He Went on a Cruise to Celebrate His Son’s Wedding, Then His Family Spent Three Weeks Fighting for His Life

Stephen Junker boarded the Sun Princess for a family celebration. His son was getting married, and the 58-year-old Minnesota pastor was there to share the occasion with his wife and children.

On August 16, while the ship was sailing off the coast of Italy, that celebration took a sudden turn. Junker fell into a swimming pool and nearly drowned. His family says he was found face down and unresponsive before being taken ashore by the Italian Coast Guard for emergency treatment in Naples.

Doctors discovered severe compression of his spinal cord at the C3–C4 level of his neck. He underwent emergency surgery the following day to relieve the pressure and stabilize the damaged area, but the injury was severe. He was left quadriplegic and unable to breathe without a ventilator, according to his family’s updates.

From there, his family began trying to get him back to Minnesota.

They arranged for Junker to be transferred to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, where doctors continued evaluating his condition. The family hoped that, with further treatment, he might eventually be able to breathe without the machine that was keeping him alive.

The family’s updates on a GoFundMe campaign created to help with Junker’s medical care and transportation described the repeated attempts to test his breathing. At one point, doctors found that his diaphragm muscles were not strong enough to support breathing on their own, so he had to be placed back on the ventilator.

The family kept going. They had already watched him undergo emergency surgery in Italy, endured the uncertainty of his condition and arranged for him to be brought home. Now they were waiting for doctors to determine whether there was anything more that could be done.

On September 4, they received the answer.

At 6:33 p.m., Junker’s family announced that he had died.

“Steve went to be with Jesus,” they wrote in an update. “He was surrounded by his wife, children, parents, and friends.”

Further diagnostic testing had revealed injuries that were not treatable, the family said.

Junker had spent much of his adult life helping other people.

He served as pastor of Chippewa Lutheran Church in Brandon, Minnesota, for nearly a decade. Before entering ministry, he worked as a pharmacist, and people who knew him remembered the same qualities in both parts of his life: a willingness to listen, a readiness to help and an ability to connect with people.

His obituary described him as being known for his “animated sermons” and his love of conversations on almost any subject. It also remembered his habit of helping people whenever he could, whether they needed advice or simply someone who knew how to fix something.

His wife, Jeanine, remembered him as a “wonderful person, loved by many.”

Junker’s family also thanked the medical teams who cared for him and the people who donated to help cover his treatment and medical transport. The fundraiser ultimately received tens of thousands of dollars in contributions from people following his condition.

Princess Cruises also confirmed that a guest aboard Sun Princess required medical assistance on August 16 and said the ship’s medical team responded before the passenger was transferred ashore for further treatment. The company later expressed its condolences to Junker’s family.

For Junker’s family, the last three weeks had been filled with decisions they could never have imagined making while celebrating a wedding.

They moved him from a cruise ship off Italy to a hospital in Naples, arranged emergency treatment, brought him back to Minnesota and waited through one medical update after another, hoping each time that there might be another option.

Junker died surrounded by the people who had stayed beside him through those final weeks: his wife, his children, his parents and his friends.