Around this time last year, Lynn Gordon "Gordie" Bailey Jr. dressed in pastel-colored clothes and headed to a formal event at the Chi Psi house with his good friend, Jack Gilles.
Before stepping on to the campus shuttle bus, Bailey turned to Gilles and laughed at his buddy who was feeling slick in all-black dress clothes.
"You look depressed," Bailey told Gilles.
On Saturday afternoon, Gilles wears a more vibrant blue shirt and stands between the white pillars of the old Chi Psi mansion where, one year ago, his friend died of alcohol poisoning. Bailey's death came a week after he and Gilles attended the "preference night" together with their clashing ideas of what defined formal wear.
At a vigil to celebrate Bailey's life, Bob Marley music played from loudspeakers on the lawn, and about 300 college students gathered and held sunflowers.
"The truth is, I can't think about Gordie without smiling," Gilles said to his peers.
On the anniversary week of his death, Bailey's life is celebrated.
He's remembered. He's prayed for. He's apologized to.
On the morning of Sept. 17, 2004, Bailey's body was found in the library of the Chi Psi mansion. The freshman from Dallas had been left to sleep off his drunkenness after he and other pledges downed whiskey and wine at a campsite near Gold Hill.
In his memory, Bailey's mother and stepfather came to Boulder — where they have nothing — to talk to Greek leaders during rush week about the fraternity initiation that killed their son.
"Anybody who has not had that loss cannot understand what it means," Michael Lanahan, Bailey's stepfather, said last week. "It's unspeakable grief of a preventable loss."
Recognizing the signs
At a forum on alcohol poisoning Saturday afternoon, Greek leaders were given plastic cards to put in their wallets. On one side was a picture of Bailey in a jacket and tie. On the other was a half-dozen symptoms of alcohol poisoning: pale skin, passing out, vomiting, seizures, irregular breathing and confusion.
Leslie Lanahan stood in front of 200 polished young adults, and, for a few seconds, they saw a mother's grief.
"One year ago this morning. That's when they got the phone call," said Rus Hackstaff, a father and Chi Psi alumnus who introduced the Lanahans. "Imagine their horror.
"Do not let your brothers or sisters down. And certainly do not let their moms down."
Hackstaff's son, Cal, found Bailey's body in the Chi Psi library last year and called 911 at 8:57 a.m.
Poster-size pictures of Bailey playing football and lacrosse are propped up at the front of a meeting room in the University Memorial Center where Greek members came together for the leadership forum and to learn about alcohol poisoning.
Michael Lanahan said his son always was a team player. He said he also was the over-enthusiastic pledge who drank too much during the ceremony when fraternity members gave him and other pledges 10 bottles of booze and said nobody was leaving until the liquor was gone.
When Bailey passed out on the couch, nobody called for help until he was dead, Michael Lanahan said.
The Chi Psi fraternity brothers probably didn't know the signs of alcohol poisoning, he told them.
Michael Lanahan admitted his family should have taught Bailey more about the threats of alcohol. His son was part of a hazing ritual at a campus where there was weak leadership from the president of CU to the president of the Boulder Chi Psi house, he says.
"At the end of the day, no one person is responsible, but we're all culpable. ... We believe to some extent he is the victim, and we are all the defendants," Michael Lanahan said.
The Lanahans have started The Gordie Foundation, an organization aimed at teaching young adults and their parents about the dangers of over-consumption.
Michael Lanahan said he has heard several anecdotal stories from college students who have called for medical help after their friends seemed too drunk. He hoped at least one life is saved, because then Gordie's death isn't in vain.
At the end of the two-hour forum, several fraternity brothers and sorority sisters lined up to hug Leslie Lanahan. Her son, when he was in high school, started a "hug club," and became known for the big bear hugs he gave.
Before their time
It's 10 p.m. Friday, the anniversary weekend of Bailey's death. In his former residence hall, Stearns East in Williams Village, a freshman stumbles out of a packed elevator.
He proudly shows off 10 red tally marks on the inside of his left forearm, one for each shot of Grey Goose vodka he has had tonight. The New Jersey native says he has never heard of Gordie Bailey.
"What's Gordie Bailey? Is that a person?" he says. He then crashes through the doors outside to have a smoke.
Mike Slattery, another freshman, grows quiet when he hears Bailey's name. He knows. He says the students who know Bailey's story realize it could happen to any of them if they're not careful.
But weekends at Stearns East are still for getting wasted, he says. Even this weekend.
"We take care of each other," he says. "Gordie Bailey, it's kind of a subconscious thing."
Bailey's story has been more than a fleeting thought for 18-year-old Ben Finn.
Wearing black slacks and a blue button-up, he looks out of place in the dorm lobby on a Friday night. Finn has just come from fraternity rush.
He says his biggest questions to the fraternity brothers have been about hazing and alcohol abuse.
"The answer: They don't want us coming in next year and hating them. They want us to be a part of the house and like the people we're around," Finn says. "The answer has kept me in rush."
Despite loud partying in nearby dorm rooms, Finn says he thinks CU's reputation as a party school is changing.
"It's clear that a lot of fraternities are taking it easy," he says. "The attitude is not what I was expecting."
At the beginning of the fall semester, resident advisers talked to freshmen about Gordie's death, which happened before they were on campus. They gave out keychains that Bailey's friends ordered in his memory to help prevent another alcohol-related death.
Tags attached to the keychains say: "I will understand the risks involved. I will be mindful of my surroundings. I will spread awareness."
House of prayers
In some ways, the library in the former Chi Psi house hasn't changed.
The same books line the dark wooden shelves. Headlights from busy University Hill streets illuminate the three curtainless windows that face the front lawn.
The green carpet is pocked with circular burns, and cigarette butts hide under ashes in the marble fireplace. A half-burned log, etiquette books for men and a hockey stick in the nearby closet are echoes of the former residents.
So is the furniture, including the same cracked leather couch where Bailey breathed his last breath.
The fraternity men moved out when their house shut down. This fall, the mansion on 14th Street is an alcohol-free home to about 25 college women, most members of the Christian sorority Alpha Delta Chi.
Tiffany Williams, 21, says her friends always ask her if it's weird or scary to live in the house where Bailey died. Williams is not a member of Alpha Delta Chi.
"I never even think about it until they bring it up," she said. "I don't know why, I just don't. That was their deal. This is our deal, I guess."
The new residents haven't made any changes, other than a daylong extreme cleaning before they moved in and the addition of a few cheery touches, like flowers in the shared bathrooms. It's not their property, so they don't feel right changing anything, said Kristen Moats, 22, a member of Alpha Delta Chi.
It's not that they deny what happened there, she said. They just don't dwell on it.
On Wednesday, Moats dimmed the candle-shaped bulbs of the chandeliers in the library and shut the door. About a dozen students hold hands in a circle around the coffee table. They prayed for tests, for survivors of Hurricane Katrina, for health. They thanked God for giving them a house to live in and asked for strength to be a light to the campus.
Then Moats prayed for Bailey's family and friends. She prays this every Wednesday.
"I pray that they'll be able to feel and know you love them and that there's hope. ... Bless all their endeavors, that out of something so tragic, your glory will be shown."
Moats slid behind the black grand piano. The sounds made by her fingers filled the room, and her friends' voices followed in a popular Christian song:
"Did you feel the darkness tremble?
When all the saints join in one song?
And all the streams flow as one river
To wash away our brokenness."
Contact Camera Staff Writer Aimee Heckel at (303) 473-1359 or heckela@dailycamera.com.
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