fearless

Our first road trip our pledge semester in 2004 was to JMU. We were told by everyone that it was going to suck and we should not compare it to a real road trip like Tau and Alpha Beta. Sure, the banquet was boring sitting there and listening to random speeches from people that we've never met before and probably would never see again. They didn't have DD's for us nor did they prepare for as many of us to travel to their Founder's Day as we did. The truth is, though, our pledge class had the most fun of anyone there that weekend. It could be because we were so young and had nothing else to compare it to, but looking back on it, we still remember so many fun moments from that weekend. We didn't care if there was a huge party for us. We were having a blast being with each other. Emily, Kiggins, Omar and I shared two airplane bottles of tanqueray in the bathroom of the banquet and if you've never tried it, it is the most disgusting type of gin to have without a chaser. But we shared it in the bathroom and Em and I were SOOOOOOOO excited that we could take more of it then the boys could. And then it took so long to get the nasty taste out of our mouths. BUT we never forgot that crazy moment the four of us shared in the bathroom at JMU's founder's day.

Emily loved to talk. She loved to share her feelings about love and life and the reason for living. We shared countless hours of these conversations and the best times were when we were outside enjoying the weather and the beautiful surroundings of wherever we were. We were supposed to study at the duckpond before finals our pledge semester and we ended up studying for maybe 15 minutes. What we did do was walk around campus and share stories of being loved, being hurt, life changing experiences, and much more. I took Emily to Wind rock for her first time when she was trying to get over a break up 2 years ago. She immediately fell in love with the spot and we went many times after that. What I gained from talking to Emily those many times was that she experienced life.

She often times looked fear in the eye and laughed at it. We went Sky diving for the first time for her 20th birthday with a couple other brothers after we went rock climbing the day before. We felt like we could do anything. Emily decided to go first and luck would have it that when she went up in the airplane, the weather suddenly got bad. The plane ended up landing at a nearby airport and then returned when the sun came back out. It was one of those fluke summer storms. When Emily got out of the plane she never looked happier to be back on solid ground. They had really rough turbulance and she felt queezy and not ready to go up in the plane only to jump out of it. I told her that Todd and I would go first and she could wait and see how she felt when we were done. After I went, I told Emily that I'm not going to force her to go but if she doesn't I gauranteed she was going to be missing out on something amazing. She thought about it for about 2 minutes and decided that she had to do it. She went up during sunset and came back down with the biggest smile on her face. Sky diving was all that we could talk about for at least the next week. It was an experience that I am so glad to have had with her. And because the weather wasn't right the first time she went up, she got to go during her favorite part of the day: Sunset.














We never got to ride that mechanical bull or visit Serendipty in New York but I will do it in honor of you my friend. A piece of my heart will always be yours for when we meet again.

Love and miss you,

Your Finds

"There are certain people who touch our lives in a certain way, and having known them, we will never be the same."