Man, 22, who died at hospital site was ‘rare light in the world’
Family says he had kind heart, diverse talents
Aiden McQuillan was a 22-year-old Renaissance man.
He was a decorated young swimmer and a budding actor; a musician who also enjoyed math and science and had talked about studying physics in college. He worked with his hands as a machine operator but could use those same hands to play the bodhrán, a type of Irish drum.
McQuillan, a Santa Fe native, died following an accident at the site of Presbyterian Healthcare Services’ new hospital on Feb. 8. The accident is still under investigation by the New Mexico Occupational Health and Safety Bureau and no details have been released.
On the day of the incident, Santa Fe Police spokesman Greg Gurulé told The New Mexican the worker died after a spool of wire had fallen on him, citing information from the regional emergency dispatch center. Rick Marquardt, the CEO of Jaynes Corp., a contractor on the new hospital, confirmed the accident happened to an employee of National Electric Supply.
McQuillan had only been with the supply company for about six weeks, said his parents, Dennis and Kathleen McQuillan.
Before that, McQuillan had worked for two years at The Santa Fe New Mexican’s south-side plant, where he sometimes worked the machines or drove trucks, his father said. He worked briefly at the Santa Fe Ski Basin earlier this winter but didn’t stay long due to the season’s lack of snow, his father said.
Aiden attended Santa Fe Prep but graduated from Santa Fe High School. He was deeply affected, his father said, by his year in a kindergarten program at the New Mexico School for the Deaf, where young deaf students and those who could hear mixed together.
“He always had a kind soul, but he really developed a respect for people with disabilities from that experience,” Dennis McQuillan said.
Aiden and his sister made friends with a young boy with a disability while they were in school, his parents said, and would make sure that he felt included and was doing OK, Kathleen McQuillan said.
His father recalled Aiden standing up for a boy on his swim team who was being bullied because of his race in the locker room of the Genoveva Chavez Center.
“He never had a bigoted bone in his body and had a very keen sense of justice, of what is right and wrong,” his
father said.
McQuillan grew up playing hockey for a local league and was on the Santa Fe Seals swim team through elementary, middle and into high school. He competed at the state tournament multiple times, his father said, and once took home a state medal in a freestyle event.
In middle school, Aiden got into musical theater.
Kathleen McQuillan remembers one of his first plays, called Once upon a Mattress — a spin on a classic fairytale.
Aiden scored a leading role in the play, as the prince. A love for music and theater shaped Aiden’s high school years as well. He performed in the all-state choir and over winter breaks would go to The University of New Mexico to study music and perform at Popejoy Hall, his father said.
“He was one of those kinds of kids, those kinds of singers that you were like ‘Thank you for sending them to me!’ ” Santa Fe High choir teacher and music director Marilyn Barnes said. “As an actor, he was just so natural and so funny. He just had a really natural act, beautiful voice and comedic timing.”
Each year, only about 10 or 15 of Barnes’ 150 students make it into the all-state choir. Aiden McQuillan made it into that group every year except for his freshman year, she said.
He also played the bodhrán. For a time, he was a percussionist for the Santa Fe Megaband, local volunteer musicians for the New Mexico Folk Music and Dance Society who play for community dances every other month. Dennis McQuillan plays fiddle in the band, and Aiden’s mother and one of his sisters have both performed on ukelele and the cello.
Aiden and his sister got their start with the band collecting money at the door for the dances when they were young, Dennis said.
“He was very unselfish. Very generous, very compassionate and considerate in just everything he did,” Kathleen McQuillan said of her son. “That’s definitely coming through with people visiting and sending emails and texts and cards.”
“Several people have talked about him being a rare light in the world,” Dennis McQuillan said.
One note, Dennis McQuillan said, included this: Aiden, it said, “was proof that only the good die young.”