Too Young to be Silent - N6JLV

[video=youtube_share;hUVTPhc2eVA]http://youtu.be/hUVTPhc2eVA[/video]

 

My Condolences.


Jerritt L. Van Es, N6JLV SK

SK August 10, 2014






Music filled San Dimas High student's life; now, it is his legacy

By Imani Tate, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

Posted: 09/06/14, 12:01 AM PDT | Updated: on 09/07/2014

“He was a sweet difference,” said Anne Tidwell, the grandmother and family matriarch of the late Jerritt Van Es.

His kind heart, willing spirit and charismatic personality made the 17-year-old one of the most popular students at San Dimas High School and in the school’s marching band, drumline and animation class, said principal Michael Kelly. Students and teachers returning to school on Aug. 18 received the shocking news that Jerritt had died in his sleep on Aug. 10, the day before he was to register for his senior-year classes.

Jerritt may be physically absent, but he leaves a legacy that will last decades at his school.

Gina and Robert Jacoy, Jerritt’s mother and stepfather, and sister Bree Van Es, 15, understood how devoted the boy who loved banging things and making loud noises felt about the drumline and band. Coping with their own and the collective grief of SDHS teachers, students and staffers and agreeing flowers were less needed than new instruments, his family established a website for band donations.

The www.gofundme.dot//jerrittvanes website, created with help from family friend Christine Lawrie, raised $10,000 in two weeks.

“I knew Jerritt had friends and everyone loved him, but I never expected such an overwhelming response,” Jacoy said.

The response prompted another friend, Jodi Martin, to contact Yamaha.

“Yamaha only makes two things: musical instruments and motorcycles,” said Daniel Sandt, SDHS marching, concert and jazz bands, drumline and color guard director. “She thought maybe Yamaha would want to donate something, too. But when she first called her contact, he was non-committal and wanted to know more before promising anything.”

Then the Yamaha executive checked the website. Considerably impressed with the outpouring of love and money, he promptly called Sandt and said Yamaha would donate $10,000 in instruments, including three sets of quad drums, seven snare drums, six bass drums, harnesses, cases, music stands and auxiliary equipment.

When SDHS alumnus and former drumline coach Lance Beckford, now a professional playing Paiste drums, heard about Jerritt’s death, he donated Paiste cymbals to the school.

The $10,000-and-growing website funds will be used to purchase pit drums, mallets, marimbas, keyboards, xylophones, timpani drums and accompanying accessories for the drumline.

Jerritt’s legacy stretches far beyond his mom, stepdad, grandmother, sister, father Jeffrey Van Es of Corona and best friend Khristian Frantz, said Sandt and Kelly. It encompasses the 117 student marching musicians, his 25 drumline buddies, current teachers, students and administrators and future student musicians, Sandt said.

His family and friends feel Jerritt was an angel sent by God to transform, inspire and motivate others. When Tidwell spoke of a young girl Jerritt had saved from suicide, Bree interrupted to note “She wasn’t the only one. There were others. Lots of others.”

The family moved from Fullerton to San Dimas in 2010, just before Jerritt’s freshman year. Jacoy admittedly “grilled Mr. Kelly” about the school.

“We were trying to decide if Jerritt should come here or go to Fullerton Union High School,” his mother said. “He decided to come to San Dimas because it was smaller, more personable and there was a better chance of teachers knowing him here than on a campus with 3,000 students.”

Jerritt first banged on a drum when he was 2 and spied a drum in his church band. He was never professionally taught. Drumming came naturally for the boy with a photographic memory, a penchant for percussionistic rhythms and a family of musical folks who encouraged his love of melody and rhythm, said Bree, the little sister who was never ignored, intimidated or resented by her brother.

Khristian met him on the day they started their freshman year. He was drawn to the amazing beats pouring out of Jerritt’s bass drum.

“I thought this guy is pretty good. So I came up to him and said ‘Hey man, you’re cool.’ That was the beginning of our friendship,” said Khristian, a drummer since sixth grade. “Our friendship deepened over the years because he was different, but not to the point where people think you’re weird. Life was never boring for or with Jerritt and you could talk to him about everything, not just music. He had stories about everything, even peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.”

Bree, Khristian, Kelly and Sandt said Jerritt’s non-judgmental, inclusive, generous and accepting attitudes and actions made him everyone’s favorite. Sandt found it difficult initially to believe Jerritt was a freshman when he walked into the band room four years ago. It was more than his 6-foot-1-inch height (He was 6’4” when he died). Sandt said Jerritt’s mature, sensitive conversations and interactions with students and teachers belied his age.

Tidwell and Jacoy laughingly remembered adolescent Jerritt and his boy buddies wearing “Star Wars” costumes and welding light sabers, then stopping to play with Bree dressed as Princess Aurora. He also played teatime with Bree and her little girlfriends when she was younger. If Bree had a nightmare, it was Jerritt she ran to, not her mom.

She said there was always comfort and solace with Jerritt whether he was calming her nightmarish anxiety, sharing a joke over their walkie-talkies or tapping out the code they created to “wall” talk between rooms.

Sandt and Kelly remembered Jerritt walking around campus or into the band room wearing a “mouse head” fashioned from felt and a hamster ball or donning a hallowed out old television console he’d transformed into a helmet for The TV Guy character he’d created for an animation film.

“He didn’t do it for attention or to disrupt the class,” Sandt said. “It was always done at times when you could afford to and needed to laugh. He’d come up with things that you couldn’t help but smile.”

He was as adept with technology as he was at the performing arts, Kelly said. That was especially appreciated by an animation teacher who’d inherited 19 computers, but not the entry codes, from the previous teacher.

“Jerritt said ‘Give me one.’ Within a minute, he was in and asked ‘You want to give me the rest of them?’ Jerritt was gifted with people and things,” Kelly recalled.

Jacoy said the secret of Jerritt’s popularity was the fact “he took people just as they were. He didn’t care about political views, the way you looked, the clothes you wore. He saw value in everyone.”

http://www.dailybulletin.com/obitua...s-high-student8217s-life-now-it-is-his-legacy


73 K2HAT Lee Hatfield Jr