A vigil was held Wednesday to honor senior Nicholas Smith, who was killed in a car accident on March 7 on his way to a spring break mission trip.
Senior Nicole Langlois attended the vigil and said it was very encouraging for Smith’s friends and family, who traveled from Georgia to attend.
“I think that Nicholas would’ve loved every minute of the service tonight,” Langlois said. “The crowd was obviously mourning the loss of Nick, but those who spoke tried to keep it light and humorous, much like Nicholas would’ve had he been doing the service for someone he knew.”
Smith was traveling to Syracuse, N.Y., in a caravan of four cars with 10 other students when his car was involved in an accident on I-71 in Kentucky.
Smith was a youth and family ministry major, an honors student, a member of Beta Omega Chi social club and a beau for Chi Kappa Ro social club. Senior Jacob Norwood, Smith’s roommate, said everyone who knew Smith loved him.
“The impact that Nick had was very clear,” Norwood said. “There was no doubt of what he brought to people, and that’s an incredible thing to leave behind: the certainty of his impact and where he is now. So much of him was what he believed and what he stood for.”
Norwood left for a spring break mission trip to Nicaragua on March 8 and said he was initially worried about coming back to an empty apartment, but having a strong support group of friends has helped.
“Nicaragua was probably what I needed, which was staying busy, staying committed to something important and having people around me,” Norwood said. “Since I’ve been back … I get texts and calls from numbers I don’t know, people want to make sure I’m okay and want to make themselves available to me. As much as I’m coming to terms with it, I’m doing okay, but they encourage me to do that for other people. It sums up how much people cared about Nick.”
Senior Andrea DeCamp, a friend of Smith’s since 2010, spoke at his funeral in his hometown of Buford, Ga. on March 12. She said she wanted to focus on the joy Smith brought to his friends’ lives.
“You can let situations like this make you weak, or you can use the pain to be stronger,” DeCamp said. “That’s my hope, is to be stronger through this and to say, ‘Yes, it’s sad that Nicholas is gone and it really hurts, but at the end of the day, I was blessed to know him.’ He was a great friend to me and that’s what I want to think about.”
