Jared Quirk was thrilled to be on his senior class trip to Greece and Italy with Rockland High School teachers and friends during spring break in April 2015. Their first full day, in Athens, the group toured Olympic Stadium, climbed the Acropolis and took in all the ancient sites, and did a little shopping. They returned to their hotel, changed into bathing suits, and headed over to the Aegean Sea for a swim.
Jared and the others were crossing the street when he collapsed. At first, his friends thought he was just fooling around. At 18, Jared was a multisport athlete, never had a sick day, and had recently passed a routine physical with flying colors.
But on that Athens street, it quickly became clear that he wasn’t breathing. Teachers did CPR on him until an ambulance arrived, but it was too late.
Back at home, Regina Quirk got the call that literally brought her to her knees. Her youngest boy, the one who always presented her with his cheek for kissing whenever he left the house, was gone.
“He was a fabulous kid, just all-around great,’’ Quirk says. “He was National Honor Society, an athlete, a very caring soul with lots of friends. He was the one who always remembered birthdays and anniversaries.’’
The Quirk home in Rockland was the one the kids gravitated to, and within hours of his death, it was filled. The senior trip participants returned home, and went straight from the airport to Jared’s house.
“His friend Richie was on one side of me, Katie was on the other, telling me everything about Jared’s last day,’’ says Quirk, who with her husband, Michael, owns a Norwell financial planning business. They told her that Jared had called that day in Athens “the happiest day’’ of his life.
In shock, with expired passports, the Quirks scrambled to bring their son’s body home. Greek authorities wouldn’t release it to the two teachers who had stayed behind with Jared. EF Educational Tours, which had planned the class trip, helped get the couple to Athens and took them, step by step, to where their son had spent his last day.
“We relived it,’’ Quirk says. “We went to the Acropolis, we went to Olympic Stadium. We ate what he ate.’’ That would be gyros, Greek salad, and gelato.
They lay down at the spot where their son collapsed, and where locals had set up a makeshift memorial. They put their feet in the Aegean. “We finished his journey,’’ his mom says.
Once they brought his body home, doctors determined that he’d had a stenosis, or narrowing of his left main artery, something that would have formed when he was in utero. No one had known about it. “Why it decided to close that day, we will never know,’’ his mother says.
If there is anything that brings his family comfort, it’s the friends who have kept Jared’s memory alive. Last April, they filled Holy Family Church in Rockland, where Jared had his baptism, confirmation, and funeral. This year, they came to his memorial service.
“Whenever they’re home from college, they come to the house and hang out with us,’’ Quirk says. “I get texts from them.’’
With help from Kristen Walsh, a teacher who had been with Jared when he died, the teens last year started a speed ball tournament. Speed ball is a beloved tradition at Rockland High, and both Jared and his big brother, Ryan, loved it.
Ryan, now a senior at Boston College, put together a team of friends from his class of 2012, and for the championship, they played Jared’s class of 2015. Jared’s team won in overtime, and the funds went to a scholarship in his name, also known as “The Good Guy’’ scholarship. The second annual tournament will take place June 8-10 at the high school.
A few months before Jared died, his close friend and classmate Patrick Sullivan was killed in a car crash. In his honor, Jared took Patrick’s baseball uniform number, 15, as his own. Jared’s friends now wear red Jared bracelets with the number 15 on them.
After he died, his teacher told the family to look in his backpack; Jared had bought them gifts that first day in Athens. His mother waited to open hers on Mother’s Day last year: silver earrings with blue stones. For his father and brother, there were T-shirts. And for his 93-year-old grandmother, he’d bought two Greek thimbles, to go into her longtime collection.
The Quirks feel his presence and see the number “15’’ — and his former number, “33’’ — everywhere they look. “Love never dies, and the bond between a mother and child is so strong,’’ Regina Quirk says. “I only had him for 18 years, but they were 18 wonderful years full of love and happiness, and his memory is continuing through those who loved him so very much.’’
When told that this story would appear May 15, Quirk said: “The number 15 again. And May 15 is my birthday.’’
Bella English writes from Milton. She can be reached at english@globe.com.
