Mourners remember life of Nicholas Cumer
Nicholas Cumer event
Gideon Bradshaw/Observer-Reporter
Members of the Washington High School Band perform during the memorial service for 2012 graduate Nicholas Cumer, who died in a mass shooting in Ohio.
Nicholas Cumer event
Gideon Bradshaw/Observer-Reporter
Vicky and Ron Cumer speak on Saturday during an event in memory of their son Nicholas, who was 25 when he was killed Aug. 4 in a mass shooting.
Washington High School teacher Brandy LaQuattra remembers student Nicholas Cumer Saturday at an event in his memory.
Organizer Benjamin Marasco, a former classmate of Nicholas Cumer, speaks Saturday during an event in his friend’s memory.
Dozens of people gathered Saturday at Washington High School to remember a former student killed during a mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, four weeks earlier as details emerged of another in West Texas.
Those gathered in the gymnasium were mourning Nicholas Cumer, a 2012 graduate who was 25 when his life ended Aug. 4.
Standing near a blown-up portrait of Cumer grinning, Pastor Brian Greenleaf of Washington Alliance Church said the image matched his own mental picture of his late congregant.
“He’d come into youth group, and if he was having a bad day, and maybe not smiling, but it was only a matter of moments before those teeth came out, and he just couldn’t hold it in anymore,” Greenleaf said.
Greenleaf was one of a number of speakers who evoked Cumer’s sense of humor and compassion during the memorial ceremony, which drew more than 70 people.
During brief remarks, Vicky Cumer, Nicholas’ mother, thanked the community for its support and the school district for her son’s education.
“We do have one more request – that you just keep us in your prayers, because prayers are what are getting us through, and that’s the main thing that we can ask for,” she said.
NPR reported that Nicholas Cumer was out with colleagues from the Maple Tree Cancer Alliance, where he was interning this summer and had just been offered a full-time job there.
Cumer – who was from East Washington and was a graduate student in the cancer care program at St. Francis University in Loretto, Ohio – was one of nine people killed during the shooting in Dayton’s Oregon district in the early-morning attack.
In a reprise of that attack and similar ones across the country that now dominate the news cycle, media outlets reported Saturday night that 5 people had been killed and more than 20 wounded that day in Odessa, Texas, before the apparent gunman was fatally shot by police.
During Cumer’s memorial, teacher Brandy LaQuatra recalled the good-natured pranks Cumer and his classmates played on her when he was in her advanced English class during his freshman year. She also said he made a point of greeting her politely at the beginning of each class, and thanking her at the end.
“I knew that his faith was so important to him, and it was important to me,” LaQuatra said. “And it was so nice that I could watch someone make a difference from that perspective. And I knew that there was someone else in the building also on my side trying to make sure that people kept faith and goodness and that they were spreading it.”
While he was at the high school, Cumer was also a boy’s doubles tennis champion and member of the National Honor Society, band and Bible club, among other activities his classmate Benjamin Marasco listed.
“I could only wonder how many hands he had because there were so many cookie jars in his life,” Marasco said.
Mark Spruill, who graduated the year after Cumer, said they traveled together during a trip to Spain and France one year. They roomed with another friend, but there were only two small beds, so one person had to spend the night on a cot.
“Without debate or drawing straws, Nicholas immediately volunteered to take the cot,” Spruill said.
“Even after we both offered our beds, he would always refuse and simply say, ‘I got this,'” Spruill went on. “That just goes to show how selfless Nick was.”
This article has been updated to correct information about how the gunman in the Odessa, Texas, mass shooting was killed.