"My son was a great kid, all American, bright, funny. We had this perfect little family life," Frank Sente, Jeremy's father, said. "All of a sudden, he developed cancer."

Jeremy's tumor was discovered when he was 14, after he started to complain of vision trouble, said Marjory Sente, his mother.

"In the fall of 1994, Jeremy went back to school after spending the summer at Boy Scout camp. He was having trouble with his vision, so I made an eye appointment and we went to go see the optometrist. He noticed that something was radically wrong and, after running some tests, told my husband and I that Jeremy had a textbook case of a brain tumor," she said. "The next day we were at Hershey Medical Center, where we saw an optometrist and a neurosurgeon. They found a malignant brain tumor sitting over the center of Jeremy's optic nerve."

Though the survival rate for pediatric cancer as a whole is 85 percent, the survival rate for Jeremy's type, neuroblastoma, cancer of the nervous system, is only 56 percent, according to the St. Jude Children's Research World Wide Web site (www.stjude.org).

From the beginning, Jeremy and his parent knew his odds. His treatment would include surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.

"He had two horrific brain surgeries, one lasting 11 hours and another lasting seven hours; several months of chemotherapy, which was three days about every three weeks; and six weeks of daily radiation," Frank said.

Marjory said although his surgeries and treatments took a lot of out of him, her son always had a good attitude.

"He loved to play practical jokes," she said. "After one of his treatments, around one o'clock in the morning, he said, 'Time to have some fun.' He asked the nurse for a drink of water and, when she left, put on his baseball cap that had battery operated Christmas lights stuck through it. She came in with the water and he said 'Is this what chemo does to your head?' The nurse laughed and brought people from all over the floor to see him in that hat."

In early November, doctors at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center learned Jeremy's tumor was growing aggressively and they felt they could not do anymore.

Because they knew Jeremy was not getting better, his family planned a Make-A-Wish Foundation trip. They went to New Orleans and Jeremy shadowed Emeril Lagasse, the chef. A week later, Jeremy died.

"I found out that he had died at (high) school, very impersonally. It was devastating," said Jeff Mace (freshman-management science and information systems).

Mace and Jeremy were in the same Boy Scout troop and worked at the same Boy Scout summer camp. Mace is dancing in Jeremy's memory at the 1999 Interfraternity Council/Panhellenic Dance Marathon for Alpha Phi Omega, a service fraternity.

"I wanted to dance, period. Nobody should have cancer, especially children. Jeremy was struck down in his prime," Mace said.

For two years after his death, Alpha Epsilon Pi, 425 Locust Lane and Sigma Sigma Sigma sorority, continued to adopt the Sente family.

"This year we asked not to be adopted," Marjory said. "We felt it was inappropriate and unfair for a family that doesn't have a child with cancer to be adopted."

The Sente's will still be attending Thon this year. It is because of children like Jeremy that pediatric cancer still needs Thon, Frank said.

"They estimate that by the year 2015 or 2020 there will be a cure for pediatric cancer," he said. "Someone who is going to dance at Rec Hall will have a kid and that kid will have pediatric cancer. Some people in your generation will go through the hell my family went through. Keep dancing and when you graduate from Penn State, take a piece of Thon and start it somewhere else."