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Eric Charles Spry

Image of Eric Spry
Birth Date: January 17, 1992
Death Date: February 4, 2011
Age at Death: 19

Obituaries

Vail Daily page A4 - February 11, 2011

EDWARDS, Colorado — Look around and you'll find Eric Spry in all the places great kids are supposed to be … honor rolls, track and cross-country championships, among the honored graduates of Battle Mountain High School.

“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift,” Spry said on his application to join a service organization at Colorado State University, where he was a sophomore.

But there he is where no young man should be — the obituaries.

At 2 p.m. last Friday, Spry, 19, was rushed from his CSU dorm to Poudre Valley Hospital, where he died.

Spry was laughing and joking with friends the night before. He hadn't been feeling well, but no one expected this.

It was pneumonia, the doctors say.

At CSU last Monday, more than 350 students, faculty, staff and family members remembered Spry with a slide show and celebration of life.

Rob Parish was his cross country and track coach at Battle Mountain. Parish opened his home Tuesday and about 50 lost souls from the Battle Mountain running community showed up, clinging to one another for support, strength, searching for understanding where there's none to be found.

“Eric was a fantastic young man in every sense of the word,” Parish said. “'Enthusiastic,' that's the word we keep coming back to. Everything he did, everything he saw, everything he was part of. He lived life to the fullest in everything he did. He made the most of the time he had.”

He wanted to be a physical therapist; he wanted to help people.

“It was his love of helping people that helped him decide to choose his major of health and exercise science,” Thomas van Cleave, a teacher at Edwards Elementary School told the Rocky Mountain Collegian. Van Cleave mentored Spry as a fifth grader after Spry's dad died.

Did you know Spry was nominated for Battle Mountain's Male Athlete of the Year? Or that he was a member of Battle Mountain's National Honor Society and carried a 4.0 GPA?

Find someone doing something for the greater good, and Spry would be in the mix.

He mentored Battle Mountain freshmen as a Link Crew leader, tutored elementary school children, helped in highway clean ups, Thanksgiving food drives, taught underprivileged kids to snowboard and was a member of the Key Service community in Braiden Hall — a CSU program where participants who live on the same floor volunteer together in the community.

And he was a great runner.

“He probably knew more about running, and he was probably more fired up to run than anybody who had laced up their shoes that day,” said John O'Neill, a CSU junior journalism major who knew him since their days together on Battle Mountain's cross country team.

Andrew Carrera writes for Colorado State University's Rocky Mountain Collegian, where some of this material first appeared. He can be reached at news@collegian.com. Staff Writer Randy Wyrick can be reached at 970-748-2935 or rwyrick@vaildaily.com.

Vail Daily page A9 - March 17, 2011

Spry memorial set for Friday in Vail
Valley native Eric Spry, 19, died at CSU
Special to the Daily

VAIL, Colorado — Friends and family will gather Friday to celebrate the life of Eric Spry, a life that was far too short.

The outdoor gathering is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Friday at Eagle's Nest on Vail Mountain, near the observation deck at the top of the gondola.

Eric Charles Spry died of pneumonia and sepsis on Friday, Feb. 4 in Fort Collins, where he was a student at Colorado State University. He was 19.

Born Jan. 17, 1992, Eric lived his whole life in Edwards, attending Edwards Elementary School, Berry Creek Middle School, and Battle Mountain High School. He entered Colorado State University in the fall of 2010.

A true mountain kid, two of Eric's passions were running and snowboarding. He fell in love with running as he ran track in middle school, and the passion only grew when he started competing in cross-country as a high school freshman. He was a regular at the team's summer afternoon trail runs and recruited anyone he could.

He ran the Bolder Boulder each May and had trained for and completed the Boulder Half-Marathon, winning second place in his age group.

Like most local kids, he found his way to the ski mountains early, starting snowboarding in the third grade.

He loved Colorado's mountains, just as his father did. Eric's father, Stan, passed away in 2002.

When Eric was in sixth grade, he began assisting with Beaver Creek snowboard school classes and SOS groups. One of Eric's dreams came true when this winter he became a snowboard instructor for the Lionshead Snowsports School in Vail.

It was fitting that Eric became a children's snowboard instructor, friends said, since he had a natural way with young children. Eric was looking forward to bringing his new friends from CSU up to the Vail Valley to ride the mountain with him, friends said.

Wherever he was in school, Eric's name was a regular on honor rolls. He was a member of the National Honor Society as well as the Battle Mountain High School Link Crew.

His desire to help others and his interest in health and wellness led him to choose health and exercise science as his major at CSU, his family said. Eric was a member of CSU's Key Service Community. He was thoroughly enjoying his time at CSU, friends said, largely through the support and friendships made possible by the closeness of the Key Communities.

His family said they will always be grateful for the university's attempts, through the Key Program, to help incoming students connect and find a home at CSU. For Eric it really worked.

Those who knew Eric know that his greatest passion was for people and for life itself, friends said.

“Eric was never, ever down about anything,” one of his mentors said.

Friends say he will be remembered for his genuine love and acceptance of others, for opening his heart to whomever he was with, never judging, and always being tolerant.

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