Ella Carr was born in Truckee, California, on May 25th, 2001. On March 5th, 2022 she passed away in Union County, Oregon, in an accident while backcountry skiing. Ella was enrolled in the class of 2023 and spent 2.5 years in the Wesleyan community, with a semester off during the pandemic. In the spring of 2022, Ella transferred to Whitman College in Walla Walla, W.A. and spent a very happy five weeks with a beautiful community that shared many of her values. The Wesleyan administration never publicly recognized her death on the terms that she was not officially enrolled, despite multiple requests for a campus email from her close friends. As people who had the gift of knowing her, we want to make sure that her presence and legacy on campus are remembered. We hope that these pieces can be a start.

 

Stories from friends: 

I met Ella during orientation in a Bennet study room. A few days into freshman year, I asked her to come with me to a Rainbow Kitten Surprise concert that I didn’t have anyone to go with. She easily agreed then quickly became one of my closest friends for the next 3 years. 

There are so many stories of all the crazy things she did, and they’re all true. She was no stranger to pushing herself and seemed to try to find every way to do it. She was an exceptional skier. She was a crazy runner, secretly winning state all 4 years in high school. In college she ran two ultras and won them both, including a 50k over fall break sophomore year. She skinned a moose her first night on a homestead in Alaska. She had more medals on her wall than I could count. We hitchhiked across Alaska together. She once punched a bear. She was technically the 2nd best hurdler in the state of Nevada, with the scars to prove it. When we put her on her first climb we had to force her to come back down, the same with surfing. She once told me she wiped the blood off her legs after a gnarly trail run because she didn’t want to make me worried. And she was exceptionally humble about all of it. You had to know to ask about the “nice run” that she did to find out it was 20 miles. She was fierce and brave and relentlessly determined. She delighted in the challenge. In the difficulty she found humility. In the humility she found presence. She was the most secret badass you’ve ever met. 

I don’t think that’s all what made Ella special, however, I think that really came out in the way she lived. 

Ella was fiercely kind. She loved her friends more than anything. You could see it in the way she acted and hear it in the way she spoke. When Ella moved through the world she kind of careened around, almost as if she was 3x as dense as the rest of us with a center of gravity slightly too high and all this momentum; perpetually about to fall over but never really actually. When she saw you from afar she would let out a shout and start running full speed, half bent forward, barrelling towards you with this huge cheesy grin on her face before colliding into you in the biggest bear hug – you really felt the extra momentum then. When you made a joke, usually a dumb one, she would go from completely stone faced to erupting with this laugh that cracked out of her and shook her whole body – either that or she’d turn away with this sheepish smile like she just couldn’t let you know you got her. You always knew it was genuine. She would do anything for her friends; sit for hours in the freezing cold with you, drive multiple states if you were in a crisis, even successfully ditch the cops. She chose her friends very carefully and saw something in them that I think often many of us didn’t. She brought out the best in you and you couldn’t help but believe it. Despite always being in an existential crisis herself, she had an amazing ability to make everything feel like it was going to be okay. I had the immense privilege to get to know her for so long. I can never describe all the ways she changed me and all the things I learned from her. 

We spoke often of presence. As she grew and we grew together she began talking more and more about wanting to live her life to the fullest. We talked about adrenaline and cold shocks forcing us into presence, into the intense awareness we were alive. We talked about people that made us feel grounded, made us feel whole, made us feel like we found a home. We talked about what a beautiful and painful gift it was to be alive, to love and be loved, to experience. She spoke about how she wanted to live every day as present as she could and wondered how she could be as present in a class as she could be on a mountain somewhere or fresh out of a polar plunge. She would write to herself every day reminding herself to savor it, that it could be taken away at any moment. She wrote to herself saying she would die tomorrow and base her day off of that. Her last semester at Wesleyan she would wake up in the mornings and run with the sunrise. At Whitman she would skin up a nearby ski resort and watch it in the snow. In place, people, and intention, she really tried to live each day like it was her last. 

One of my first thoughts after I found out she had died was that I knew she knew everything I wanted to say to her. If you put me on the phone while she was dying I could’ve said it again, but she knew it already. I knew everything too. She never failed to tell me she loved me. I know I am not alone in that.

Ella lived with a ferocity I still don’t understand. She was playful, and silly, and weird, and the most powerful athlete. She was kind and loyal, and said what she meant and you knew she meant it. She was one of the kindest, bravest, humblest, and most intentional people I have ever met, and she would cringe reading any of this.

I am so privileged to have known you for as long as I did.

Thank you for everything, Ella.

— Dane Thompson ’24

Dane Thompson can be reached at dothompson@wesleyan.edu.

 

Whenever I think about Ella, this one memory floods my mind and brings a smile to my face. It was on one of our many runs through Wadsworth. First off, she was a major runner. I could never keep up and was continuously amazed by her endurance and honestly, parkour abilities. We ran to where there is this small hill leading to a grass clearing right before a great view of the waterfalls. Without preface, she lies flat on the ground and starts rolling down the hill. When her momentum slowed, she popped back up and sprinted to her imaginary finish line near the edge of the falls. It was a simple activity, but we must have spent hours just racing each other down the hill without break. Ella always had me rolling down hills or dancing in the rain, and I miss her every day.

— Izzy Durcan ’22

Izzy Durcan can be reached at idurcan@wesleyan.edu.

 

I met Ella for the first time when she was a freshman on the ski team at one of our first ski races that season. When I asked her if she had raced before she said yes but that she hadn’t raced in a really long time. I realized after her first run at that race how humble she had been. She was the fastest racer on the Wesleyan team that season, and brought so much energy to the team on and off the slopes. My favorite memory of her was seeing the smile on her face after her first run of our last race, when she had memorized the entire course and ended up winning the race by 5 seconds (which is a lot). Every time I go skiing I think about Ella and I know she is with me. I know I will always miss her. 

— Alina Widmann ’22

Alina Widmann can be reached at awidmann@wesleyan.edu.

 

I feel so grateful to have known her. As much as I feel grief, I also feel pure gratitude to have been a character in her life. I met her in our freshman year dorm, and though the next 2+ years of our friendship included many a conversation about our greatest fears, our purposes in life, stupid problem sets, etc., they were completely overrun by laughter, spontaneity, hope, determination, and wackiness, most of all. Ella embodies a special kind of magic, and I see that same magic in the people whose lives she touched. Even now, she is still helping me become a better person, and keeps pushing me to live the life I want – but am sometimes afraid – to live. I miss you and I love you, Ella.

— Lex Bryan ’23

Lex Bryan can be reached at abryan@wesleyan.edu.

 

How do you write a story about someone you feel like you just got to know and then left too soon. 

I met Ella on the ski team my sophomore year.

I did not know Ella as well as her best friends did, nor as long, but Ella imparted something to me I will never forget. 

Ella was kind to me. 

She was someone who chose kindness. Ella did not know me, but she chose to be kind to me. 

Relentlessly kind. 

She has passed that on to me forever. 

That is, how important it is to be kind to others, to everyone, because after all the dust in the world settles it’s your greatest regret, not being kind enough. 

It’s the greatest thing you leave behind, your impression on others. And it’s what you will remember, what I will remember, your kindness. 

It’s the truest signaling of your soul, and I can still see your smile. 

— Finley Jacobsen ’23

Finley Jacobsen can be reached at fjacobsen@wesleyan.edu.

 

Ella was not afraid to do things differently. In her last semester at Wesleyan, she went to bed before nine on weekends and woke up before sunrise to run. After her runs, she would jump in Miller’s Pond, even in December. She read about a guy who became impervious to cold by showering exclusively with cold water, so she decided to do the same, just for fun. On the other end of the spectrum, when she was in Alaska, she once told me she hadn’t showered for two weeks. Why shower when you were just going to do more gardening the next day?

Being around her, it was impossible not to let her open-mindedness and excitement to try new things infect you like a coronavirus of love. She was the best person to have dance parties under the strobing Exley stairwell light with, to run onto the highway median just to see the moon and planets all in a line with, to lie on the grass and discuss how to create a more compassionate school system with, to fit three people on a single bike with.

She was multi-talented, a force to be reckoned with, and the most supportive friend to those of us lucky enough to know her. As I am writing this, some part of me still thinks it can’t be real. But the voicemail on the other end of the line and the pillow that I hug wishing it were her tell a different story. Knowing her has shown me just how wonderful one person can make my world, and now just how painful life can feel. Grief and love are the same song, just in different genres. I’ll be singing Ella’s song for a long time. 

— Ben Rubel ’22

Ben Rubel can be reached at Bensrubel@gmail.com.

 

Ella had the best laugh in the world – the very best – you can hear it at the top of a mountain or a climbing rope. She taught me how to climb, and climbing taught me a lot about my relationship with myself and the outdoors. She brought out pieces of you you didn’t know about. 

— Fox Hayes ’23

Fox Hayes can be reached at fhayes@wesleyan.edu.

 

The first and last time I met Ella, it was wild to finally put a face to the name I had heard so much about.  Since then, I have gotten to meet so many more of her closest people, and they happen to be some of the bravest, most thoughtful, most fun people I have ever known.  I know that isn’t a coincidence though, as it seems like Ella lived as intentionally as anyone.  Those who knew her talk about her with a palpable sense of pride: pride for knowing her, for being trusted by her, and for getting to love and be loved by her. There is a fathomless admiration and a particular light that comes to friends’ eyes as they recall her laugh, her weirdness, or her grit.  I think of Ella whenever I am outside or doing something hard, and I feel like I keep getting to know her through knowing the people she loved.  She is so much a part of them, and her being lives on in the ways they shaped each other. Ella, and those I have met because of her, have changed my life.  If I could write to her now, I would say thank you. I would try and capture how much she meant to so many people, and yet I figure all of this, she would already know because it seems she left so little unsaid.  I would tell her how grateful I am for the ways she continues to teach me how to be. 

— Maggie Monaghan ’24

Maggie Monaghan can be reached at mmonaghan@wesleyan.edu.

 

Leila Henry ’23 and Dane Thompson ’24 organized the collection of these stories about Ella Carr.