A tribute to a young man who is gone

I was fortunate to know Andrew Lucas.

He gave me seven minutes of his time and I gave him seven minutes of mine.

Which is not a lot. Not in a lifetime.

But when we shook hands, and he arose from his chair across the table from me — a tall young man, a high school senior, 18 years old with eyes that looked for assurance, while at the same time hinting his self confidence — I wished him the best.

Andrew Lucas died the next day in a car crash on Highway 41 near Twin Lakes. He was a passenger in a car that in broad daylight last Saturday collided with an oncoming vehicle.

Others were injured. But the young man who shared with me his plans for the future just a day earlier, stopped there.

And I feel fortunate to have known him.

We met last week at a reverse job fair at Mountainview High in Rathdrum.

Everyone should clamor to take part in these, because what we know about young people is mostly proven false as high school seniors sit across a table from volunteer interviewers who assess them.

The students are critiqued on manners, posture, the grip of their handshakes, eye contact, how they handle themselves, their knowledge of the career fields they hope to enter, and the impressions they leave.

They have jobs in mind — chiropractor, cop, physical therapist — and interviewers more or less grill them on their expectations and preparations.

Would I hire you based on this seven-minute interview? Why or why not?

I told Andrew Lucas I would hire him, but that he should have ironed his shirt.

He wore a tie over it. His hair was in a pony tail. He was taller than I, his grip was firm and his eyes had a question mark.

I asked him about it.

He was nervous, he said.

Nervous is good. You’re handling it well.

He showed me a few drawings he had completed. He was a talented artist. His creativity extended to his career choice.

Andrew said he wanted to study psychology, and use his creative background to assess the art of others. What does their art say about them?

He called his career choice, Art Therapist, and planned to attend a small college in northern Minnesota, a raindrop’s splash from the watery Canada border, named Vermilion.

I had attended the same school.

This was a coincidence, and despite its remarkable concurrence for both of us, he stayed on task.

Reverse job fairs are less about what a student will become than what they at that moment want to pursue, or consider to be a worthwhile goal. We’ve all been there.

Andrew Lucas followed the adage that if your career choice does not exist, then make it exist. Draw on who you are, to carve your own path.

I had expected to write about soft-hackle flies today, for this Outdoors column, and how they are easy to tie, with a minimum of effort and materials. Fished just beneath the surface, even in winter in North Idaho rivers, under heavy skies on days when rod guides don’t ice, they will catch mountain whitefish.

But I thought instead about Andrew Lucas, the young man dearly missed by his family and friends. The young man who asked us to look beyond his wrinkled shirt, to feel his handshake and carry his intensity and kindness with our own eyes.

Maybe soft hackle flies fished in winter will remind me of Andrew Lucas from here forward, I don’t know.

He scored the lowest of the handful of students I interviewed that day, all of them separated by a half percentage point. It was his wrinkled shirt, I told him. And his bottled up intensity, whereas the other candidates were calmer. He was reliable, I could tell. He was task oriented and resourceful. He was, I thought, someone you showed what had to be done, not how to do it.

His teacher said so, as well.

It’s a fine trait for anyone.

I would have given him a shot at a job, I told him.

Definitely.