Brooke Fagundes, ... a "star" forever...
Friends, family remember teen's love of life By DOUG RUSSELL, news editor McAlester High School teacher James Brown fingered the hand-made heart and read the words again. "We miss you and hope you hurry back soon." The card had been made by two of his students while Brown was away from school one week; two students who always took time to let the teacher know he was appreciated, two who had planned to take another course with him this fall. "Right at the end of the school year, I told my class 'I guess I'll be losing my seniors,'" Brown recalled. "Brooke piped up and she and another girl said, 'We'll be here next year.' Now she won't." Sixteen-year-old Brooke Leigh Fagundes died Thursday when she fell from a cliff, hit her head on a rock and slipped into the waters of Lake Tenkiller. "It didn't make sense," said Brooke's father, Alan Fagundes. "She was afraid of heights." But Alan Fagundes, like others who knew the petite teen, prefers to remember the way Brooke lived. "She was one of a kind," he said. "She didn't have problems; she had solutions to problems." According to family members, Brooke Fagundes was swimming before she was crawling, dancing before she was walking and could "light up a room with her smile." Her mother, Sandra Fagundes, was a lifeguard when Brooke was a baby and taught both Brooke and her older brother Seth to swim at a very young age. The swimming didn't stop when the family moved to Pittsburg County from California when the family was in the second grade. Neither did the young girl's outgoing love of life. "She sang all the time," Sandra Fagundes said. "She couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, and I think she knew it, but she sang like she was a rock star. She loved to sing. "She loved life." Blake Stewart, who'd known Brooke since the two met in middle school, soon became almost inseparable from her. The two would sit at the Fagundes home, watching television, listening to music, singing and dancing. "We could be bored out of our minds, but we'd still have fun," 17-year-old Stewart said. "You couldn't get mad at the girl." Brooke Fagundes had an "infectious smile" and "When she'd walk into a room, the whole room would light up," said Evan Burdzinsky, 19. "She had a smile that didn't quit." She also had a laugh that made others laugh along with her - even when they didn't want to, said Kim Alberson. "If Brooke started laughing, everybody in the room would be laughing," she said. "We're a lot alike," said Stewart. "Every time we laugh, we snort. People will start laughing and say 'stop it!' and we'll say 'we can't - snort, snort, snort." "She took care of people," said Jon Yott, 17. "Every time you need to talk to someone, she was always there. She was always the one working out everybody's problems." Brooke would sometimes spend hours on the phone or sit up late into the night listening to others and offering possible solutions to problems. On any given day, a dozen or more of her friends would be at either her mother's home or her father's - wherever the popular teen was that day. Angie Horn was Brooke's dance instructor for six years before the teen got too involved with other things to continue her dance classes. "I remember one year, Brooke broke her arm right before recital," Horn said. "She never missed a beat. She made that cast a fashion statement." "She was a wonderful young lady," said McAlester High School Principal Alan Wadsworth. "She was well thought of by faculty and students alike. Her death is a great loss for our school." "The world just lost one of its brightest stars," said Randy Higgins. "I'll miss her a lot." A special fund to help pay funeral expenses has been set up under the name Fagundes Estate. Anyone wishing to donate to the fund may contact The Bank of Oklahoma. According to Alan Fagundes, any money left over after funeral expenses are paid will be used to start a scholarship fund. Three teens, including two from McAlester, Bailey Jonathan Roberts, 19, and Joshua Aaron Henry, 18, and one from Savanna, Shell Tidwell, 19, were arrested in connection with Brooke Fagundes' death. The three were arrested by the Sequoyah County Sheriff's Department on complaints of public intoxication and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Contact Doug Russell at drussell@mcalesternews.com GriefNet page by... |
