DIANE HUNTLEY Obituary

HUNTLEY--Diane Roberta. Diane Roberta Huntley, an exceptionally persuasive promotional writer and a spirited public speaker who worked for People Magazine, the late U.S. Senator from California Alan Cranston, and the American Library in Paris, died at her Northern California home in San Rafael on February 19 of complications from Bulbar Onset ALS. She was 75. Diane was diagnosed in May 2024 with ALS, a rapidly progressing motor neuron disease that slowly chokes off the ability to speak, to eat, and to breathe. The deterioration of her lungs was hastened by pneumonia, and suddenly the previous prognosis of six months became a matter of days. Diane, who had gone Ziplining just months earlier, passed away in the arms of her husband of 41 years journalist Robert F. Howe. They were just about to celebrate the 57th anniversary of their first date - at a drive-in theater in Burbank, California, with the not-so-romantic double feature of "The Odd Couple" and "Rosemary's Baby." Diane began her professional career in 1975 at The North Face apparel company in Berkeley CA. After a stint at People Magazine she was hired in 1984 by Sen. Alan Cranston to help manage communications, writing newsletters and giving speeches on the Senator's behalf. "A remarkable person," recalls Daniel Perry, a long- time senior aide to Sen. Cranston. "Quick, sharp, funny, sometimes irreverent, sometimes outrageous. Had a natural charm and wit as a public speaker. And she was passionate about politics. She also became a den mother to all the new people - young people trying to find their way in this strange world of working for a U.S. Senator. Diane made them feel like they were doing something special. She never overlooked anyone." Over the years, she also volunteered at the Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City and later with a hospice organization in Northern California as a companion to patients suffering from fatal diseases. Diane did not submit passively to ALS. Hours after her diagnosis, she told her husband that she wanted to go back to Rome, Capri, and the Amalfi Coast - as she and her husband promptly did. In a period of 13 months, they took seven trips - the last one with a portable ventilator to help her breathe and cartons of formula to feed her through an implanted port into her stomach. But she didn't just want to travel. She was keen on some adventure, saying, "What have I got to lose?" Against the cautions of her neurologists, she and her husband went horseback riding along the Maui coastline. They then sent photos to the doctors - who were pleased that she had been so bold. Diane and Rob went parasailing for the first time about a month later, admiring the island of Maui and the sea 600 feet below as they floated 1,200 feet from the boat towing them. Her husband balked briefly at one venture. Ziplining. On Kauai. One line, a straight shot down a mountain and above a dense forest. The line was 4,000 feet long, the drop in elevation about 1,000 feet, and they flew along belly-down at 50 mph. Traveling, eating the simplest meal, and working on the stunning collages she produced during her illness became increasingly challenging. "I can't speak and I can't eat. I don't know who I am, but I am not this," she wrote on her iPad. She was angry about her fate, for herself and for all the other ALS patients who she felt have been failed by the medical community that, over the course of several decades trying, has yet to identify the cause, much less a cure, of ALS. But she never lost her spirit. Dot Spaet, her multi- disciplinary physical trainer for the past five years, explained, "Her decline came in steps and stages. She'd lose the full functioning of one part of her body, then another. Everything about life was getting hard. But she kept coming to the Zoom classes. They made her feel 'normal', like she was still involved in a regular life. A lot of the students were inspired by her, and some of them didn't even know she had ALS." Diane and her husband had no children, but she lived a very large life, growing up in Southern California in a family of modest means, graduating with an American Studies degree from the University of California at Berkeley, moving with her husband 18 times for professional and sometimes passionately personal reasons, to New York City, to Washington D.C., to Paris, back to New York City, and finally to the wine country in California. Life-long friend Trudi Castleman Meyer, who met Diane in Kindergarten in Glendale, California, recalled: "Even then she was fun, bright and unique. And she grew into a beautiful, accomplished and remarkable woman. My life was richer because of Huntley." Diane is survived by her husband, her niece Stacy Hedin of Salisbury, N.C., and Rocky, her beloved eight-pound toy poodle with a hundred-pound personality.