Zachary Jay “Zack” Hunter

Zachary Jay “Zack” Hunter

August 11, 1979 – April 29, 2024

Zack is survived by parents, Shane and Debbie Hunter; brother, Nick (Aly) Hunter; sisters, Kristin (David) Gentry and Shelby (Sterling) Fox; grandparents, Charlotte and Dennis Smith, and John and Sandi Hunter, Frank Scharff, Sr.; aunts; uncles; cousins; and many friends.

Family will receive friends Saturday, May 4th, from 1 to 2 p.m., followed by FUNERAL SERVICE at 2 p.m., West Center Chapel, 7805 W. Center Rd.

Interment: Evergreen Cemetery

Following the services, please join the Family for a reception from 3:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at the Omaha Firefighters Hall, 6005 Grover St.

The family ask all to wear Nebraska Red.

Memorials may be directed to the family.

To view a live broadcast of the Funeral Service, please visit www.heafeyheafey.com and click the “LiveCast” button at top of the homepage.

Zack was the oldest of his siblings and the first grandchild of many for his grandparents.  During the early years of his life, it was discovered that he would not have the same cognitive abilities as other children in his peer group; in spite of that, he grew very strong physically and in that way he outperformed the early expectations for him.  As Zack grew in his understanding of the world and what he believed, he accepted Jesus Christ as his savior in 1997, at the age of 17.  Over the course of his elementary and secondary education, he developed friendships with his classmates, one of whom was Brent, that lasted for decades as many do, and he graduated from Millard West High School in 1998 After high school he performed a variety of jobs and continued to establish himself as the person everyone wanted to befriend; he particularly enjoyed his peers and staff at CARE Recycling.  His laugh was infectious, he was funny, kind, and loved spending time with all of the family whether it was one-on-one or in a large group of extended family at the pool or holidays.

Zack would spend most of his life watching and listening to learn instead of reading.  It was through this method of learning that he become knowledgeable about the wildlife of the earth and was happy to regale the stories of animals from all over the globe to anyone who would listen; of particular interest were birds, dogs, and cats, but most especially his love for our pets. Professional wrestling was important to Zack, he knew every wrestler from the historic wrestlers of the 80’s though contemporary wrestling stars. Zack would attend national wrestling events when they occurred locally, and we dared not bring up our thoughts on the events being fake, or risk the verbal reprimand from Zack in defense of one of his fondest interests.  Zack was Nebraskan by birth and a Cornhusker football fan by privilege, and he was loyal to them regardless of what wins or losses the team may have had in any particular season, and would defend them staunchly against anyone who was not supportive; you could always find him pacing in front of the television on game day, just waiting to celebrate every point the Cornhuskers made.

Zack successfully battled Lymphoma for several years and it went into remission. He then moved in with his friends Don and KC who lived, worked, and thrived in general together.  It was here that Zack was the happiest, having found “his roommates” to do life daily with together, just as we all desire for in our life when we find “our people”, and we definitely desired for Zack to have that in his life; it was this loyal and fraternal  peer relationship that became his priority, more so than other family related events, because he did not want his roommates to “be alone” in his absence.  How we all could take a lesson in empathy from Zack in prioritizing the feelings of others in such a selfless manner.

Zack loved all of us with the his whole heart and the entirety of his person, and he knew of no other way to go through life.  We all are blessed to have had him for the time that we did and we are all better people for having the privileged experience of being loved by him and loving him back; he will be sorely missed and our world will be less without him.