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Alex McGuiggan had a passion for life, poetry, music, ‘my mountains’ and friends; a new scholarship in his honor aims to keep his memory, and promise, alive

Alex McGuiggan argued that Bartleby the scrivener seemed not quite human, something less than alive. Bartleby was nothing like McGuiggan.

In February 2009, McGuiggan was a University of Colorado student with a voracious appetite for life, an infectiously sunny disposition and a deep passion for his newly declared major: English.

At the time, McGuiggan was taking the course “American Literary Masterpieces,” and his assignment was to analyze “Bartleby the Scrivener,” Herman Melville’s short story whose protagonist responds to his boss’s requests for help with a consistently civil but unhelpful reply: “I would prefer not to.”

Analyzing Bartleby, McGuiggan wrote: “Personification is a literary device employed to assign human characteristics to inanimate objects; in this case, however, Melville is doing just the opposite. He has created a character that is depicted as a living person, but every one of his traits bears an eerie resemblance to an existence other than that of a human being.”

David J. Rothman, who was teaching the class, was impressed. “It’s just so well put, and I’ll always remember that. And that’s what you’re looking for in a student.”

On Thursday, Feb. 19, 2009, McGuiggan handed the essay to Rothman. On Sunday, Feb. 22, McGuiggan’s life—brimming with zest and promise—accidentally ended.

Two days later (with the permission of McGuiggan’s parents), Rothman gave copies of McGuiggan’s essay to his class. He did not tell the students that their classmate had just passed away, only that this essay was written by one of their own and that the class should discuss it.

The students had “a wonderful conversation that proceeded to go from Alex’s interpretation to the story itself,” Rothman recalls. “What greater honor could you give to anyone than to take his work and use it for further conversation?”

After the discussion, Rothman told his class that Alex McGuiggan, whose insights had sparked such a stimulating discussion, had died that weekend after drinking tea brewed from poppy seeds and pods. “Students wept.”

Like Alex McGuiggan’s parents, Jill Fischer and Mike McGuiggan, Rothman wanted to honor memory of the person, not the manner of his passing. “I didn’t want him to be remembered for his death. I wanted him to be remembered for his life,” Rothman says.

“I’ve used those exact words,” Fischer says. “I would like people to understand how Alex lived his life and what he meant to his friends and family.”

In Rothman’s class and in the CU Department of English, Alex McGuiggan’s life will be remembered and even immortalized.

Shortly before Christmas, the families of Alex’s closest friends from high school invited Alex’s family to a holiday gathering. After dinner, everyone was summoned together for a toast in memory of Alex. But the remembrance did not stop there.

To the astonishment of Alex’s parents, they were handed documents establishing an endowment fund for The Alex McGuiggan Scholarship. “I burst into tears,” says his mother.

“Alex had an uncanny ability to select great friends, and it touched us to the core that their families would honor Alex’s memory in this way.” Fittingly, The Alex McGuiggan Scholarship will be awarded to a student of creative writing, with a preference for those whose strength is in writing poetry. It will issue its first award this year.

Alex had a keen mind, but, like many students, he did not come to the university knowing what he wanted to do. A Chancellor’s Achievement Scholar, he sampled several different disciplines in his quest to find one that could suit him long-term.

He enjoyed “Music in American Culture” but didn’t see himself becoming a music historian. He was fascinated by psychology, particularly what drove people to behave the way that they did, but he didn’t see himself becoming a psychologist. He liked philosophy but found some classroom discussions too abstract, and at times, pompous.

“What really sparked things for him was taking the Introduction to Poetry Workshop with Serena Chopra in the fall of 2008,” Fischer recalls. Over dinner during Parents’ Weekend, “he got this look of excitement over his face and said, ‘I’ve decided what I want to major in—English.’”

He proceeded to describe how he was honing his poetry writing skills so that he could apply for admission to the Creative Writing Program in the spring. “Majoring in English was pretty remarkable for a kid who had never voluntarily picked up a book till he was overcome with boredom while working as a beach attendant one summer,” Fischer said in her eulogy of her son. “He had finally found his academic home.”

Chopra says it’s hard to enumerate the qualities and talents she saw in McGuiggan. “Simply thinking about what I admired in Alex has brought me to tears a few times.” “Alex was a young spirit. He was newly curious and was just discovering the universe around him and inside him,” Chopra observes. In class he was usually quiet, often late, but always very attentive.

Chopra had encouraged him to move beyond the Beat poets to the French Romantics. He fell in love with Baudelaire, a flâneur (an observer of the Parisian streets), who, Chopra says, “seamlessly unites sight, what he was literally seeing, with a very deep and often quiet philosophy.”

“For Alex, being young and curious, this ignited a passion for introspection through the lens of the physical world,” Chopra says. Alex translated his passion into intensely focused action, editing and re-editing his poetry, “never satisfied” with the results.

“He was a young, burgeoning artist, engaged and scattered with thoughts,” Chopra observes, “That energy only happens once in an artist’s life, and it is students like Alex that keep me teaching.”

Fischer had never seen her son’s poetry until after he died. She was struck by its power, and she shared one work, “The Royal Arch,” at his funeral. The poem (which can be read ) reflected images that he loved.

He often referred to the Flatirons as “my mountains.” Even if he’d had a rough day, he’d tell his parents, he could look toward the mountains and “feel a sense of peace.”

The Royal Arch, nestled at the foot of the Flatirons, inspired a 46-word poem that was “in a way, Alex’s masterpiece,” Chopra says.

“He cared a lot about that poem” and wanted it to be just right, Chopra recalls, adding, “We worked on that poem for five months.”

“The poem garnishes ultimate humility and respect for the natural order of the universe. A young mind that can understand this is one of a blooming artist,” she concludes.

Before he was a blossoming poet, McGuiggan was a Chicago-area teen-ager, brother, son and friend. Every evening without fail, Alex knocked on his younger sister’s door to bid her a good night.

Before his foray in to literature, McGuiggan had a passion and particular proficiency in the guitar. Fischer notes that Alex admired classic rock and blues guitarists such as Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and B.B. King. As a high school senior, he did an independent senior project that entailed writing and recording his own music.

“He was always fascinated by music with complex rhythm patterns,” Fischer comments. In college, Alex expanded his repertoire, composing electronic music on his computer and gravitating toward jam bands. He and his CU friends were great fans of Pretty Lights, going to concerts whenever they could.

Mike McCarthy became friends with McGuiggan when they were in seventh grade. Together, they played guitar, and McGuiggan was always encouraging McCarthy to succeed. “Pretty much every memory from middle school on involves him,” McCarthy adds.

McCarthy attends the University of Illinois and has never been to Colorado. He recalls that McGuiggan’s decision to attend CU had a lot to do with the mountains.

Though they were in different states, McGuiggan and McCarthy continued collaborating musically. McGuiggan had an especially discerning ear for music, McCarthy says. “If he said something was worth listening to, I knew it was.”

They were working on a song in February 2009. “We’d been exchanging it for a couple of weeks,” McCarthy recalls. “I said, ‘I’ll talk to you tomorrow.’ I talked to him on Saturday evening.”

On Monday, McCarthy got the news.

“It is by far the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with in my entire life. It’s tragic and horrible. It shouldn’t have happened,” McCarthy says. “Take care of your friends and watch out for them.”

“I’m still so happy that I got to know him and that I got to call him my friend. He was the best person, just a great individual and brought out the best in everyone around him,” McCarthy says. “He always had this gigantic smile on his face. It was contagious.”

Shortly after Alex’s death, a CU friend commented to Alex’s mother, “I look up at the stars at night, and I can just hear him laughing at me.”

Alex McGuiggan is, indeed, remembered for his life. Friends in Colorado and his high school friends across the country gathered on Jan. 14 this year to celebrate what would have been his 21st birthday. His CU friends played Pretty Lights music and shared their favorite memories of Alex.

Fischer and Mike McGuiggan talk about Alex often, as does Alex’s sister, Lauren. “We wouldn’t be who we are without him,” Fischer asserts. Mike says he’s glad that Alex didn’t take his advice to pursue a “practical” field like accounting, because “at least we are left with his poetry and his music.”

On the 22nd of every month, McCarthy goes outside to “sit there and enjoy, think back and talk to him a little bit in my head. … I feel like I can feel him right there.”

David Rothman hopes each recipient of the Alex McGuiggan scholarship receives a copy of Alex’s essay on “Bartleby the Scrivener.”

“Memory and commemoration are crucial parts of our educational mission,” Rothman says. “It can only make an educational institution stronger to honor those who have passed through it. The assumption is that the past is something that is precious and should be protected. Recognizing who Alex was, what he cared about, and what he did is a way to convey those values to other students. The humanities are about what it means to be a human being, and students can come to understand that all the more powerfully by encountering his work; it gleans an important gift from his painfully young passing.”

Rothman stresses the fact that discussions between readers and writers (who may no longer be with us) “drive home the kind of meaning that writing and reading can have in our lives.”

As for students, Rothman adds, “You want them to feel that piercing quickness of life—how delicate it is, and how powerful and meaningful.”

Alex McGuiggan seems to have felt that—and fully embraced it.

For more information on the Alex McGuiggan Scholarship or other scholarships, contact T.J. Rapoport, associate director of development
at the CU Foundation, at 3O3-541-1455 or tj.rapoport@cufund.org.