Mother recalls former Lehigh Valley area resident killed in Colorado shooting
The mother of Derrick W. Rump, a former Berks County resident who was killed during the Saturday night mass shooting at a Colorado gay bar, remembered him Monday for his kindness to others.
“Whenever my daughter and I needed help, he was there for us and lifted our spirits,” Julia Rump said, speaking by telephone from her Berks home, more than one day after learning from authorities about her son’s death.
Derrick Rump, 38, was a bartender and co-owner of Club Q in Colorado Springs, site of the mass shooting where four others were killed and 18 others were injured.
“He was living his dream,” Ms. Rump said. “He just wanted everybody to live their dreams like he did. Don’t stop; keep going.”
Kindness and other traits were common themes among those who remembered Rump, according to the Denver Post.
Bryant “Tip” Ragan told the Post that Rump had a personality that was “always very sunshiny, warm and generous.”
Mr. Ragan, who teaches early modern European history at Colorado College, said he would see Rump around campus regularly in the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic when Rump worked for the university’s catering service, Bon Appétit.
Rump helped cater multiple events at Mr. Ragan’s home and acted as a steadying presence to those around him. The professor described himself as a “very nervous kind of person,” but noted that Rump helped take that edge off before parties when they chatted about Rump’s home in Pennsylvania and other topics.
“We would be waiting for guests and I’d be ramped up and worried,” Mr. Ragan said. “Derrick would come up to me, immediately pour me a glass of wine, and tell me, ‘Tip, you can calm down, we’re going to take it from here, everything will be fine.’”
Rump, whose Facebook page has since been memorialized, was a 2002 graduate of Kutztown Area Senior High School.
“It is with great sadness that the Kutztown community grieves the loss of Derrick Rump,” the school said in a statement Monday. “In his time at KASD, Derrick was a quiet, kind, helpful, cooperative student who loved art and music. He enjoyed the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, math, and was a student who was well thought of by his peers and teachers.
“Tragedies like this are hard to process and comprehend. Senseless violence taken against innocent bystanders and unsuspecting victims has become all too common in our society. Derrick will forever be a reminder of this for the Kutztown community.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the extended Rump family in this time of loss,” the school said. “Please join us in teaching our kids the value of human life and creating a future where violence of this nature is unheard of.”