A close friend of Southwest Airlines flight attendant Jenny Lupton described her as someone who “loved her friends fiercely and showed up for the people she loved.”
Jenny, 50, was found dead at a hotel in Waikiki on August 20. Hawaiian authorities told her family that she died from an apparent fall. The Honolulu Police Department’s investigation is underway. A local medical examiner said her official cause and manner of death have yet to be determined.
‘She was energetic, full of life’
“Jenny was the kind of friend who always showed up. It didn’t matter whether you were celebrating something big or something small, or going through one of the worst moments of your life – she was there,” Angela Clark Little told HindustanTimes.com.
“When my mom died unexpectedly, Jenny picked me up and drove me everywhere I needed to go. She took me to meet my family at the funeral home and then helped me find an outfit to bury my mom in. She kept me talking the entire time, asking me about my mom and helping me remember the good times when it would have been so easy to be consumed by the bad. She got me through one of the hardest days of my life simply by being Jenny,” she added.
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{{/usCountry}}Angela also described Jenny as “unintentionally funny.”
“She loved her friends fiercely and showed up for the people she loved. She was energetic, full of life and almost always had a smile on her face. And she was so unintentionally funny – half the time she had no idea why the rest of us were laughing, which only made her funnier,” she said.
Angela added, “Jenny celebrated life, and she made the lives of the people around her brighter just by being in them. I was lucky enough to call her my friend for more than 30 years, and there will never be another Jenny.”
‘She was everyone’s friend’
Jenny’s nephew, Samuel Lupton, echoed these thoughts and described her in a similar manner. He said Jenny was a “very friendly person” who knew “exactly how to make anyone laugh or smile.”
“She was everyone’s friend. She traveled the world and was always up for an adventure,” Samuel told HindustanTimes.com.
“When I was younger, my siblings and I would often see Southwest airplanes in the sky and we would get excited because we could see ‘Jenny’s plane’,” he recalled.
Samuel said that Jenny died under “unusual circumstances” after falling from the 24th floor of a hotel in Honolulu, but also stressed that the family has no reason to believe it was a suicide or that someone may have wanted to hurt her.
“That said, she’s not from Honolulu. Without any evidence, any conclusion about Jenny’s death is speculation,” he said.
Samuel also revealed that Jenny danced with a friend, got a tattoo she was excited about, texted her sister about the tattoo before dying just hours later. He added that as authorities learn more about Jenny’s case, the family is “hoping to gain access to critical evidence like camera footage and key-card access devices.”
Amid the investigation, a Facebook page titled ‘Memories of Jenny Lupton’ has been set up, where her friends, family and loved ones have been writing about their experiences with her.
A GoFundMe has been launched to help Jenny's family in the aftermath of the tragedy.