Tony Heubach Obituary

Tony Heubach attended North Penn High School in Lansdale, PA. View the obituary, post a memory, or share a photo about Tony Heubach.

Graduation Year	Class of 1976
Date of Passing	Aug 20, 1994
About	Obituary from Weds. Aug. 24, 1994: Tony Heubach-Winik, 37, Formerly of Lansdale, died Saturday at his home in Austin, Texas. He was the husband of Marion Winik. A 1976 graduate of North Penn High School, he was a competitive ice skater and toured Europe as a member of Holiday On Ice before settling in Austin, Texas. Surviving with his wife are two sons, Hays Anthony and Vincent Valdric; his parents, Rod and Grace Fell of Lansdale and Lake Ariel and Edwin Heubach of Fort Washington; three brothers, Frank Heubach of Telford, Sam Fell and Larry Rivenbark of Lansdale, maternal and fraternal grandmothers; and several aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews. He was proceded in death by an infant son. Memorial services were held Tuesday in Austin, Texas. Tony was a professional Ice Skater, and former Olympic athlete. He skated professionally for Holiday on Ice for several years after graduating First Comes Love, by Marion Winik (Vintage, $12): It was hardly a match made in heaven. Rather, during a debauched Mardi Gras in New Orleans in 1983, student Marion Winik and former ice skater Tony Heubach found they shared a passion for the same kind of drugs and music. And they couldn't stay away from one another, despite the fact that he was openly gay. Eventually, they married and had two sons, despite Tony testing positive for HIV. And eventually Tony got AIDS. Winik charts their rollercoaster relationship with unflinching honesty. Some of the scenes of drug use are hard to take; the ending is heart-wrenching. ''Love came first, and last . . . how can it be that he is gone?'' When Marion Winik fell in love with Tony Heubach during a wild Mardi Gras in New Orleans, her friends shook their heads. For starters, she was straight and he was gay. But Marion and Tony's impossible love turned out to be true enough to produce a marriage and two beautiful sons, true enough to weather drug addiction, sexual betrayal, and the AIDS that would kill Tony at the age of thirty-seven, twelve years after they met. In a memoir heartbreaking and hilarious by turns, Marion Winik tells a story that is all more powerful for the way in which it defies easy judgments. As it charts the trajectory of a marriage so impossible that it became inevitable, First Comes Love reminds us—poignantly indelibly—that every story is a special case.