Vigil at Mariner High School honors two crash victims
Published 11:46 am Friday, December 4, 2009
EVERETT — The boisterous Mariner High School fight song faded into the somber strains of “Silent Night.”
Then, there was silence.
A few minutes later, mourners honoring car-crash victims Brad and Melissa Agerup headed up the street. Candles in hand, they drifted toward Mariner, where Brad Agerup, 54, was a teacher.
“Brad and Melissa were both such active participants in the community,” said Melissa Agerup’s younger sister, Michelle Rutherford of Normandy Park. “They were so full of life.”
The Clearview couple were killed along with their neighbors and friends, Tom and Hilda Woods, in a wreck on Sunday night, Snohomish County’s deadliest drunken-driving accident in recent memory.
Rutherford was among the more than 70 relatives and Mariner students who gathered at a vigil for the Agerups on Thursday night. The group met in the Albertsons parking lot on 128th Street SW at 7:30 p.m., then walked up Fourth Avenue W. a few blocks to the school where Brad Agerup touched so many lives.
Some shielded their vigil candles with paper Gatorade cups as a nod to the physical education teacher’s reminders to drink fluids after exercise.
Braden Thomson, 17, said Agerup may have saved his life, encouraging him to get on the right path.
“I cried for like three days after it happened,” he said. “He was the greatest man in the world.”
If not for Agerup, Thomson said he wouldn’t be on track to graduate early next year.
Brad Agerup’s younger sister, Kim Larson, also said she owed him her life; when her kidney failed 10 years ago, he donated his to her.
Melissa Agerup, 48, worked at The Everett Clinic. Hilda Woods, 62, was a retired administrator with the Lake Washington School District, where she worked for more than 20 years. Tom Woods, 57, worked for an electrical-component wholesaling business.
The four were headed home on Highway 9 around 6:15 p.m. Sunday when a Ford Explorer ran a stop sign at 108th Street NE and hit the Hyundai sedan they were riding in.
The suspect, 27-year-old Matthew C. McDonald of Snohomish, remained in jail Thursday on $1 million bail. He is charged with four counts of vehicular homicide.
McDonald told police he drank eight beers before getting behind the wheel, according to court papers.
Another community memorial service is scheduled for the Agerups at Mariner on Sunday. Services are scheduled for the Woodses on Tuesday at Washington Cathedral in Redmond.
The mourners at Thursday’s vigil included the Agerups’ daughters: Kaitlyn, 16, a student at Glacier Peak High School, and Sarah, 18, a student at Bellevue College.
“They were more than a mom and dad,” Sarah Agerup said. “They were our inspiration, our heroes and our best friends.”
Noah Haglund: 425-339-3465, nhaglund@heraldnet.com.
