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Scraps of yellow legal pad paper are strewn across his desk. A tempest of emotions swirls though his brain. The cursor of his Powerbook G4 blinks in anticipation..
But Ross Brunetti is stumped.
When Arkell Weygandt, the co-editor-in-chief of Unionville High School’s student newspaper, The Indian Post, approached him about the project, Brunetti didn’t hesitate with his answer. "OK, great," he said. "I’d love to do it."
But with countless memories now zipping around his mind - a dizzying dance of late nights, rap songs and practical jokes - he doesn’t know how, or where, to start.
As if in slow motion, during the train ride home a few days earlier, Brunetti -- a 2005 Unionville graduate currently studying film at the School of Visual Arts in New York City -- had jotted down some thoughts. But that was more of a therapeutic attempt to soothe the pain and subdue the shock of the previous day, when he learned the dreadful news:
Colin Fitzpatrick, his fellow Class of ’05 Unionville graduate and best friend, had been involved in a gruesome two-car accident while safely driving home from Penn State-Delco early one afternoon to pick up a book. The other driver, Jean DeFague, alleged by authorities to have been traveling in excess of 87 mph in a 45-mph zone and blowing a red light, survived. Fitzpatrick, a former ice hockey standout and a beloved member of the Unionville community, died on impact. He was 18 years old.
A rising sense of fury snaps Brunetti back to reality. He tries to focus on his laptop. Outside, the familiar sounds of New York City sift into his dorm room -- cars and people constantly in motion. Suddenly, his fingers are doing the same.
Trying to make sense of his notes, his memories and his emotions, Brunetti begins to write, effortlessly and inspired. About 20 minutes later, he completes a poignant tribute to his best friend, one that would touch the entire high school, and many others beyond.
"I could have made that a book," Brunetti says longingly.
As hard as his task seemed at first, it became simple once he realized that all he had to do was carry out his best friend’s lifelong wish. He had to keep Colin alive, the best way he knew how.
"What can you find beautiful on a bad day? ..You can find life. That’s right, every time the sky pours down on all the plants, it helps them grow. And without rain, you would have no rivers, no water, no life..
-- Colin, age 13
Gale and Pat Fitzpatrick could not believe the outpouring of support they received when news of their son Colin’s death broke.
Over 1,500 people paid their respects at his funeral. About 1,200 came to the wake, and more were turned away. Collages were built. Letters were sent. Many friends essentially relocated to the Fitzpatrick house, consoling Gale, Pat and Colin’s two torn-apart sisters, Cara, 23, and Gillian, 15.
Rocked by tragedy, the Unionville community easily could have crumbled. Instead, it united. For Colin.
"He would have laughed," Gale says.
Well, of course. A stand-up comic in training, Colin laughed like William Butler Yeats cranked out literature - prodigiously.
"You’d yell at him," Gale says, "and his face would just beam. ..I can’t ever remember a time you would look at him and he wouldn’t smile."
Luckily, he made others smile almost as much. Whether rapping before hockey games, riding the imaginary horse with his stick after scoring a goal, or squawking at his Spanish teacher, Colin rightfully earned the title of class clown his senior year.
Colin lived a ‘remember when?’ kind of life - as in whenever people spoke of Colin, they invariably told a story beginning with, "Remember when..
Everyone who crossed his path has a share of Colin Fitzpatrick stories. There’s the time he leapt over cafeteria tables trying to shave the head of some poor JV player ..and the time he frolicked through the streets of Paris, wearing a beret and eating a baguette ..and those special days when he decided to belt out Celine Dion’s "My Heart Will Go On" during math class. And who could forget the famous incident when Colin tried to imitate Spiderman by climbing the sink in the locker room before gym class? Not quite as nimble as his favorite superhero, Colin ripped the sink out of the wall and flooded the locker room -- but avoided detention when he instructed everyone in his class to blame Peter Parker.
"He really did seem to brighten every room that he ever walked in," Unionville ice hockey coach John Donovan said. "He managed to get a smile over almost anyone. No matter how upset the adults were with him, they would end up cracking up."
Colin had people in stitches for much of his life. After returning from a camping trip with his father about 15 years ago, the 3-year-old was bombarded with questions by his mother as soon as he walked through the door. When Gale asked her son his favorite part of the trip, he exclaimed, ‘It was great! I got to dig a hole and poop in it.’
"The problem we’re all having is he always had us laughing," Gale says wistfully. "You could be so mad at him, but you’d look at his face and he would just smile. You’d take a minute and the whole room would be laughing."
Colin’s heart, his soul, it seemed, knew no boundaries.
"His personality was as big as him," Pat says of his 5-foot-11, 260-pound son, aptly nicknamed The Big C. "His personality was as big as his hockey jersey."
With such an upbeat outlook on life and a natural way of making everyone around him feel comfortable, Colin could have been great at anything. Hockey just got lucky.
"On my perfect day I would sleep until 12 a.m. Then I would eat McDoldes 3 or 4 hash brons for breakfast. Then I’d watch MTV. Then I would go out to lunch at Red Lobster. Then I’d watch more m.t.v. Then I’d go to the out back for dinner and I would have streak. Then I’d go out for ice craem. Then I’d play hockey until midnight."
-- Colin, age 9
Colin Fitzpatrick was a prolific journal writer, a terrific poet, a burgeoning rapper, an adored camp counselor and an enthused actor. He loved to eat, he loved to do impersonations and he loved his Irish heritage.
But those who know Colin best say that he truly lived for ice hockey.
It came from his upbringing. The son of a former Drexel University hockey player, Colin first laced up skates at 13 months - although in the beginning, he may have lacked a certain competitive edge.
"One time (when he was 4 years old), he was going down the ice and I yelled, ‘Go, Colin!’" Gale recalls with a chuckle. "He came back, skated to me and said, ‘Mom, what’d you say?’ I was just thinking, ‘Oh, my god, he never listens to me! What’s he doing?’"
But Colin lived in the ideal environment to expand his hockey horizons. Just after his first birthday, the Fitzpatricks -- a family often on the move because of Pat’s job with the international division of ARCO Chemicals -- relocated to Toronto, the unofficial hockey capital of the world.
"You would have thought he got transferred to heaven," Gale says of her husband. "He was beside himself."
Pat’s passion for the game quickly spread to Colin. Together, father and son started practicing the city’s most popular religion: Maple Leafs hockey. Their church? The cathedral also known as Maple Leaf Gardens.
Blossoming into a diehard Maple Leafs fan, Colin soon began to worship former star Doug Gilmour -- and throughout his career always wore Gilmour’s No. 93.
"He used to say that (Gilmour) was a little scrawny player that had the biggest heart," Pat says. "He always did things that no one expected of him; that’s why he liked him."
But shortly after Gilmour arrived in Toronto, the Fitzpatricks had to leave town -- driven to Charleston, W.Va., by Pat’s latest work assignment. The transfer could have been harsh -- moving from Hockey Heaven to a what’s-hockey-again? town -- but Pat’s first order of business in West Virginia was finding a team to coach for his son. Buying a house came next.
Gale still remembers her husband’s breathless remarks on his first visit to Charleston: ‘I got a hockey team!’ he exclaimed. ‘Come down, we’ll find a house. But you’re not gonna believe it, we got a hockey team! There’s actually a rink!’
When the Fitzpatricks moved again, this time to Unionville, Colin had all the tools for success at his disposal: a live-in coach, a rich hockey history and a fierce desire to compete. Colin blossomed into an excellent, if not flashy, player. Last year, in his senior season at Unionville and with his father as head coach, Colin, a forward, led the team in goals and points, almost on pure grit alone.
"He wasn’t gifted or fast," Pat says. "But he had hands. Once he got the puck, you weren’t getting it."
Like Doug Gilmour, Colin got the most out of his abilities, even if it meant mucking and grinding in the corners or using his size to camp out in front of the net.
"He just summed up the heart of playing hockey," says Unionville senior captain Rob Denning, one of Colin’s best friends. "He was always in the right place somehow. He stole I don’t know how many goals from me."
Hockey remained close to Colin’s heart, even after he graduated from Unionville last year and began attending college nearby at Penn State-Delco. Seamlessly changing roles from team captain to team cheerleader, Colin attended almost every Indians game this past winter, often sitting right by the bench, beside his old buddies.
"He was always there for you, like an older brother," says senior captain Nick Skuraton, another of Colin’s best friends. "He was our biggest fan. Every game, he was there screaming."
It didn’t matter that he wasn’t on the team anymore. Colin’s Unionville jersey became a part of his daily wardrobe, his No. 93 constantly reminding him of his hockey past as well as his goals for the future: Always try the unexpected. Colin even wore the jersey on Monday, Jan. 30, the fateful afternoon the freshman left campus but never made it home.
A few days later, people were hardly surprised at the viewing when they peered into the casket and saw Colin in his favorite Maple Leafs jersey.
But still, that didn’t feel entirely right. So when Patrick Collins, an 8-year-old boy from the neighborhood, asked if he could put his new graphite hockey stick into the casket with Colin, the Fitzpatricks gladly obliged.
"I wanna stay a child forever."
-- Colin, age 14
When Gillian Fitzpatrick searched through her older brother’s room the night of his death, she made a startling discovery. Deep in the crevices of drawers, she found a will Colin had penned as an eighth-grader.
Scrawled on a few pieces of paper, it begins, ‘If you are reading this, then I have already taken my place in the sky,’ and goes on to express his love and admiration for his friends and family, and explain his need to write poetry and rap about life. At one point, he implores his mother to read a poem at his funeral from another one of his idols, the late Tupac Shakur.
Five years later, Gale, who never quite understood Colin’s fondness for rap music, complied -- and nearly choked up when she read the final verse: ‘I loved all who were positive in the event of my demise.’
"He had a very positive spirit," Gale says. "We would sit for hours and talk. He had a lot he wanted to do and a lot he wanted to accomplish.
"But part of him, maybe, felt something. I don’t know."
The ominous overtones are clear, but there’s still one unmistakable theme to Colin’s will:Even after his death, he wanted everyone to smile with him.
So as painful as it may have been, those close to him tried to block out the images of Colin’s totaled ’93 Corolla on the side of Route 202. Among many of his loved ones, a feeling of rage over an unspeakable crime -- DeFague has been charged with third-degree murder -- has subsided, replaced by a lifetime of joyful memories.
"At the time, I was really mad," says Unionville senior captain Tyler McKeeman. "I couldn’t believe what was going on. Now I look back at all the good times I had. Thinking of him, I’m not thinking of going to his service. I think of him running through the cafeteria or jumping off sinks."
Complexities aside, there was a simple and noble premise to Colin’s existence: He loved people, and people loved him.
"He was such an ebullient character," says Tom Martin, a parent of one of Colin’s old teammates, Peter Martin, and a friend of the Fitzpatrick family. "He had an infectious smile and an infectious laugh. I would call him a universal donor of friendship."
Universal, indeed. Colin disapproved of only one thing more than people without a sense of humor: cliques.
"He could move in all circles," Gale says. "Moms and dads would call us and say, ‘Yeah, Colin’s here. Yeah, we’re washing his clothes. Don’t worry, he’s eating his favorite meal.’ He’d be everywhere."
That, of course, was made evident at Colin’s funeral, when practically an entire town --different types of people, all united -- came to pay its respects. Omnipresent in life, Colin was omnipresent in death.
"He broke all boundaries," says Dave Lichter, Colin’s middle school hockey coach and fifth-grade teacher. "He liked people because they were people. It didn’t matter who you were or what you drove.
"He was larger than life - the way he encompassed so many people. ..His death affected people more than anyone can begin to realize."
"I want everyone to know that I cared for everyone on earth, and I don’t want anyone to mourn me. I want my funeral to be a celebration, a time to rejoice."
-- Excerpt from
Colin’s will, age 14
McKeeman feels a surge of adrenaline, accompanied by an eerie premonition, as he skates off the ice, hops over the boards and takes his seat on the Unionville bench.
Funny because, by logical standards, this game last month should have been a time to worry.
Making their first Flyers Cup appearance since 1998, the Indians had stormed out to a 3-0 lead over Williamstown (N.J.) before allowing the guests to come back and tie the score. Now, with McKeeman and the rest of Unionville’s first-liners coming off the ice, their bubble of momentum seems to have burst. Less than three minutes remain in the critical playoff contest.
Overtime looms.
But at this point, McKeeman is far too fired up to be concerned. Moments earlier, he broke up Unionville’s timeout by screaming, "1-2-3," at the top of his lungs, and listened with great pride as his teammates responded with a crisp bellow of "Big C."
The captain touches the tiny engraving on his jersey that signifies the presence of his predecessor. And he hears his coach’s words echo through his mind and feels them send shivers down his spine: ‘Do it for the shamrock.’
From his seat on the bench, McKeeman scans the crowd at Ice Line Quad Rinks in West Goshen. Other than the 260-pound void, there are many recognizable faces from the Unionville community. Behind the Williamstown goal, a diminutive man with gray hair presses his weary face against the glass.
There’s no way we’re gonna lose, McKeeman thinks. Not this game.
Just then, Unionville junior defenseman Rob Levesque rushes the puck, skates to his left, stops short to avoid a defender and fires a shot from the circle --- a floater that wobbles toward the net with neither speed nor precision.
McKeeman had a feeling something strange would happen, but even this seems far-fetched. Levesque, with only one goal to his credit all season, has an agreement with the offensive zone: They got along best when they stay away from each other.
"Of all the people to score a goal, there’s Mike (Milana), our goalie, and then there’s Rob," McKeeman says.
On this night, it doesn’t matter, as Levesque’s shot flutters past the Williamstown tender and into the back of the net, igniting a massive celebration from a crowd aching to cheer.
Colin had never made it to the Flyers Cup -- a postseason tournament that pits the best scholastic ice hockey teams in the Delaware Valley. This game, everyone knew, was for him.
"Scoring that goal," Coach Donovan says, "it was like our destiny."
n
The last two minutes of the game are a blur, but the inspired Indians hang on to win. In the victory’s aftermath, McKeeman follows his fellow senior captains, Denning and Skuraton, over to where the gray-haired man stands.
‘That was for you,’ they mouth through the glass to their former coach, their words muted by the cries of joy emanating from the home crowd.
Pat Fitzpatrick smiles back. Ever since this man was a kid, hockey has been the heartbeat of his life -- and now, in the most trying of times, hockey would keep his heart beating.
A few minutes later, in an exuberant locker room, the players launch an animated yet unfamiliar cheer. In breathless, staccato tones, they chant, "Leva-squad," the nonsensical nickname Colin, always the prankster, had donned on Levesque -- the unlikely hero who, at this moment, basks in the glory of his unlikely goal.
Everyone wears smiles. Leave it to Colin to play one last joke on his buddies.
To contact staff writer Dave Zeitlin, send an e-mail to dzeitlin@dailylocal.com.
