Nicole's friends were interviewed for a story in the student newspaper, and the writer just decided to do a series of quotes about her instead:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nicole Bingham died in a fire at the Boardwalk Apartments Friday morning.
She would be 22 today.
She was a Wichita senior at the University of Kansas.
She had blue eyes.
She had a half-brother and a mother, Nancy Bingham.
Her parents divorced when she was young.
A friend: “She’d gone through too much to die like this.”
Doctors discovered a hole in her heart when she was 15.
She was diagnosed with two heart conditions: special arrhythmia, a condition when the heart beats erratically, and syncope, a condition where the brain doesn’t signal the heart to restart.
Her mother couldn’t afford the surgery Nicole needed, and insurance wouldn’t cover it. So Nicole wrote a letter to Ronald McDonald House, which scheduled a surgery for her at Children’s Mercy Hospital.
“She always joked about dying. She said if she didn’t take her daily pill, she would have a 30 percent chance of dying. She said if she took it, she had an 9 percent chance of dying at any minute.”
“She could accept her mortality. She thought other people should accept theirs.”
In middle school, she played volleyball and ran track.
She was on the debate team when she went to North High School in Wichita.
“Alpha Delta Pi was her life.”
“She didn’t care if she was busy. She would drop everything to be with you.”
“Last year I was really sick, and she took me to the E.R. She held my hand and told me stories. My parents used to call her my guardian angel.”
“The last time I saw her, we went to the used bookstore, and she spent forever in the history section.”
She did her Alpha Delta Pi philanthropy at Ronald McDonald House.
“She was the happiest person I’ve ever known.”
She had two kittens, Spanky and Cleo, and three cats that lived with her mother in Wichita.
“I’m a big worrier. She had this way of calming me and making me feel okay again.”
“She had honey-brown hair.”
“Her favorite television show was the ‘Gilmore Girls.’ She liked ‘Sex and the City.’ It’s about girlfriends and how they make each other a priority.”
“One time we took her to the hospital. I started to cry because I was worried about her. She cracked a joke.”
“She brought a Big Bird stuffed animal to the hospital. She got it when she had her heart surgery at Children’s Mercy Hospital. She slept with it every night.”
“She sang me to sleep once.”
“She owned more than 200 movies. When I lived with her, we didn’t have curtains so we just put her movies in the window.”
“She said, ‘I’m going to live life to the fullest. You may only have today so make everything of it you can.’” “I saw her last week. She saw me on campus and gave me a ride home. She went out of her way to take me home.” “We used to hang out and watch movies. We talked a lot. She was always there.”
“She majored in history at the University of Kansas. She liked working with kids, and she wanted to be a history teacher.”
“She always spoke her mind, and if she had a problem with something, she would let you know. That’s something not a lot of us have.”
“She gave great advice. I would talk to her about anything and everything.”
“She would stand up for her friends. She said what she felt because she thought it was the right thing to do. She made me want to be a stronger person. She made me want to stand up and say what I believed in.”
“When she found out what my last day at work would be, she asked if I liked fudge, cookies or cake better. I said fudge. She made her grandmother’s fudge for me on my last day.”
“She was one of my best friends. I talked to her almost everyday. She was always willing to hang out with me. She put her friends above all else.”
“She would walk into the room and smile. No matter how bad your day was, you had to smile back.”
“She taught us to appreciate life more.”
“She made a point to make sure everyone knew how much they meant to her.”
A friend thought what Nicole would want to come out of her death would be for everyone to tell their friends how important they were before they parted.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Unfortunately, another ADPi was killed last weekend, in a car accident:
Julie Nagel
Alha Delta Pi Killed in fire
Linear Mode
