Pam Nelson's Blog: Untimely deaths

April 24, 2007

Untimely deaths

We have dealt with two untimely deaths in the past few days. First, a friend of Chris' and mine from our days in Fayetteville, Charles Waddell, died Saturday at the age of 49. Charles died of alcoholism. He was a funny, sweet fellow who drank himself to death. We had not been in touch with him for quite a long time, but his sister had called Chris some time ago to tell him that Charles was ill and dying. We were not surprised by his illness or his death. Still, it is very disheartening to see a man die before his time because of alcoholism. Chris and I went to the family visitation Monday night in Fayetteville, and Chris was a pallbearer for the funeral today.

The other death was a student named Daniel Goodstein who lived in Jake's dorm at St. Andrews Presbyterian College. Jake didn't know Daniel, who was a senior. His body was found Sunday night, and Jake's dorm was evacuated while the police investigated. Jake was out of his dorm without any extra clothes or anything but the clothes on his back, his wallet, his keys and, thank goodness, his cell phone. He went to a motel Sunday night, and spent Monday night in a spare room in another dorm. At the beginning, we had no information about Daniel's death, but it appeared that he had been dead for days before being found. The police took over the dorm, making us worry that the death was a homicide. An autopsy showed that he took his own life. I was quite concerned that the college administration did not give information to the students. I also worried that a student's absence wasn't noticed at such a small school that markets itself as a close community. I e-mailed the dean and the president to tell them of my concerns. The dean, Glenn Batten, said that the college was trying to get information to the students, and that he was particularly paying attention to Jake. That was reassuring. He also said that the dead student has been doing student teaching and that he was often off-campus. The president, Paul Baldasare, wrote later to say that the dead student had been seen possibly as late as Wednesday, so he wasn't lying dead in his room for days on end, as I had first feared, based on what a police detective had said.

Jake is back in his own dorm room tonight and very relieved. He is sad, like the rest of the campus, that one of their fellow students has died.

Apr 24, 2007 8:16:21 PM | Family