Community remembers teens gone too soon
RIDGEFIELD, Wash. – A community pulled together in the face of devastation as more than a thousand people remembered four Ridgefield High School Students Thursday night who died in a car crash.
It started as two teenage girls hung a poster for each life lost – just one of many memorials that have sprung up at the school. But the memories of Aja Gerrity, Amanda Williams, Richard Araiza, and Jason Carter could fill more than just the blank canvas next to the poster where visitors could write messages.
The teenagers lost their lives in a crash on Highway 30 near Clatskanie just a week and a half ago and friends and family said they lost four of the best.
"We graduated with 128, and this is 4 less, and we really cared about all of them,” said Bianca Purviance who graduated with the victims. “They were good kids."
"There's really not words to describe who they were because they were so outgoing, so motivational, so happy all the time,” added Chenae Ryder, a friend of one of the victims.
Still, they said it's only fitting that, as fellow cheerleaders handed out memorial programs, one word stood out: inspired. They said each of the victims was an inspiration to follow.
"Because of Aja I'm inspired to use my talents and to sing out and to let everyone hear them," said one girl.
And they said their lives inspired not just two teenage girls but an entire community to come together around the four faces they love and to find the strength to heal.
The two girls who put up the posters said they will give them to the families. Family members were at the service and on the back of the programs students handed out, the family thanked people for their love, care, thoughts, and prayers. They said it meant more than words could express.
