North by Northwestern

Friends, professors and family of Rebecca Quint gathered in the McCormick Tribune Forum Thursday night to honor her memory following her death on February 28. She was 19.

The night was filled with silence, sadness, hope and laughter as stories about Quint were shared. A photo slideshow from Quint’s life, set to a song from the musical Elizabeth, and sung by Quint herself, was also shown before the night was over. Speakers described Quint as a driven student, a gifted linguist, a loving daughter, a stalwart friend and a brave individualist. Mentioned also were her love of travel, musicals, Asian culture and metal music.

Recognizing that no publication can capture the essence of a person the way the people closest to her can, North by Northwestern respectfully presents Rebecca Quint in the words of her friends and family, as excerpted from the memorial service.

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How does one memorialize their only child? Rebecca was the center of our universe. We loved her so deeply and never imagined that we would outlive her — that we would be here today memorializing her. There is no way we can do justice to her memory and what she meant to us. We can only give you a brief glimpse of Rebecca from two people who loved her unconditionally.

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Rebecca was an only child. We were a very close threesome. We loved to cook together, travel together, play cards and board games together, go to restaurants and theater together. We skyped each other almost every day while she was here at Northwestern. Rebecca was responsible and organized. She got her homework done and kept her room neat. She avoided drugs and alcohol and chose very nice friends. At the time of her death, Rebecca was excelling in school and was planning to spend her junior year abroad in Germany. She was updating her resume and looking at possible internships for the summer. We were shocked, as were all of you, to hear of her suicide. None of us could have anticipated it, her behavior did not betray her intent.

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I’m pretty sure that, out of all the people here, I’m one of the ones that knew Rebecca the briefest. Her friendship was, for me, an anchor when I was just starting out at Northwestern. I am normally a pretty shy person when it comes to meeting new people but she was there in class and I could just tell that she was someone I wanted to know. I think she brought out one of the favorite parts of myself, the parts of myself that aren’t afraid to do something that other people might call nerdy because it’s still fun to watch anime and play video games and walk all the way to Tech on Friday night when other people are out doing what they think are better things — but they’re wrong — to get together with a group of people and watch shows from Japan, because you love the culture and you’re in class together and you want some day to understand it. She was someone who was so passionate about languages that [she] made me want to be better at everything I did.

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Although we exposed Rebecca to hiking, scouting, camping, sports and the great outdoors, she knew by middle school that none of that was her. She started up an online bulletin board titled “The ‘I Hate Running Club’” and another online bulletin board for collaborative storytelling. She fell in love with the internet, cities, theater and music. […] Rebecca fell in love with Taiko drumming and along with one of her classmates, formed the first Taiko drumming club at her high school — indeed the first Taiko drumming club at a high school east of the Mississippi.

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She helped us to discover worlds we never would have explored by ourselves. For Rebecca, one passion would lead to another. She loved heavy metal music, discovered much of it was in German, and committed herself to learning German in order to understand it. Rebecca […] somehow convinced us to take her to Rockin’ Germany for the world’s largest outdoor heavy metal concert.

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Every morning she would walk in [to Japanese class], I was there kind of early, she would walk in […] and she always seemed so at peace and just happy. Even when she was wasn’t smiling to just see the contentment in her eyes, she was listening to […] some obscure German metal. I just thought she was so cool. […] She was someone you want to know, someone you want to get to know because she will bring something to you that you never would have thought is possible. I would see her outside of class and she would always be surrounded by friends, and she would have the wittiest things to say. […] As someone who only knew her for three months, I was absolutely in love with her. I just want thank her for being someone who inspired me to better myself and to find something that I could be as passionate about as she was.

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I still remember the first day I met her, which was literally the first day of school here. We actually had a really short exchange. We asked “what do you like” and we both like anime and I guess that’s what hit us off. […] We moved into Plex together and I’d knock on her door and she’d knock on my door — which is really the same as last year, actually. We’d go on these little trips around town and I think the best memory I have is just watching Star Trek and Babylon 5 with her. I never knew those shows were so cool. She was someone I could share everything with. I kind of forced her into watching some anime and she would end up liking them and I was always so happy when she enjoyed it.

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We wish we understood why she took her life, but we do not. She may have been fighting with demons that she never shared. She may have found the world just too heavy to bear. In either case, her suicide has left a huge hole in our hearts and in the hearts of so many. Chains have been broken that we are all struggling to mend.