Watching Courtenay Nash sip hot chocolate in a Starbucks caf will be unforgettable in the memory of Andrew Nash.

‘It was dad and Courtenay time where we would catch up,’ Andrew Nash said in an email, referring to the occasions when he and his daughter, Courtenay, would sit and talk about music, current affairs or a good book. They would talk about family, about life.

Courtenay Nash died March 23, and the Syracuse University community was forced to say goodbye to a freshman economics major described by her father as ‘beyond her years.’

Andrew Nash said Nash had a love for words and literature, passions noticed not only by her father. Patricia Burak, Nash’s Russian literature professor, said the 18-year-old valued giving deep thought to the authors studied in the course.

The novels read in class explored serious issues within life, such as love and loss, and the Russian artists’ quest for the meaning of it all. Nash took part in discussing these concepts, Burak said. And although she was a quiet student, when she spoke, it was genuinely pondered. It meant something.

For the course’s midterm, students were charged with writing about a quote they found meaningful to them. Nash chose a quote from the novel ‘Doctor Zhivago’: ‘Man in other people is the man’s soul.’ Burak explained that this means the immortality of a person’s soul lives in others.

She received an A+ on the exam.

‘It now gives comfort to us all, as it reaffirms that Courtenay remains immortal in the memory that others have of her,’ Burak said of her and the students in the class. ‘We all feel like we have a little piece of Courtenay in us.’

Burak received Chancellor Nancy Cantor’s email regarding Nash’s death while she was at a restaurant March 23. Though Burak left in tears, she remembered Nash in her class the day before. She was wearing an orange T-shirt, Burak said, in support of the men’s basketball team, which played against Ohio State in the Elite Eight that night.

During the next Tuesday’s class, Nash’s peers learned that it was their classmate who had died the week before. It was the classmate who was always there to occupy a chair in their 20-member circle, the classmate who never missed a single discussion.

‘They were sad to lose her because she was a part of this living organism that is our class,’ Burak said.

Burak felt she knew Nash well. But she would have liked more time together to analyze the works of Russian authors and more time to talk about what Nash saw in them.

Though members of the SU community will miss Nash, she will forever be in the hearts and memories of her parents, Andrew and Sonya, as well as her 14-year-old brother, Lachlan.

‘The four of us had brunch every Sunday – Courtenay and Lachlan took turns choosing their favorite restaurants,’ Andrew Nash said. ‘It was ‘us time.”

Nash, who was born in Australia, moved to the United States when she was four and resided in Virginia a year later. She enjoyed writing and spoiling her two rescue dogs, Peanut and Roo.

‘Courtenay would save more rescue dogs if she could,’ Andrew Nash said. ‘She loved animals, dogs in particular.’

Andrew Nash also likes to remember the love of music he shared with his daughter. Their eclectic list of favorites included artists like the Kings of Leon, Pearl Jam and the Rolling Stones, he said.

Said Burak: ‘I am sure she has made a print on the ground of Syracuse University, and that print will always stay there.’

rebarill@syr.edu 

Published on April 1, 2012 at 12:00 pm