Letter: A note of gratitude following a tragedy

Posted 4/25/18

To the editor:

Like many parents, when I moved to Barrington 22 years ago, I thought it would be a good place to raise my son. I learned this week that it also the best place to live should …

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Letter: A note of gratitude following a tragedy

Posted

To the editor:

Like many parents, when I moved to Barrington 22 years ago, I thought it would be a good place to raise my son. I learned this week that it also the best place to live should every parent’s worst nightmare occur.

We’ll never be certain why my son Max’s car veered off New Meadow Road last Monday night. He wasn’t drunk. He was a good driver—a professional one, for UPS, in fact.  It was a dark, wet night. Was he going too fast? Was he avoiding a deer? Texting? We’ll never know, and even if we did, it wouldn’t alter the facts that his car overturned in the river and that he drowned.

As tragic, cruel and unfair as this episode has been for me and his mother, I am so grateful to the remarkable people of this town. 

The efforts of the Barrington Police and EMTs who tried so hard and so long to save him were nothing short of heroic. The policemen who awakened me at 1 a.m. showed such genuine compassion and caring. The outstanding doctor at the hospital (who lives only two houses away from me as the crow flies) tasked with informing me of Max’s death, could not have been kinder. My neighbors, friends and even people I barely knew have expressed their condolences in so many ways. You have all softened this blow more than you’ll never know.

Most surprising of all is how Max’s friends have risen to the occasion to remember him. 

While I was fretting how I would adequately honor him for them, they took it upon themselves to take care of it for me. Starting a Go Fund Me Page, they’re planning to give their buddy a send-off that’s exactly what he would have wanted—a “banger.” (For those without an urban dictionary handy, that would be a joyous, raucous celebration). It is planned for May 13, at the Bristol Yacht Club, under a tent, with 400 of his nearest and dearest in attendance.

For someone whose life was packed with fun, joy, friendship and laughter, it is the most fitting tribute I can imagine—but didn’t. They did. And all of us in town can take pride that our sons, daughters and the rest of this new take-charge generation are making the world a happier place. Thanks to his friends, my son won’t be remembered as a young man whose life ended too soon, but as one very special dude who loved life, and knew how to live it up. That’s the legacy he would want.

Scott Bean

Barrington

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Jim McGaw

A lifelong Portsmouth resident, Jim graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1982 and earned a journalism degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1986. He's worked two different stints at East Bay Newspapers, for a total of 18 years with the company so far. When not running all over town bringing you the news from Portsmouth, Jim listens to lots and lots and lots of music, watches obscure silent films from the '20s and usually has three books going at once. He also loves to cook crazy New Orleans dishes for his wife of 25 years, Michelle, and their two sons, Jake and Max.