HAMILTON – Almost seven years after a drunk driver killed three former Norwich High School students at Colgate University, family and friends of the victims say the loss is often still too hard to handle.
For some on that campus, the shock of the accident is hitting home for the first time.
“I didn’t know the details of the crash,” said Colgate Sophomore Mika Ella-Tang. “It’s all very shocking to me.”
On Nov. 11, 2000, best friends and Norwich graduates Rachel Nargiso, Emily Collins and Katie Almeter, along with Troy-native Kevin King, were killed when the drunk driver they were riding with lost control of his Jeep and struck a tree on the campus in Hamilton.
Tuesday, Ella-Tang was viewing a collection of the personal items, pictures and accounts depicting the victims’ and families’ lives before, during and after the tragedy. The exhibit, titled “Friends,” opened Monday and is on display at Colgate for the first time until Nov. 12 on the fifth floor of the University’s Case Library.
“Everyone has heard about it. Everyone knows about it,” Ella-Tang said, with tears in her eyes, referring to the accident. “But I never realized this many girls were involved.”
“Friends” is being shown as part of an Alcohol Awareness Month being sponsored by the university.
The exhibit was created by Dr. Dennis Foley, an Anthropology professor at Union College in Schenectady, in 2003 and has been shown in nearly 30 high school and college campuses across the state and northeast.
The collection includes pictures, videos, artwork, stuffed animals, sports trophies, journals, clothing, and a host of other “artifacts,” as Foley and family members call them.
“It shows them as people. It shows that they were students like them,” said Nargiso’s mother, Rita Ashton. “After seeing this, I think the students at Colgate will be able to relate to all four kids. Hopefully it influences them to make different choices.”
“Friends” also displays the contents of the four victim’s pockets at the time of crash.
Among the many pictures – from childhood through to their freshman year of college – is one taken of the Nargiso, Collins and Almeter just hours before they died.
Parents of the four say they still have trouble coping with the loss of their children.
“Physically, I live in the same house. Emotionally, I am in another dimension at times,” states Betsy Almeter in a section of the exhibit that updates viewers on the families in the years after the accident. “I often wonder where Katie, Rachel, and Emily would be now if they were still alive. Would they have followed their dreams?”
Had the crash never happened, Betsy says she wonders if her daughter would be married, and tries to imagine what that would be like.
Nargiso, an avid artist, drew a picture that hangs in “Friends” showing what she thought the three girls would look like as old women.
Also displayed are pictures of King and the drunk driver, Robert Koester, who were friends since childhood in Troy.
New York state Trooper Bernard Kennett, who was at the crash scene in 2000, says the heartbreak of the Colgate crash has been used as a powerful educational tool.
“I reference this crash often when I do speeches to young drivers and I explain to them that every decision that they make from this point forward in their life counts,” Kennett states on one the exhibit’s wall displays. “I explain to them that the Colgate crash is an example of the worst consequences that can result from such a decision.”
Colgate’s Vice President and Dean Charlotte Johnson hopes students and community members will see first-hand how important, and devastating, their daily decisions can be.
“I hope we’re able to educate students and folks in the community about the dangers of deciding to drive drunk,” said Johnson. “But I also hope they can take away that sense of loss. These were very rich lives ... in viewing how rich their lives were, hopefully this exhibit will give people a sense of how much of an impact their choices have everyday.”
At the time of the crash, Almeter was a first year student at Colgate and a member of the track team. Collins and Nargiso were in their first year at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva. King was a student at Hudson Valley Community College.
There will be a ceremony commemorating the victims Nov. 12 at the scene of the crash on Oak Drive in Hamilton.