If you have new photos or stories, please send them to Jim@kevinjgoodwin.com
 
 
 

By: Lauren
For those of you that don’t know, Hector’s roommate before Kevin was, well, unfriendly, unsociable, a huge computer nerd, and among other things, very sexually active with the same sex (all the time)…. After he left, we were anticipating a change and excited to see who the new roommate was.  So we called Kevin (on speaker phone) and began talking.  Hector, his outgoing self, was asking him all these questions for like an hour, and Kevin probably said ten words.  After we hung up, all we got from the conversation was: didn’t talk that much, didn’t seem that excited, loved computers!  We thought – we’re getting the same exact roommate!! We couldn’t be further from the truth and for those of us who knew and loved Kevin – we know, the boy just didn’t like to talk on the phone.
 
Although we met Kevin when he moved in that long 3 years ago, we didn’t really meet him until a month later when he ate dinner in hi and Hector’s  dorm room (he was always in Jim’s room), and we finally got a chance to talk to him.  After discovering our mutual love for Zelda (okay obsession), Kevin would come over after we were sleeping and wake me up and we would play until 4 in the morning on Nintendo 64.  Never before, in my little world, did I meet someone like Kevin, and his uniqueness and the way we did things together will always be my one of my greatest achievements at Rowan University, meeting him.
 
The year all the boys lived at the Crossings was our best year (and I say our, as in I was the 4th roommate!) When Game cube and Xbox came out it was like our World was going to change.  For the launch of each new system, Kevin, Hector, and I slept at Kmart and Target, respectively, only to see we were the only ones sleeping there!  We bought Xbox’s just to resell them (we thought were going to make thousands, re: Tickle me Elmo)… yeah, that didn’t work out as we planned but it was fun as hell anyway. 
 
Through all the parties, long talks, adventures, and just life-long experiences I had with him, I will only tell one story that sticks out in my head every time I think about summing up what Kevin meant to me.
 
This one night we were all going out to a party (I think Jolene’s…) and we left from H219.  I remember Jon, me, I think Fiona, Kevin, Wehner, and Hector were there.  I can’t remember everyone, so if anyone does, let me know… and extremely inebriated Hector had started (for no reason whatsoever) screaming at this truckload of soccer players (their crossing neighbors, as it turned out).. He was screaming, “Hey, Pussies, Oh look at you fucking faggots, let’s all go in a car and drive to a party…. Fucking pussies”… on and on and on until finally they had to stop the car and offer to fight us.  As they were screaming about Hector, they said something nasty about us girls and Hector, and Kevin said, “Yo, man, what the fuck, don’t talk shit if you can’t back it up.” And the big, tough, soccer player said something like, “I would beat the shit out of you, but I don’t hit people with glasses.”  Kevin was about 8 feet away, and very seriously took his glasses off in this cool Easy Rider type way, and walked right up to the guy.  Needless to say, Kevin was thrown to the ground, but holy shit was that something that only a great friend would do, and something I never would have expected him to do.  When you are built like Kevin, you would think he would be talking all the shit and having Hector defend him, not vice versa.  Later, as Hector was crying for feeling bad about Kevin getting pushed b/c of his stupidity, Kevin told him that he would do anything for him, and he loved being his friend, but you’d have to ask Hector about that.
 
Kevin was a man of few words (compared to me, anyway), but those things that he said were so deliberate, so meaningful.  Things he said to me could make me laugh (mostly), make me think, and seriously make me question things about my life and the lives around me.  That’s what I will miss most, that feeling of wanting to talk to him, to hear what he had to say.  For me, it was like hearing the truth when I talked to Kevin, sometimes I was even afraid of what he might say.  All those years I felt like I was holding Kevin’s hand, taking care of him, letting him see parts of my World that he didn’t have when he was younger, but now, I look back and see all the things he did for me, and I just wish I could have a little bit more, learn one more lesson, play one more Zelda game, make him the clothing he always, always asked me to (more than anything he wanted me to buy a sewing machine and make clothes for us; i.e. Zelda and Link costumes and overalls, specifically).  One of the unique things about Kevin was that each of us had extremely unique relationships and activities and he touched each of us in totally different ways. 
 
I just want to thank you, Kevin, for really influencing my life, changing it, making me care less about shopping and material items and more about friendship and life, I promise I’ll try to keep my voice down and not talk so loud.  I miss your smell and fucking spaghetti pots all over the kitchen, and I love you so much.  I am so glad you had Corey and Colleen in your life, your two loves of your life…  I am sorry we spent less time together over the past few months, but you were so happy and I saw that and I just wanted to let you live.  If I knew you were leaving, I would tell you please not to, that you are the most caring and smartest person, and it’s time you realized your potential.  That your words would make me think more than any other college graduate or genius in the World and that there are so many people that are touched by you, that it would break all of us if you left.  But we will carry on your life through ours and your memories forever will they be engraved in our hearts.  I’m not going to say goodbye, because I will see you in me everyday for the rest of my life.
 
“Advertise it up” “Mo Hawks = Mo Chicks” “We’ve gone so far, yet we’re all still morons in a world of idiots”
            -Our overused, played out quotes that lasted three long years and we’ve applied to situations of all types.