Jeremy's Eulogies

JEREMY APRIL
1983 - 2002
Eulogies

Rev. Dae Eun Jung

Palisades Presbyterian Church

Saturday, May 4, 2002

Let us pray:

Dear God, we cannot conceive a more melancholy moment, than the one we now face, sitting next to each other at the edge of understanding, trying to find some answer, some meaning in the silence of the beloved, Jeremy who is now gone.

We come to this place, totally ill prepared, with deep sorrow and broken hearts - bewildered by what has happened - death so completely unexpected and final.

If it's possible, we all want this terrible nightmare to simply go away. But the pain is real. Jeremy is gone. He has gone ahead of us into your embrace. So, as each of us search for some measure of comfort if not faith to hold our life together - to support and surround each other with love, may your strength and peace be with us here and now. Amen.

The last time I saw Jeremy was at the Christmas Eve Service here at the church.

I didn't know Jeremy then. Unlike many of you who had the privilege of knowing him all his life or part of his life, I've just begun to know about him under the circumstance which we all wish wasn't true.

One of the things I discovered about Jeremy this week is that he and I share the same birthday. Yes, the 4th of July!

Nancy described to me at the hospital, how she remembered that hot summer day at Piermont watching the fireworks over the Hudson River. She was pregnant with Jeremy, her body swollen and hot. Then her water broke, "Jeremy wanted to come out." No not on the 3rd, nor the 5th, but it had to be the 4th of July, just in time for the fireworks.

And for the next eighteen years of his life he was true to his calling!

"He was a real firecracker!" as Nancy said.

There is no denying that - just to remind you, just look at the picture in the back of the bulletin! Jeremy upside down in the air, flying high... I don't know the technical word for such flight, but one thing I do sense is that he seem so free up there in the sky - or as someone described it to me, "he was one with nature - so connected with the elements of the earth." Now, that's what I call religious experience or "awe moment."

I suspect that many of you who watched Jeremy rocketing down the slope 45 mph and looping into twists and flips 50 feet in the air, your jaws dropped, eyes fixed on him and for a moment "time stood still." That's what he was capable of and was best at, because in his own way, with the gifts he had, he was close to God. It was an eternal moment for him - a sanctuary of his own from the terrible depression he was struggling with.

Up there in the air he was alive, explosive and full of life!

Ashe described in his college application "Shooting into the air, executing a floating spin, landing cleanly, I retain my rhythm: Up-Down-Left-Right. I move smoothly and effortlessly through the midcourse moguls. Blasting over the mounds of snow, my heart races and the adrenaline ruches through my body. My senses are heightened. This is why I compete."

Just listening to Nick talk about Jeremy, how he set the bar up a notch for teammates and was the one to beat, it struck me how passionate Jeremy was and engaged he was with life.

All the more perplexing that we should be talking about Jeremy in the past tense!

We shouldn't be here.
Why is he not here with us?
Why did he take his own life?

Though we know that in the end, there are no simple answers to our most pressing questions. Yet we nonetheless press on to know.

Perhaps we seek some kind of reasonable explanation because we somehow believe that the answers will make our sense of loss and grief more bearable and our sense of guilt and shame less arresting and to release us from this horrible pain of Jeremy's death.

But there are no reasonable answers to why he took his own life.

The great tragedy in Jeremy's death is that no one really knew Jeremy's inner world, the demon that drove him to end his life. Sure we knew what he was capable of, what he can accomplish, who he can be and who he was to people around him - we can make an endless list, but not one us here today really knew how his inner world was torn. In as much as he loved life there was depressing side that he kept to himself and finally driving him to commit an irreversible act.

It all took us by surprise.

So the question we may ask here in this sacred place is where was God in all this? Was God there with him when he was suffering, when he was despairing, when he took his last breath?

I believe that as God was there with Jeremy when he was conceived and given birth on that hot summer 4th of July, in the womb beautifully and wonderfully fashioned by God's hand as a gift to the world, I believe that God was also there with him in his last hour, to embrace him.

In as much as God was real with him in his freedom up in the air upside down, God was also with him in the pit of his loneliness and self-despair - in life and death God was and is with Jeremy.

You see God's claim for each one of us is ultimate!

We may never understand the great mystery of life. But one thing we can affirm is this. In faith, no matter how life ends, there is nothing in the world that can separate us from the love of God ”Not death, not life, not angels, not principalities, not things present, not things to come, not powers, not heights, not depths, not anything ” not
even when one takes one's own life. We belong to God ultimately.

Yes, we cannot know all the circumstances that surround Jeremy's decision to end his life. That's a painful realization. But we can know this with certainty, as many of us discovered from sharing grief and loss with each other with love and care, "None of us lives to him or herself, and none of us dies to him or herself."

As Saint Paul once said in the scriptures, "If we live, we live to the God and if we die, we die to the God; so, then, whether we live or whether we die, we belong to God."

May the peace and the assurance of God be with us in the knowledge that we all belong to God. And Jeremy now rest in peace with God! Amen.

Palisades Presbyterian Church
Rev. Dae Eun Jung
May 4, 2002
9:30a.m

Nick Preston

Coach, Eastern Inverted Aerial Team

Saturday, May 4, 2002

The family has invited me to provide you a glimpse of Jeremy's remarkable participation in the sport of freestyle skiing. First, I hope you've all had a chance to check out Jeremy's web page at www.mountsnow.org where in addition to the spectacular pictures of his skiing, and information about his accomplishments, there are many profound testimonials about Jeremy. And I know that Jeremy himself would be so thrilled to see that 10,000 hits have come to his site since Tuesday. Quite a fan club!

I've had the privilege of coaching Jeremy, since he was 11 years old when he and a young bunch of Mount Snow kids enrolled in my summer trampoline camp in New Hampshire. Many of those people are here, For the next 7 years I have had the joy of his company and that of other similarly dedicated youngsters training, traveling, and competing throughout the East and West of the US and Canada, and most recently to Junior Worlds in Finland, my last trip with Jeremy and one I shall always remember.

Of course, many coaches have worked with and enjoyed this talented and intelligent skier, and I'd especially like to acknowledge and thank his Mount Snow coaches Flapper, Laff, Tony, and Lynn, who initially enrolled Jeremy into the sport of freestyle and have nurtured him at every step and stage. Subsequently, many coaches, athletes, and ski families have become part of Jeremy's career in skiing, where he has contributed so much to his peers and friends, as has Geoff, Jeremy's younger brother.

Going another step, none of this could have come to be without the dedicated support of his mother and father, who have contributed tireless energies to Jeremy's and Geoff's participation. Nancy and Ernie are respected and loved throughout the skiing community for their contribution as volunteers, and for simply being our friends .

At the visitation yesterday, there was an impressive display of Jeremy's awards. They represent many brilliant performances, and they proclaim a young man of extraordinary talent and athletic ability. These are not your typical youth sports accomplishments, for most exceed the local and regional category. Most are representative of elite level, National and International competitions .

Another notable distinction is that although Jeremy is characterized as an aerial skier, he was a multi-talented multi discipline skier with a record of victories in mogul skiing, aerials, acro skiing, combined skiing, and freeride big air. If anyone could think up more disciplines of acrobatics on skis, he would undoubtedly excel as those also.

A few of his most remarkable are .

· US National Combined Freestyle Champion in 1999, at age 16.

· Eastern Aerial Champion in 2000.

· #4 Acro Skier at the 2000 Junior World Championships ( 19 years and under) at age 17

· And perhaps the most satisfying to himself: He placed 3^rd in Aerials in a recent FIS Nor-Am event, where 7 countries brought their absolute finest athletes. And even the 1998 Olympic Gold Medalist found himself a few points shy of Jeremy that day.

By the close of the 2002 season, Jeremy had captured the big brass ring of freestyle. By finishing the season with a #7 rank on our US National Point List, he had earned selection to the United States Freestyle Ski Team, at the promising age of 18. Jeremy wears his US Team uniform presently, as many of you had seen in the viewing yesterday. Congratulations Jeremy...You did it!

Of course, the road to glory isn't all adulation and applause. It can be filled with pit falls and challenges. For instance, once while perched atop the Eastern Championship podium at Sunday River, Jeremy evidently spaced that the top rung is rather elevated and as he went to step down, he stepped off. Well, the thunder of applause turned to howling laughter. The quick on his feet Jeremy tried to front roll out of it, but no one bought it. Oops! Uncool!

One of my own favorite qualities of Jeremy from a coaching perspective is he was never a high maintenance athlete. Well, not to me, but maybe to himself. He sustained a constant string of injuries, characteristic of the risk takers and daredevils, which he certainly was. There were the broken arms (day 1 of week 1 out of 6 more weeks of summer camps) ankle sprains (no more skateboarding, please), foot bandages (stepped on a fork), calf muscle tears( couldn't put on a ski boot for a month), the torn ACL (see ya next season), and everyone's legendary favorite:. Tried to grind a stair rail at the mini golf course in Lake Placid in his new Nike's, while showing off to the girls, feet gracefully contorted above his head, falls, and lands directly on his wrist. But never one to blow his cover or lose his cool, proclaims, "Hey, It's not that bad." Well, the 45 degree angle in the bone on the X-Ray showed otherwise.

My theory is that an athletes frequency of injury is inversely proportional to the number of medical professionals in one's family.

All this is mostly "what Jeremy did" and yes, it was all a thrill a minute. However, for real insight into "who Jeremy was", I'd like to read what some of his closest friends in skiing have written about him in the emails and letters to the family.

Tim Massucco, 19, 2002 US Junior World Team:

"Jeremy April embodies the determination to succeed. He raised the bar for the rest of us to follow. On the water ramps, he was all business preparing himself to achieve his life's first major goal: the US Freestyle Ski Team, the team every young skier dreams of being on. When one of us is standing on the podium at future World Cups and the Olympics, we will always see Jeremy standing next to us knowing he would have been there. But he was much more than a competitor. He was a teammate, roommate, my best friend, a brother. All of us on the US D Team have developed a bond so deep, he'll never be forgotten."

Wes Preston, 21, US Development team:

"Jeremy would show up to an event and immediately the standards would go up. Everyone would compete better. He was strength, posture, alignment, the best twister. He was the single best training incentive."

Dan McQuillan, 18, 2002 US Junior World Team:

"We love to jump, to ski, and to train, to compete. We all have talent and a love for freestyle. We look for and find other kids with these qualities, but we will never find a replacement, for the one affectionately known as “Japril”. We all would look to his jumps with envy. And like any true friend, he tried to help us do things better too. When he wasn’t jumping, he was always the one to watch us jump, coach us, help us perfect our technique. He was one of the brightest kids we knew. If we didn’t understand something, he helped without hesitating. And It wasn’t just us he helped, he did everything he could to help everyone, from giving kids from the OTC a ride to school, holding doors open for strangers. He didn’t care that he was making his competitors better. He didn’t care that there was a possibility that this could hurt his competition results in the long run. He just wanted to help us, and be a friend. To all of us the eastern aerial team, he was much more than a friend; he was a training partner, a teammate, a brother."

Tim Preston, 18, 2002 US Junior Team

"Jeremy was always my closest competition. Watching Jeremy when we were younger, I could anticipate that he was going to be the toughest competition. As I spent more time with him, especially living with him in Lake Placid, I knew he would push me. I started to consider Jeremy and me a tandem like Shaqueil O'Neill and Kobe Bryant . We already had plans for doing side by side quad twisting triple flips at the Air Wave in Park City this summer. Jeremy and I loved to compete against each other and we kicked a lot of butt in the sport of freestyle over the years. Then Jeremy took it a step further, and he didn't wait for me. From an aerialists point of view, Jeremy had everything it takes. He had technique, athleticism, form, he was smooth, and he could land."

Jeremy April, his legacy is obvious. For he may have left the team, but he's hardly off the team. For we bonded with him. He showed us strength, form, technique, intelligence and magnificence. He raised the bar. And we'll continue on competing with and measure ourselves against the magnificence of Jeremy April. The one who brings out the best in us. He is now the coach. And we will carry out his quest. So let's get on with the mission. The one that is excellence and achievement. Thanks Jeremy. You’re the best.

Nick Preston, Eastern Inverted Aerial Team Coach
May 4, 2002
9:45

A Prayer for Jeremy

Helena Leiter

Dear Drs. April and Geoffrey:

I have been praying for each of you since we heard the tragic news on Monday, April 29th. You have been in my thoughts constantly and I just wanted to share some of those thoughts.

I know nothing can ease the pain and sorrow and suffering you are experiencing and I also know that no one can possibly share your feelings. Unfortunately, I have some idea of your pain... it is the unthinkable, the unbearable, the inconceivable.

I would like to share a prayer with you that I found helpful in my own search for healing.

We take our son by the hand and lead him to you. God of love. Here is
Jeremy. Accept our love and thanksgiving as we entrust him into your
loving care. We want Jeremy to be free to be at home with you. We ask that
you save a place for us there beside him and that you be our loving
presence in all the lonely moments that await us. We ask that you fill us
with motivation and energy in the days when we feel like giving up; remind
us often of our true homeland when we are caught up in the desolation of
the journey. Help us to find joy in the people, events, and the beauty of
nature which surround us. Thank you for the gift of Jeremy in our lives.
We want to believe that we will celebrate the treasure of our love again,
when we are all together in your presence forever. May this truth sustain
us in the days to come. Take our sad and aching hearts and comfort us.
Comfort us, for we can only feel hollowness and emptiness. God of the
sorrowing, Draw near!

Amen

Prayerfully, Helena Leiter