By DIANE GASPER-O'BRIEN

dobrien@dailynews.net

The holiday cheer was missing in Oberlin schools Tuesday morning.

On their last day of school before the winter break, staff and students were mourning one of their own.

Lora Marietta, a 2006 graduate of Decatur Community High School in Oberlin, Monday night in an accident while coming home from college for the Christmas break.

Marietta, 22 and a senior at Kansas State University, was on her way to see her family in Oberlin when a semi reportedly crossed the center line and hit Marietta head-on about 15 miles south of Hoxie on Kansas Highway 23.

She is the daughter of Alan and Judy Marietta of Oberlin, where Judy Marietta works as a secretary in the high school.

"It was a hard day," said Sherri Ruf, a fourth-grade teacher in Oberlin's elementary school.

Ruf came to Oberlin in 1997, and Marietta was a student in Ruf's first fourth-grade class.

She also is a student Ruf said she will never forget.

"Lora was one of those students who would help everybody and anybody," said Ruf, who also coached Marietta in volleyball her freshman year in high school. "She holds a special place in my heart. She's one of my favorite students ever."

Marietta -- the youngest of four siblings who has a twin brother, Bret -- went on to excel in athletics in high school.

She was part of the school-record holding 3,200-meter relay team that earned a medal at state.

But her real passion was in power lifting, in which she and her older sister, Leah, started competing in high school.

Lora Marietta earned a silver and two bronze medals in the sub-junior division for 16- to 18-year-olds at the World Power Lifting Championships in South Africa as a high school junior.

She held the American bench press record for the 16-17-year-old, 132-pound weight class until last fall.

Marietta was a member of the Army ROTC Battalion varsity team at Kansas State, where she was majoring in psychology and pre-occupational therapy.

As a sophomore at Kansas State in 2007, Lora placed third overall at the USA Power Lifting Collegiate National Championships in Texas.

Earlier this month at the Task Force Dodge Regional Ranger Challenge at Camp Dodge, Iowa, Marietta earned the top female individual Army physical fitness test score of the competition with a 342 -- well over the maximum physical fitness score of 300.

Joe Dreher, athletic director at Oberlin who coached Marietta in track and weightlifting in high school, said he wasn't surprised that she carried her success into college.

"She was a great kid," Dreher said. "Whatever the workout, she'd do whatever you asked her to do."

Besides her parents, twin brother and older sister, Marietta is survived by another older sister, Loni; a niece, Alaxis Jensen; her boyfriend, Devon Krenzel from Leoti; and grandparents Wayne and Odetta Marietta from Russell.

Memorials are suggested to either the Oberlin Good Samaritan Center or St. John Lutheran Church in Oberlin.

Service times are listed in her obituary above.