Jan. 5, Magurshak called her mother in Iowa because she was feeling sick. When her mother couldn’t come to Evanston, her father agreed to drive her home.

“I thought she had a very bad case of the flu,” he said.

When her condition didn’t improve the next day, he took Magurshak to the emergency room, where she was diagnosed with pneumonia.

“She was so sick, she was saying, ‘Please don’t tell me you can’t do anything for me,'” Dan Magurshak said.

The bacterial pneumonia, which became severe because it joined with a viral infection, attacked her lungs, heart valves and blood. The night after she was admitted, she was moved to the intensive care unit and put on life support.

“It proceeded to do every wicked thing to her body,” Dan Magurshak said.

By Tuesday, doctors told her father she was having strokes, and by Thursday, she had brain damage. After a week, doctors decided to perform open heart surgery to repair two deteriorated heart valves.

Dan Magurshak called the doctor’s explanation of the surgery a “lose-lose proposition.”

“It was either the one way, where we knew she would die, or the other way, where chances were slim to nil,” he said.

About six hours after the surgery, Magurshak was taken off life support and died early Saturday morning.

Dan Magurshak said his daughter’s dream was to move to California and become a film actress. He said she became involved in theater at her middle school in Grinnell, Iowa.

“She seemed to be in love with drama,” he said.

She performed in “Camelot” in eighth grade and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Our Town” in high school. She won first place at a statewide drama competition for a one-act play she performed with a high school friend.

Magurshak said he recognized his daughter’s talent during her performance of “Our Town.”

“I swear, I was watching her on stage, and for the first time, I forgot she was my daughter,” he said.

At NU, Magurshak performed in “Women and Wallace” last quarter.

Weinberg junior Michelle Tate shared an apartment with Magurshak, and the two had been close friends since their freshman year.

“She was really full of energy, an exciting person to be around,” Tate said. “She liked to do anything like any normal college student does.”

Dan Magurshak called his daughter an “older spirit” because she was so mature.

“She would always seem to be sadder and wiser,” he said. “It was an irretrievable loss. We will never forget her.”

Magurshak is survived by her father; her mother, Trudy Magurshak of Grinnell, Iowa; her sister, Jeannine Magurshak of Arlington, Va.; and her brother, Adam Borkhus of Racine.

The family has planned a viewing on Tuesday at Smith Funeral Home in Grinnell, Iowa, and a private memorial service at First Presbyterian Church in Grinnell.