Memorial for student brings tears, laughter
Tears flowed, but there was also laughter at times during a memorial service Saturday in Pompano Beach for a 20-year-old Florida State student from Lighthouse Point, who died on Nov. 3 after an off-campus party.
Andrew Coffey’s parents were the first speakers during the two-hour memorial, and they were followed by about a dozen other family members and friends who painted a vivid picture through their words of a vibrant young life that touched everyone with whom he came in contact.
At least 500 people attended the service inside the auditorium at Pompano Beach High School, where Coffey graduated in 2015. The crowd included Coffey’s former classmates and teachers, and neighborhood pals.
The side and back walls were lined with people, with an overflow crowd outside.
They listened to richly detailed memories of Coffey as a child, as a competitor on his high school swim team, an overachiever on the gridiron, and as a charitable, wide-grinning young man who could relate to seniors.
There was Coffey as a spiked-haired boy, chasing a wild boar on a camping trip. His joy was so infectious that it vanished the fears of an adult friend, a reluctant camper who had been having an uncomfortable experience in the wilderness until that moment.
Most of the speakers got choked up, even after rousing the crowd with their fun memories of the young man they knew as Drew.
Coffey, a junior studying civil engineering, was pledging the FSU chapter of Pi Kappa Phi. He was at an off-campus party on Nov. 3 that more than 50 people attended. He was found unresponsive hours later.
Three weeks after the tragedy, authorities have not determined Coffey’s cause of death, but have said that alcohol may have played a role.
Coffey’s death led the school’s president, John Thrasher, to impose an “indefinite interim suspension” of all Greek life activity at FSU.