Standing in front of more than 40 students gathered outside Danieley K, Jim Stetler recalled the day he dropped off his bright and bubbly son Trent as a freshman student three years ago.
“I was bawling my eyes out,” he said. Three years later, he said he stands at
the same location bearing a similar, heavy feeling in his heart.
A year after Trent Stetler’s sudden death, friends and strangers gathered together outside his freshman year residence hall Saturday morning to share cherished memories and glimpses of their late friend, brother and son.
Together, the community planted a sapling in his name and memory as a
symbol to remind the community of his presence and the memories he left behind.
The Burlington Police reported Stetler’s death last January, informing the community that they believed he took his own life.
His mother, Denette Stetler, said the planting is a powerful way to ensure that Trent’s memory is not forgotten at Elon.
“One of the challenges of the situation is not letting the loss overshadow what we gained,” she said. “When you drive by here in a week, 10 or 20 years later, remember all the late night talks, the laughs and the love.”
And they remembered. Through a mix of tears, smiles and laughter, many of his friends shared glimpses of their most cherished memories with him.
There was the time he called up his friend and asked him to reenact a chapter of Fifty Shades of Grey for a Big/ Little surprise. There were the countless embarrassing but creative nicknames he would make for people close to him, how he’d make people smile with the mantra of Finding Nemo’s Dory’s, “just keep swimming,” and how he never failed to share his happy-go-lucky spirit with everyone he encountered.
Loretta Ann Elisson, a custodian at Environmental Services who met Stetler when he would set up for games in Alumni Gym, recalled how he would make her day every time they spoke.
“Trent was a rainbow in the sky,” she said.
In a moving display of the profound impact Stetler had on his friends, Jake Battersby, a junior at Elon who was on the rugby team with Stetler, asked the group of students to raise their hand if Stetler had introduced them to at least one other friend.
Without question, countless hands were immediately raised.
“There’s never a time when I think of him without a smile on my face,” Battersby said.
Logan Drew, an Elon senior and Trent’s teammate on the rugby team, said the past year has been “hellish.”
“He was one of my best friends, and I never got the chance to tell him that,” he said. “But I think he knew.”
The event was planned over the summer by senior Nicholas Cianciara and a close group of Stetler’s friends as a way to honor Stetler while helping his friends come to terms with the loss.
“I know that I can speak for more people than myself when I say that this has been a tough year,” Cianciara wrote on the social media invitation to the community. “I know that many people are still working to find some amount of clo- sure.”
Stetler, from Havertown, Pennsylvania, was majoring in economics with a minor in communications. Outside of class, he was a member of Elon’s chapter of Alpha Kappa Psi, the professional business fraternity, Elon men’s rugby and worked as an intern for the Phoenix Club in the Athletics department.