Thousands of UF students return to campus today for the new semester, but some had to come back to Gainesville without their loved ones.
Over Winter Break, the Gator Nation lost three UF students.
Though they may no longer be among the crowd on Turlington Plaza, sitting nearby in lecture or cheering from the bleachers in The Swamp, their memories live on through their friends and families.
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Brandon Mead and Ashlee Lightner were excited to celebrate Christmas in their new apartment.
Almost every day, Mead, a 22-year-old UF mathematics senior, and Lightner, 26, would drive from the small Cabana Beach apartment they shared with a roommate to check out their new place at Uptown Village at Townsend, said neighbor Brittany Bennis.
“They were so happy together,” Bennis, 20, said. “They’d only been dating since July, but it was almost like they’d known each other their whole lives, like an old married couple.”
Five days before the couple planned to move, they got into Mead’s black Nissan 300Z to go for a ride.
They never came back.
Mead hit a roundabout at the corner of Southwest 24th Avenue and Southwest 38th Terrace at a high speed, crashing into a large oak tree and flipping the car. Just after 1 a.m. on Dec. 10, Gainesville Police found the vehicle upside down against the tree, engulfed in 30-foot-tall flames.
Mead was studying to become an actuary, a profession involving estimating the financial consequences of risk.
Now, Brandon Mead’s father, Gary, has no one to talk football with on Sundays. Brandon Mead’s Friday-night Magic: The Gathering card games are one player short.
“I walk around with a ‘Gator Dad’ T-shirt on,” Gary Mead, of Coral Springs, said. “I’m just wondering how to go on.”
With Mead, Lightner was the happiest she’d ever been, said Michael Stanley, 21, her friend since childhood.
“Every time he was around her, she was smiling, and she didn’t used to be like that,” he said.
Sometimes, Bennis tries to convince herself Mead and Lightner are still alive. They just moved, she tells herself.
But the memories of times spent laughing on Mead’s couch keep her going.
“I look around and see all these people who never got to meet them,” she said. “We were the lucky ones.”
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Rafael Valim didn’t learn for school. He learned for life.
Born in Araras, Brazil, Valim moved to the United States in 2000 and enrolled as a transfer student at UF, where he met Adam Mahardy.
They loved to design and build furniture.
“He was always working on something,” said Mahardy, his best friend. “Almost like a mad scientist.”
Valim, a senior architecture student, died Dec. 26. He was 25.
After graduating, Valim planned to take a year off and either intern in America or go to Germany with his brother and pursue something in design.
“He wasn’t really planning the exact route you’re supposed to after graduating,” said Mahardy, a 25-year-old UF architecture senior.
Mahardy said he was stunned when he got the news, worried that Valim’s time spent in school and aspirations would be in vain.
But Mahardy said the world won’t be cheated of Valim’s vision.
“His ideals will live on through my work. The mark I leave upon this earth will be much deeper and will read of his influences,” Mahardy later wrote.
Mahardy chooses to remember Rafael the designer, Rafael the fighter: a person with raw design talent who wouldn’t have cared if he lived simply, as long as he was doing something that made him happy.
In one word, Valim was “limitless.”
There will be a memorial for Valim on Jan. 9 at 6 p.m. in the school of architecture’s atrium.
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On paper, James Polatty was a 23-year-old UF pre-medical senior.
But to his friends in the UF community, he was better known as Jimmy, the Phi Kappa Tau brother with the contagious smile who could befriend anyone.
“He was always the first one to rally up the guys when anyone was down in the dumps, and he was always the first one to get the party started,” said Drew Zervos, a 20-year-old UF finance junior and fellow Phi Tau brother.
Polatty passed away Tuesday.
Jin Kim, Polatty’s close friend and roommate, described his gregarious, fun-loving personality.
“You never knew what was going to come out of his mouth next,” said Kim, a 21-year-old UF food and resource economics senior.
Zervos recalled a time when the Phi Tau brothers were at a house party.
Some pedestrians started throwing bottles at the house.
Polatty didn’t hesitate — he went outside and confronted them.
“We knew he always had our back,” Zervos said.
Kim also shared moments when Polatty’s serious side came out. Kim recalled when Polatty stayed up with him until 4 or 5 a.m. smoking cigars and talking about life.
“He was the most kindred spirit I ever knew in my entire life,” Kim said.
Amy Havlock, a 23-year-old UF alumna, knew Polatty from their days of attending high school together in Sebring, Fla., where they competed on swim team together and he wrestled while she kept score.
Havlock mentioned a photo from a school formal that summarized her friend best: Polatty wearing a pink tuxedo surrounded by a group of grinning friends.
“He’s rockin it,” she said. “He was going to do what he wanted to do. That’s Jimmy – making people around him smile.”
A version of this story ran on page 1 on 1/6/2014 under the headline "UF students remembered by their friends, families"
