Community gathers for anniversary of tragic accident

About 40 friends, family members, classmates and peers congregated at 116 East University Parkway on Sunday to remember Hopkins student Nathan Krasnopoler one year after his fatal bike accident.

Krasnopoler was hit by a car while biking towards Homewood on East University Parkway. The accident, which garnered an outpouring of support from the Hopkins community and brought the question of campus pedestrian safety to the fore, left Krasnopoler comatose for six months. He died on the morning of Wednesday, August 10, 2011.

The vigil arose from the collaborative efforts of the Krasnopoler family, members of the University administration and representatives of the Student Government Association (SGA) to honor Nathan's memory.

"I reached out to Nathan's family shortly after the accident, but they felt it was best to wait until the one-year mark to commemorate it," Junior Class President Alexandra Larsen said.

Larsen, who spearheaded the organization of the ceremony, stood alongside SGA Executive Vice-President Wyatt Larkin, Dean of Students Susan Boswell, and Executive Director of Campus Safety & Security Edmund G. Skrodzki. Also in attendance were Mary Pat Clarke, who represents the 14th District of the Baltimore City Council, and Nate Evans, the city's Bicycle and Pedestrian Planner. Though not in attendance, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake expressed her personal regrets to the Krasnopoler family.

Members of the victim's family distributed candles among the crowd. Tethered to a sidewalk sign was a white bicycle adorned with yellow flowers and a commemorative plaque.

"He biked everywhere," Mindy Sperling, a family friend who shared Krasnopoler's zeal for biking, said. "He was biking from an organic grocery store when we he was hit. We were going to cook a dinner together that night with the food he bought."

She paused.

"He never went to a gas station," she went on. "He never went to a gas station, and it was a fuel emissions vehicle that hit him."

Sperling had participated in the memorial bike ride to the accident site, which began at 5:00 p.m. By 6:45, the crowd had candles in hand, and fell silent to a brief invocation by Krasnopoler's father, Mitchell, to walk in silence to a ceremony at Charles Commons.

The walk, led by Mitchell Krasnopoler and his eldest son Elliot, took the crowd along East University Parkway, through the North Gate, along the perimeter of the Freshman Quad and Beach, and across North Charles Street into the ballroom of the sophomore dormitory, where Krasnopoler lived for his last months at Hopkins.

For the most part, the ceremony therein was a memorial. Family and friends of Krasnopoler's, including a teary-eyed Solomon, stood before the crowd to give eulogies tailored to their personal recollections of his wit and intellect. At a table in the back of the ballroom sat a group of faculty from Krasnopoler's high school alma mater, the Shoshana S. Cardin School, reminiscing on a "brilliant student," as English teacher Leslie Rosen described him.

"He was wonderful. Really, truly wonderful," she said.

ShosHana S. Cardin is a small Jewish community school in northwest Baltimore, where the dual tragedies of last February and August — the accident and, six months thereafter, its victim's passing — reverberated with tragic resonance, Rosen said.

"Because we're such a small school" — ("Nathan's graduating class had only eleven or twelve," Norman Prentiss, another English teacher, interjected) – "everyone knows everyone. A lot of the younger kids knew him well. And when you're young, you don't think things like this happen."

But, as Mitchell Krasnopoler stressed in his opening remarks, the night was a prospective time, with focus on posterity as much as remembrance.  

"We're here to illustrate Nathan as a person and a student, but also to see what can be done to make sure this tragedy doesn't happen again," he said.

Their efforts of the last twelve months have not fallen silent. A legislative effort, ignited by the impetus of tragedy, currently awaits deliberation in the chambers of the Maryland General Assembly. If passed, House Bill 1178 will require competency testing for Maryland drivers, designed to evaluate an individual's ability to safely operate a motor vehicle. A hefty sum of points will be tacked to the driver's licenses of individuals who fail to summon medical assistance following an automobile accident that causes injury. And for individuals in persistent vegetative states, the bill makes a provision allowing surrogates – cogent family members designated by the patient – to make a decision regarding living organ donations.

This, Elliot Krasnopoler said, channels the very spirit of his younger brother's benevolence. The elder Krasnopoler is currently a visiting Art History graduate student at Hopkins.

"It gives me something to do every day," he said. "I study, and I work for Nathan's cause, instead of, you know, sitting there and dwelling."

The collective efforts of the Krasnopolers and countless others, including a substantial bloc of local and state politicians, are rapidly nearing fruition. The Maryland General Assembly will hear House Bill 1178 on March 13; if passed, its stipulations will come into effect in October.

Closer to home than Annapolis, the issue of pedestrian safety sits paramount on the administrative docket of discussion. The past month alone has observed two distinct accidents within a block of campus, sending one University of Baltimore sophomore to Johns Hopkins Hospital in critical condition and, within a week thereafter, leaving two Hopkins undergraduates injured. In recent weeks, the SGA has outlined strategies to ensure pedestrian vigilance – the most preventative measure, in terms of accidents, until legislative action intervenes.

"It's of the upmost importance that we be safe, and the Hopkins community must take it upon itself to adhere to safety precautions. Although we cannot completely eliminate accidents, we can work as a community to limit them as best as we can," Freshman Class President Joshua Goodstein following an assembly of the student government on Tuesday night.

All actions, be they legal, bureaucratic, or honed to the level of individual behavior, serve a common purpose – to eradicate the likelihood that a tragedy cuts a life short.

The Krasnopoler family agrees.

"We never knew what he would have given to the world," Mitchell Krasnopoler said on Sunday, a year since his son's accident. "But we all know the world is greatly diminished without him."