Friends and family of Caitlin Epple and Kyle Metcalf took scores of pictures of the young couple from Longmont High School. The snapshots preserve broad smiles, tender embraces and goofy faces.
Epple and Metcalf were bursting with energy, love and promise. Now, those photographs are a testament to two lives lived very well and done too soon. Like the images on Keats’ Grecian urn, the photos show Caitlin and Kyle forever fair, forever young, forever in love.
But on an evening in September 2008, Metcalf was in a passing lane on Colorado Highway 66, overcorrected and collided with a pickup. Epple, 18, perished there. Metcalf, 17, died the next day.
Family and friends held a vigil in the couple’s memory. They talked, cried, shared memories. One channeled his grief into action.
Larkin Poynton had known his best friend Kyle since the sixth grade. At first, he says, they didn’t get along. They were in “home room,” and there was friction about food.
“I wouldn’t share my cookies with Kyle,” Poynton recalls, “and we bashed heads enough that we became friends.”
Through the years, they spent time skateboarding, which was “our big thing,” Poynton recalls. Music was another.
Metcalf played guitar and Poynton drums. With friends Michael Roach, Andy Tulenko and David Olivarez, they performed a hard-rock genre similar to the “metalcore” and “pop punk” style of the group “A Day to Remember.”
“We loved the technicality,” Poynton says. Both he and Metcalf were good at math and loved “putting beats together.” Sometimes, they’d play on Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall, where they’d make good money.
Poynton had also known Epple since elementary school. “It was cool how it came full circle because of Kyle.”
Losing his friends “woke me up real quick,” Poynton says. Many teen-agers act like they’re invincible. They’re not, he says, adding, “Life is precious.”
Poynton became a focal point of remembrance at Longmont High. He and others sold wristbands that said “Caitlin & Kyle: Endless Life, Endless Love.” The idea was to give the money to the families.
Kyle’s mother, Janice Metcalf, suggested that Poynton save it, because something would surely come up. Something did.
In Asa De Neeve’s memory
In 2009, Poynton enrolled at the University of Colorado and won a scholarship named after Asa Iokepa De Neeve—a Longmont High student who passed away in 1999. That scholarship, founded by Asa De Neeve’s mother, Barbara De Neeve, is awarded to a student from Longmont High School who has demonstrated financial need and who has performed community service.
Poynton met with De Neeve, whose goal was to memorialize her son. “A light bulb went off,” he recalls. “I said, ‘That’s what I’ve got to do.’”
In January 2010, Poynton approached T.J. Rapoport of the CU Foundation, the nonprofit fund-raising arm of the university, to learn how to proceed. It took little coaching.
Poynton started a Facebook page and a blog and began making the rounds, asking for donations. Within a month, he’d raised $5,000. A donor matched that, bringing the total to $10,000.
By late July, the scholarship fund had reached $18,476.80. Poynton’s goal was to reach $25,000, the amount at which the scholarship would be deemed “endowed” and would exist forever.
Rapoport received a call this year from an anonymous donor asking how much it would take to reach the goal. The donor then pledged that amount.
When Poynton learned of this, “I went off the wall. That was a cool moment.”
Poynton dubs it “amazing” that the community has memorialized Caitlin Epple and Kyle Metcalf this way. “They deserve nothing less.”
The Caitlin Epple and Kyle Metcalf Memorial Scholarship is awarded to graduating seniors from Longmont High School who have performed and are committed to community service.
As Poynton puts it, the award is designed to help whose who strive “to make sure people are doing all right,” who are “making people happy” and who show “graciousness” along the way.
A cheerful volunteer
Kyle’s mother, Janice Metcalf, says Poynton has been a gift to her. “He would always call me ‘Mrs. Metcalf’ and always had the best manners,” asking her how she was and telling her it was nice to see her.
Kyle helped people feel at ease. He made them laugh. And he helped friends through trying times, his mother recalls. “He awoke every morning in a good mood singing in the shower, whistling throughout the day.”
Poynton describes Kyle as “eccentric,” sometimes donning a gorilla suit for fun and other times volunteering at a senior center, nursing home or humane society. “He never did it for his resumé,” Poynton says. “He just cared about people.”
In his senior year in high school, Kyle began researching scholarships. Janice Metcalf let him do his own leg work. He was inquiring about several scholarships and had always looked forward to going to college.
The scholarship helps to preserve the memory of Kyle and Caitlin in a very enduring way, Metcalf suggests. Scholarship recipients will “get to know what a great life Caitlin and Kyle had here on Earth,” Metcalf says, citing “their love for learning, their fulfillment of family and friends, their willingness to help others, volunteering and their smiles.”
Eager for college, joyful in life
Molle Connell, Caitlin Epple’s mother, concurs. “Both Caitlin and Kyle were just exceptionally good kids. Very smart. Very social. Lots of friends.”
She was also civic-minded. She worked at Rocky Mountain Equi-Rhythm, which aims to use the “healing power of the horse-human relationship” to help at-risk youths and others.
Addtionally, Connell notes, Caitlin became active in the 4H club when she was 8 and “worked her way up.” The 4H clubs began as an agricultural effort to help young people reach their full potential.
In the summer of 2008, the Democratic National Convention was held in Denver. “She was so excited,” Connell says. “This would have been the first time she would have been able to vote.”
Caitlin Epple was deeply interested in politics and government and had won a scholarship to study international relations at CU-Denver.
At the time of her death, she had been in college only about six weeks. But Caitlin had started thinking about college in sixth grade, reading books about life and learning in college. “She had a great focus about what her life was going to be beyond high school,” Connell notes.
While she intently eyed tomorrow, Caitlin Epple intensely enjoyed today.
“One of her favorite things to say was, ‘This is the best day of my life,’” Connell recalls.
When a pod of orcas swam beside their boat off the coast of Alaska, Caitlin said it. While marveling at the stars in Costa Rica, she said it again. After a good horse ride, she said it. Even upon reading a book she loved, she said it.
“I probably heard her say that 50 times,” Connell recalls.
Connell marvels not just at Caitlin’s good humor but also her inquisitive mind. At the age of 3, Caitlin told her mother that she wanted to start a club to talk about God and the world. “Caitlin was always the kid that I looked at and thought, ‘Where did you come from?’”
Last year, Connell traveled to India to check out an organization her church wanted to sponsor. While there, she and her mother contributed money to build a well in a rural village. That well will have a marble plaque dedicated to Caitlin Epple.
“People in the village said everyone will know her name,” Connell notes.
That is welcome news. Classmates of Caitlin’s have gone to college and are discussed by friends often, but things are different with those who have passed on. “I miss hearing her name,” Connell says.
“I think Caitlin would have achieved great things if she had lived. I think Kyle would have, too,” she adds. “Since we can’t have that, it’s meaningful to know that maybe this scholarship will have an impact on somebody else’s life who’s going to do something great.”
For more information on the Caitlin Epple and Kyle Metcalf Memorial Scholarship or other scholarships, contact T.J. Rapoport, associate director of development at the CU Foundation, at 303-541-1455 ortj.rapoport@cufund.org.
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