Students recalled at somber ceremony
Jill Bonn hated it when people avoided talking about Lauren.
She didn’t want to ever forget how Lauren Bonn loved her two tabby cats and once brought home an entire litter that needed a foster home. Or how Lauren drove a blue Mustang convertible and liked to tan like a true Florida girl. And that Lauren’s main goal in life was to become a nurse and help others after doctors had cared for her as a girl.
Ji l l Bonn wanted to share those memories about her daughter, not be silent and hold them deep inside. Perhaps that’s why the ceremony Thursday mattered so much as the Longwood mother returned to her daughter’s school to pay tribute to Lauren, who died in her sleep in March 2014 after struggling with diabetes for years.
A dozen University of Central Florida students who died in the past year from car crashes, health problems and other circumstances were honored in a quiet service that has occurred annually for the past 15 years.
The ceremony was held inside the Student Union, the lively hub on campus where student groups: the atheists, the Christians, the Latin dancers, the marijuana advocates, the do-gooders, all compete for attention.
But Thursday, the building felt more reverent. Dozens of flowers and fake candles outlined the Pegasus, the centerpiece on the main floor. During the ceremony, there was a moment of silence, bagpipes playing “Amazing Grace” and a dozen yellow roses to honor the 12 who were called eternal Knights.
For Santiago Diaz Arteaga’s funeral in Miami, some of his friends couldn’t make the trip. Now, about a dozen gathered with his girlfriend, Jaewon Lim, to remember the 20-year-old aspiring doctor who was killed in a car crash in June 2014 as he drove to take a chemistry exam.
“That’s why it’s going to be so special. He would have wanted to see his friends,” said Lim, 23, before the service.
Diaz Arteaga had been her first love. One March morning, he cooked an egg-white omelet for a surprise breakfast. “Would you be my he wrote on the back of the plate.
Before they officially became a couple, they wrote seven-page letters back and forth when they lived hours apart. Lim keeps the letters in a box with his old hoodie she always borrowed when she was cold.
During the ceremony, Jill Bonn sat with her husband and her younger daughter, taking photos of the yellow roses with her cellphone.
Sometimes, she wondered who would tease her about her old-school technology or teach her how to use Facebook, like Lauren always did. Jill Bonn had lost her movie partner, the one who encouraged her to join “The Hunger Games” mania, and her favorite shopping buddy.
It hurt that Lauren, 26, died on the verge of breaking into her career. She studied nursing at UCF and had worked in a hospital, befriending cancer patients.
“I feel like now the shock of the death is over,” Jill Bonn said. “Now I just really miss her because I haven’t seen her in a year.”