Disney fanatic Brandy Houser dies at 41

Brandy Marie Houser was determined to make every event a celebration and every day an adventure. Friends said she coaxed them into karaoke and lipsync contests, and came prepared with prizes and gifts. She threw surprise parties for their birthdays. At school and theater group performances, she cheered the loudest for their children.

She loved all things Disney.

“She was the light, and she brought the fun,” her husband, Kris Houser, said in a phone interview. “She was a pop culture ninja. I’ll never be as cool as her.”

Brandy Houser died Nov. 13 at a hospital in Modesto, California. She was 41. The cause was COVID-19, her husband said.

Houser was a hospice care consultant, a career uniquely tailored to her particular gifts of empathy, encouragement and focus. She guided the families of the terminally ill to end-of-life care, informed them of the services and the equipment hospice agencies provide, organized nursing and schedules and answered myriad questions.

Houser loved her job, and loved being a resource in this way. Although she was on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, her work never intruded on her family life. During the long months of the pandemic, she and her friends and their children met on Zoom for karaoke Mondays and bingo Wednesdays.

Her rendition of Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” was pitch perfect, her husband said.

Brandy Marie Worley was born on Jan. 21, 1979, in Sacramento. Her mother, Linda Sue Lawrence, was a caregiver at an assisted living facility for people with disabilities. So was her stepfather, Jim Cartmell, who adopted Brandy.

In addition to her husband and son, Jude, Houser is survived by her stepbrothers, Brent and Jimmy Cartmell, and a stepsister, Anna Faulk.

The Housers met in Modesto at Discovery Zone, the children’s entertainment chain, where Brandy Houser, then 19, was working as a party planner — the most requested party planner, as it happened — and Kris Houser was a “kid coach,” who supervised the children as they played. The moment she saw him, Brandy Houser announced to a coworker that Kris Houser was the man she would marry. It took a few months; he was seeing someone at the time.

They shared a passion for Disney, and over the years, and from countless trips to Disneyland, amassed an impressive collection of memorabilia, filling the entire living room in their Modesto home with movie and ride posters, tiki mugs, framed cells from “The Little Mermaid” and “Pinocchio” and a small school of Ursula figurines

But their favorite movie was the 2009 film “Up,” a tender love story with an unlikely, grumpy hero, a 78-year- old widower and former balloon salesman named Carl, whose beloved wife, Ellie, died before they could have the adventures they had planned for a lifetime. Carl’s late-life feat, which involved him sailing off to South America with thousands of balloons propelling his house, is interrupted by a stowaway.

“It felt like our story,” said Kris Houser, “because Carl and Ellie couldn’t have kids, and 10 years into our marriage, we didn’t have any, either.” The Housers were looking into becoming foster parents when Brandy Houser became pregnant with Jude, who is now 11.

“He was our miracle,” said Kris Houser.