Hartwick Students Gather
To Remember Dante Crump
Korey Jubie, that Dante knit for extra credit. (Ian Austin/allotsego.com)
By LIBBY CUDMORE • for allotsego.com
ONEONTA – When Dante Crump approached Penny Wightman, chair of Hartwick College’s Business Administration and Accounting department, for extra credit at the end of last semester, she gave him what she called “The biggest challenge of his life.”
She asked him to knit a Hartwick scarf, keeping track of the cost of materials. “When he walked into my office with it, I never saw a more proud kid,” she said.
She asked if she could keep it, but he had other plans. “I’m going to give it to my family for Christmas – but you can keep it until I come back.”
But on Wednesday, Aug. 26, just a few days before Dante would have started his senior year at the college, where he played for the Hartwick Hawks football team, he was killed in a car crash in Saugerties. Wightman presented Dante’s sister, Bryannah, with the scarf at this evening’s candlelight vigil attended by hundreds of Dante’s classmates, teachers and friends.
“A person who shapes us cannot be forgotten,” said College President Margaret Drugovich. “The truest tribute is that we are better for having known him.”
Mourners signed cards for the family and wrote messages in chalk on the sidewalks. “Everything I ever needed, he did for me,” said roommate and football teammate Travis Samuels. “I owe it to him for showing me where to count in life.”
“You couldn’t be down around him,” said Bryannah. “He was the life of the party.”
Celebrations of Crump’s life will continue throughout the weekend; at the football game on Saturday, Sept. 5, balloons will be released, and students are painting the Hartwick wall in his memory.