In Remembrance
I still think about them from time to time.
I blame it on Christmas. The truth is that it's this time of year that gets me thinking about all sorts of people -- people from my past, people I have and haven't stayed in touch with over the years, people I knew in middle school or high school or college. Friends and former friends, ex-boyfriends, old bosses and coworkers, cousins and aunts and uncles that I haven't seen in a couple of years. Each year the list gets just a little longer.
It's this time of year that I think of two guys specifically. I still remember the night I found out almost four years ago ... Andyman had called me and asked if I would be able to go out for a little while, just to Perkins or something. We were both home for Christmas break and our parents live just a couple miles apart, so this was a fairly normal occurrence. It didn't occur to me that there would be a specific reason.
He picked me up and almost immediately asked if I had heard the news.
He had gotten a phone call from another friend of ours. There had been a car accident ... Three guys coming back to Rapid after a Broncos game in Denver. Three guys we all knew. Their car had been hit by a truck on a moderately snowy mountain road. Two of them had been killed instantly. He wasn't completely sure which two.
That night, I checked the news and cried. Turtle and Chad. It was Turtle and Chad.
I had met the two of them at about the same time freshman year. Chad lived on the same floor as me and hung out with the lobby guys. And Turtle's roommate and my roommate ended up dating, throwing us together when one of us vacated our room because they were in there.
Later, Turtle would become a somewhat peripheral member of my dorm crowd. He was one of the frat guys, but he would still hang out with us, too. And he (like so many others) recruited me to edit his papers for tech comm. After sophomore year I didn't see much of him (he no longer lived in the dorms), but when I did he was always friendly and would often stop and talk for a minute or two.
In the meantime, Chad was making his mark on campus, running for various Student Association positions ... and winning. He had become one of the most recognizable faces -- and voices -- at the school. He wasn't always perfectly liked but he was making things happen and had become a force to be reckoned with.
The beginning of spring semester was weirdly blurry. News spread around campus fast ... I had lost a classmate the previous winter around Thanksgiving, but this year over Christmas three students had died -- a young woman at the beginning of the break, and then Turtle and Chad toward the end. One death would have been tragic -- three was devastating.
The campus memorial service was packed, standing room only in a ballroom rarely filled to capacity. I sat with my friends behind the Triangle guys, all there to mourn their brothers. Among them was Justin, the third from the car, the survivor, saved because he was sitting on the passenger side. This was the first I had seen of him and he was surprisingly intact, at least physically.
The families of our lost classmates were there as well, leaning on this campus full of people for support. Someone talked about each person and there were picture slideshows (to this day I think of that memorial service every time I hear "Save A Horse, Ride A Cowboy" -- which still seems a little odd). And there wasn't a dry eye in the building, whether it was professor, freshman, or frat boy.
Four years later, I'm almost surprised at how vivid some of that still is. By that point I wasn't terribly close to any of the guys involved, but when I stop and think about it I still miss them. It had been an unexpected shift, the end of an era, a sudden reminder of mortality, the loss of an innocence you can't get back. It was a wakeup call -- and every year it has the chance to be renewed.
So here we are. Here's to you, Turtle and Chad; you are still -- and will remain -- missed.
I blame it on Christmas. The truth is that it's this time of year that gets me thinking about all sorts of people -- people from my past, people I have and haven't stayed in touch with over the years, people I knew in middle school or high school or college. Friends and former friends, ex-boyfriends, old bosses and coworkers, cousins and aunts and uncles that I haven't seen in a couple of years. Each year the list gets just a little longer.
It's this time of year that I think of two guys specifically. I still remember the night I found out almost four years ago ... Andyman had called me and asked if I would be able to go out for a little while, just to Perkins or something. We were both home for Christmas break and our parents live just a couple miles apart, so this was a fairly normal occurrence. It didn't occur to me that there would be a specific reason.
He picked me up and almost immediately asked if I had heard the news.
He had gotten a phone call from another friend of ours. There had been a car accident ... Three guys coming back to Rapid after a Broncos game in Denver. Three guys we all knew. Their car had been hit by a truck on a moderately snowy mountain road. Two of them had been killed instantly. He wasn't completely sure which two.
That night, I checked the news and cried. Turtle and Chad. It was Turtle and Chad.
I had met the two of them at about the same time freshman year. Chad lived on the same floor as me and hung out with the lobby guys. And Turtle's roommate and my roommate ended up dating, throwing us together when one of us vacated our room because they were in there.
Later, Turtle would become a somewhat peripheral member of my dorm crowd. He was one of the frat guys, but he would still hang out with us, too. And he (like so many others) recruited me to edit his papers for tech comm. After sophomore year I didn't see much of him (he no longer lived in the dorms), but when I did he was always friendly and would often stop and talk for a minute or two.
In the meantime, Chad was making his mark on campus, running for various Student Association positions ... and winning. He had become one of the most recognizable faces -- and voices -- at the school. He wasn't always perfectly liked but he was making things happen and had become a force to be reckoned with.
The beginning of spring semester was weirdly blurry. News spread around campus fast ... I had lost a classmate the previous winter around Thanksgiving, but this year over Christmas three students had died -- a young woman at the beginning of the break, and then Turtle and Chad toward the end. One death would have been tragic -- three was devastating.
The campus memorial service was packed, standing room only in a ballroom rarely filled to capacity. I sat with my friends behind the Triangle guys, all there to mourn their brothers. Among them was Justin, the third from the car, the survivor, saved because he was sitting on the passenger side. This was the first I had seen of him and he was surprisingly intact, at least physically.
The families of our lost classmates were there as well, leaning on this campus full of people for support. Someone talked about each person and there were picture slideshows (to this day I think of that memorial service every time I hear "Save A Horse, Ride A Cowboy" -- which still seems a little odd). And there wasn't a dry eye in the building, whether it was professor, freshman, or frat boy.
Four years later, I'm almost surprised at how vivid some of that still is. By that point I wasn't terribly close to any of the guys involved, but when I stop and think about it I still miss them. It had been an unexpected shift, the end of an era, a sudden reminder of mortality, the loss of an innocence you can't get back. It was a wakeup call -- and every year it has the chance to be renewed.
So here we are. Here's to you, Turtle and Chad; you are still -- and will remain -- missed.
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