Writing about student’s life a transformative experience

Haley Miller

Guest columnist

Someone who lives a life of purpose hopes to leave behind a legacy when he or she passes away. Sometimes, even when they’re given very limited time on earth, people make the very best of it and end up touching the lives of hundreds around them simply with their joy for living.

That’s exactly what Amber Lee Walker did.

Walker, a former student at Pacific Lutheran University, died in June due to complications from the H1N1 virus. The circumstances of her death were tragic — 21 years old, recently engaged and pregnant with twins.

Last week I wrote about Walker for PLU’s student newspaper, The Mast. In doing so, I hoped to tell her incredible story to a group of people whom she valued very much — her fellow classmates.

Walker loved everything about her experience at PLU and was devastated when she had to drop out due to financial reasons. She planned to attend college again as soon as she was financially able.

As a first-generation college student, she was trying to help her parents out and put herself through school at the same time.

From talking to Walker’s friends, family members and professors, I learned about the vital, exuberant young life that had been cut short.

To a close friend, it seemed as though Walker tried to cram as many experiences as possible into her limited time.

I hadn’t ever written about someone’s life before this story. I’ve written countless articles and columns for student newspapers, but never one like that.

And why would I? People my age usually don’t appear in the obituary section.

Initially, I volunteered to do the story out of an unexpected sense of duty. I usually shy away from writing about people, but her story appealed to my emotions more strongly than I could have imagined.

When I picked up the telephone to call her parents for the first time, my hands trembled. I procrastinated talking to them for more than a week because I didn’t know how to approach such a sensitive topic.

When I finally gathered the courage to talk to them, my heart melted with compassion.

Just four months after her death, Walker’s absence was still in the forefront of their minds. Her mother broke out in tears within a few minutes of our conversation, repeating that she didn’t have the words to describe the overwhelming sense of grief that accompanies the death of a child.

Talking to this woman’s parents made me want to commemorate her life in a way that no one else had.

The timing was strange, too. A few weeks ago, I visited the journalism class at Gig Harbor High School. Newspaper staff members were in the process of reporting the tragic story of local teenager Peter Haas, who reportedly took his own life last month.

Student journalism often is dismissed as trivial, sensationalistic and lacking in seriousness. And sometimes it is.

Most of the time, though, students have good intentions. There are some topics that only high school students, or only college students, know how to best report.

It’s stories like these — the profoundly sad, difficult to write and seemingly beyond our capability to report — that develop us as young journalists and people.

Other than the parents of these two young adults, I don’t think there is anyone more suitable to write about them than their peers.

I’m grateful I decided to tackle a topic that I wasn’t comfortable writing about. Regardless of what I end up doing with my life, I know such experiences shape who I am and what I value, and that is why I am involved in student journalism.

For the first time since I began to write, on any level, I want to pursue what truly reveals the heart of people and get to the hearts of readers.

Haley Miller of Gig Harbor is a freshman at Pacific Lutheran University, where she is the LuteLife editor of the school’s award-winning student newspaper, The Mast. She can be reached by e-mail at haleymiller09@gmail.com.