Julia Lyon
The Salt Lake Tribune
The death of sweet, smiling Kirsten Hinckley at Trolley Square was a public tragedy that everyone felt a part of.
But inside the walls of Brighton High School, where the school flag flew at half-staff last week, the students could now painfully count up to four. Four times they have learned a friend or classmate has been taken away, some in freak accidents, the last in a hail of gunfire.
This is something the Brighton family has experienced alone.
It's not that every kid knew every student who died - this is a big high school, after all - but they all felt the ripple of grief that has made for a strange year.
"As bad as it [has been], it [has] opened our eyes," said Spencer Esplin, a Brighton senior. "There are things you don't realize until it actually happens. Death is one of them."
With each loss, students became better prepared to deal with the next, more able to understand how classmates felt when they lost a best friend. They were connected by the school's quartet of tragedies, as the city has been linked since Trolley Square.
"We all went to school with Kirsten even if we didn't know her personally," said Stefanie Hall- mark, a junior.
Jim Hodges, a Brighton High social studies teacher, said losing a peer - or several - means students learn a lesson that's a true cliche: On
Advertisement
life's short route, you lose people you love.
That's even the case for teachers who see current or former students' lives cut short.
James Henrie, a Brighton junior who Hodges described as "one of my beloved students," fell to his death during a hike in Big Cottonwood Canyon last June. Two other students also died in the past year: Ryan Stewart after an ATV accident and Savannah Staley at home.
When someone dies, sometimes people feel powerless, he said. By giving back as students at Brighton have through fundraisers for the Hinckley family, they can take back a little bit of control - even if they can't change what happened.
"I think it's a sense of doing something positive out of a tragedy," he said.
Guiding students through fundraisers for Kirsten's family is Jan Moncur, a Brighton teacher who knows first-hand what loss means. Her son died in 2005 while training to return to Iraq. The tragedy came two years after Nathan Dalley, Brighton's 1994 senior class president, died serving in Iraq.
Losing her own child opened Moncur's eyes to the possibility of losing a Brighton student, too.
"Until you lose a child you will never understand the pain, you will never understand the heartache, the loneliness, the want for one more hug, one more phone call," she said. "So I find myself looking at kids differently, thinking it may be my last time I see you."
Whether the mourning ever ends is debatable. For some, it will last a lifetime. But homework, tests and prom will keep coming.
Milestones such as graduation will make the kids remember: She or he would have been here.
No death can be entirely forgotten.
Through student donations and competitions for prizes, the school raised about $6,000 in three days last week that will be given to the Hinckley family. The classes that donated the most money won a chick-flick movie and tubs of ice cream with chocolate syrup, something Kirsten's friends say she would have loved.
This week the students will tie a quilt to give to Kirsten's mother, Carolyn Tuft, who remains in the hospital recovering from gunshot wounds.
Two sophomore boys wrote a song in memory of Kirsten that they will sell on a CD to raise money for the Hinckley family.
Students' regret is that they didn't do more to acknowledge the deaths of their other classmates until Trolley Square's shocking violence spurred them to action. They want to honor future deaths differently, now that the students have learned how to help and how to heal.
"This is the event that made us realize what we need to do," said Matt Balk, a junior.
