Tragedy, Part Two

Late last Sunday night I got a phone call from a co-worker. One of the students we had taken with us on the bus trip to Georgia was killed in a car accident over the weekend while home for Thanksgiving. It was just her riding in the car and somehow the car flipped over in the bad weather. Although she was rushed to the hospital, she died later on Saturday from massive injuries.

I didn't know her all that well, but she was well loved. She did everything- and I mean everything- both in high school and college. She had a caring heart and really did believe in speaking up for the voiceless. She was very interested in her appearance, but was also much deeper than that. She was a thinker, and most importantly, a doer.

All week it has been heavy around here. The campus has been rocked by Katie's death. I have been covering for both my co-worker out on bereavement leave and students who attended Katie's funeral. Everything seems out of wack and everywhere I turn there is more really, really shockingly sad news and someone struggling with it. It is fitting then, that today when I opened up the bi-weekly newsletter from our CSA share that Rock Spring Farm, that again I heard Katie's name and all the good that she spread, along with a hearty dose of sadness of her leaving too soon.

It really is an eloquently written story about her, one that I think more people should see (especially students who cared about her):

This weekend, we lost one of most wonderful young women to have graced this farm over the past nine years. Katie ----, a star member of our crew of Harvest Heroes in 2007, died in a car accident north of Rushford on Saturday night.

Anything we say about Katie working on the farm now seems trite, but that's the avenue we knew her through the summer after she graduated from Mabel High School, before she started at ------- College in --------. A self-described high-maintenance, bug-fearing, cheerleading city girl, Katie got in touch with her inner-veggie farmer at Rock Spring Farm, morphing from a timid, awkward, and uncertain worker into a young woman who refused to let somebody else do the heavy lifting, getting dirty, or big-van driving. And she taught us all the importance of doing it all with a great tube of lip gloss and killer eyeliner.

Katie always had something to say, and that something almost always made us laugh. On the other side of that, Katie listened carefully and picked up on the world around her so that she always knew what was going on, both on the farm and in the lives of the people around her.

She wasn't afraid to call people out for slacking off or not meeting the quality standards, or to ask questions, or to shut off Isabel's Raffi tapes. But she also wasn't afraid to cheer us on when things were going well, or to offer consolation when the going was rough.

As befits the stereotype of a cheerleader, she was a master of chalkboard and whiteboard art, and her various renditions of the words "Rock Spring Farm" and "Certified Organic" still grace every writing board on the farm, almost a year after she helped out with last winter's seed inventory. It's the sort of touch that has made us smile on an almost daily basis.

She had a mindful presence, and the sort of personality that didn't always get the credit she deserved because she didn't need the credit to get the job done, or to reach out to her coworkers or friends.

We didn't make it to Katie's memorial service on Wednesday due to the nasty weather, but her passing reminded me of a story told at the recent funeral of another person I wish I had known better, local potter Tim Langholz. A fellow potter related the story of an artist's retreat where he and Tim had worked hard all day, then gone for a walk as the sun was setting. As they walked through the woods, the light was so perfect that they ran back for their easels and brushes, then sat in silence working for some time to capture the scene the had found themselves in the midst of. Finally, Tim turned to his friend and said, "You know, this is not a dress rehearsal." Katie lived like that, lip gloss and all.