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At 34, the Tacoma woman had visited China three times, backpacking and traveling from Shanghai to Tibet. She’d been to Mexico and Malaysia. She was a cyclist, a scuba diver, a surfer.
As her brother Charlie Engelmann put it, “Basically, she loved any sport that let her be outdoors.”
Julie’s latest adventure ended in tragedy.
She left her downtown Tacoma home on June 30 to tour Central America with her boyfriend, Brandon Ventura, of Sacramento, Calif. They took their backpacks, driven by an urge to go off the beaten paths and see places few others see.
Last Sunday the two of them were on a bus near Santa Rosa de Copan, site of the famed Mayan ruins in the mountains of western Honduras.
The bus, loaded with 50 passengers and headed downhill, went out of control on a curve and flipped onto its side. Engelmann and nine others died in the crash.
For Engelmann’s extended University Place family, who received the news from the American embassy in Tegucigalpa on Sunday afternoon, it was a wrenching loss.
“Julie was a part of everything we did as a family,” her brother said. “Her death will leave a huge void.”
Then the family tragedy got worse.
Overcome with the news, Julie’s father, Charles, a retired University Place minister and psychologist, collapsed and had to be taken to Tacoma General Hospital.
He is recovering, but will have to stay in the hospital for at least two more days, according to his wife and Julie’s mother, JoAnn Engelmann.
Julie Engelmann grew up in University Place, the second of four children.
She went to Curtis Junior High School and graduated from Curtis High School in the class of 1995 – then attended Tacoma Community College.
Most recently, she was working as a software trainer and analyst for the Masco Corp.
The job meant spending most of her time traveling, her brother Charlie said.
“She was traveling three weeks out of every month,” he said. “She was such a free bird, she loved it. She loved traveling.”
“She didn’t want to just fly from place to place,” added Julie’s niece, Rachelle Murray, 19. “She wanted to experience places, meet the people, experience the culture, experience their lives.”
“She was beautiful inside and out,” Murray said. “She was cooler than any of us.”
Ventura was hurt in the bus accident, but not seriously. He’s still in Honduras. In an e-mail to Julie’s mother, he explained how the accident happened.
“All of a sudden as we were going down a hill and started picking up speed,” Ventura said. “We heard the bus driver try and down shift. I looked at Julie and said, ‘Hang on, this is getting bumpy."
“We just held hands and the next thing we knew, the bus was tipping over.”
Ventura said he was knocked unconscious momentarily.
“When I came to,” he said, “we were on our sides, lying next to each other.
“She went instantly,” Ventura said. “I just held her hand and prayed and stroked her hair. I talked to her and told her how much I loved her.”
“This is very hard to make sense of,” Ventura told Julie’s mother, “how something so beautiful has been taken.”
Difficulties and delays in getting Engelmann’s body returned from Honduras has put more stress on the family, said Julie’s older sister, Christy Engelmann, a Tacoma CPA.
“It’s been quite a struggle,” she said. “The people at the embassy have been very good, but they were in such a remote area getting all the paperwork together is taking a long time.”
At this point, she said, it looks as if Engelmann’s body will be on a flight back to Washington this weekend.
A funeral service is planned for 2 p.m. July 22 at Tacoma’s Life Center Church.
“It’s open to everybody,” Christy Engelmann said. “Anybody who loved Julie is welcome to come and celebrate her life.”
