Thank you for remembering David. It means so much to us. Please remember him for everything he was.
-Daniel and Nancy St. Croix

Only a little over a month ago, the students at Jesuit High School were informed of something they never expected.

The students, particularly the seniors, had lost both a classmate and a friend.   David used to stride from class to class with his thumbs slipped underneath the straps of his backpack, and would always smile at anyone who would accept it.  The event was unexpected - shocking - and saddening in every sense of the word.

After the announcement, many of the seniors wandered around outside their classes together or alone and tried to sort out the intruding reality.  Such a quiet, powerful gathering of the seniors, with the collective sense of confusion hovering above them, is unparalleled in the high school's history.

The following items are a small collection of senior thoughts and excerpts from an essay of David's, part of which was read during his memorial.

SENIOR FEELINGS:

Hope, Faith, Courage: obtain them, seize them, embrace them,
in the Lord, in your family, in people:
For your life, for your soul.

You had the gravity of indifference pushing
your feelings, your emotions, your fears, down into you:
condensed, constricting your happiness, clouding your judgement, blinding you of the pathway of God's will, forcing your eyes to see nothing but pain... but sorrow... but end.

And this I will never forget, and for this I am sorry
for all that I should have, would have, but failed to do.
You will be missed.

To David-
"Your death has brought a new realization to our school.  It had caused us all to examine our lives and decide what we need to work on.  It has also brought up the question of brotherhood in our class."

EXCERPTS FROM AN ESSAY BY DAVID:

"The moral of the story is to always try to to your best even if you think it is not necessary."

"When your friends are in trouble you should do your best to help them out, even if it means that you have to sacrifice some of your free time..."

"I guess that I almost always try to do my best to be a friendly person.  I say almost because saying always is like saying never.  You can never live up to either one."

Through [the] experiences in my life I learned some valuable lessons about friendship.   It can be found in the strangest of places.  You can find it in the strangest of people.  Once you find a true friend you never really stop being friends, no matter what happens.
And when you find a true friend, then you would go through almost anything to protect and help that person to the best of your abilities..."

Keep David in your prayers.

• Also read "The Death of One of Our Own"
  in the Student Life Section