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Bill Humphrey died Saturday after a monthlong illness that included flulike symptoms.

Virginia Tech graduate Bill Humphrey was so committed to becoming a veterinarian, he wouldn't stop studying even as he lay in a hospital bed hooked to a ventilator.

The 24-year-old began working with animals as an eighth-grader in Henrico County, first as a volunteer at local veterinary clinics because he was too young to be legally employed.

"He always knew what he wanted to do, and he never wavered," Regina Humphrey said of her son, who before his death Saturday hoped to graduate next year from the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine in Blacksburg.

"The reason that I believe he got as sick as he did is because he didn't want to miss any classes. He wanted to finish on time," she said.

So her son put off going to the doctor, despite suffering flulike symptoms, she said.

Humphrey thought he had recovered, but then became so ill before Thanksgiving that he was hospitalized, first at Montgomery Regional Hospital and then at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center in Richmond.

It's unclear if Humphrey suffered from the H1N1 virus, or so-called swine flu. But Burke Humphrey said his son developed severe respiratory complications that eventually took his life.

"Whatever it was, it was some sort of flu that he believed he had recovered from. Then, it went into multiple infections," Regina Humphrey said.

One of five siblings who grew up just outside Richmond, Bill Humphrey sometimes lectured his mother about how to care for the family's menagerie of animals, such as his ban on feeding pork to dogs.

Throughout his career at Blacksburg -- first as a biology major and then as a veterinary student -- Humphrey cared for pets and their people at the school, Companion Animal Clinic in Blacksburg and through NRV Varmints Pet Sitting Agency.

He was often photographed with his dog, Mimzy, who lived with him in Christiansburg. After his death, Mimzy went home to Henrico County and is "right now snoring and shedding all over my sofa," Regina Humphrey said Wednesday.

"He would have made an outstanding and very compassionate veterinarian, had he finished up," she said of her son.

Humphrey's father called him "the brightest of the bunch."