At the sink, stylists in their red "No Regrets" shirts were busy shampooing. The talk was of weddings, spring and Megan. "She was so sweet," one stylist said to her client. Said Tessa, "She would have appreciated everyone that came."


HOW TO HELP - Tax-deductible contributions may be mailed to:
 
Friends of Megan Bolton Memorial Fund
c/o The Greater Harrisburg Foundation
P.O. Box 678
Harrisburg 17108-0678
 
For information or to donate by credit card, call the foundation at 236-5040.
Online: www.friendsofmegan.com
 

Teen's death inspires fund, Family, friends start scholarship

DAN SHEEHAN
Of The Patriot-News
10/02/03

Megan Bolton had a two-word motto: No regrets. It was a blunt, practical philosophy, an invocation against despair when things went wrong. "She said life is going to do what it's going to do.

You really can't do anything about it so you have to stay positive," recalled Megan 's father, Gage Bolton, a man trying to come to grips with his daughter's death in July. It happened with terrible suddenness. Megan , 17, was driving on Route 15 in Adams County, on the way from her mother's house in Maryland to her father's house in Camp Hill, and lost control of the car. It crossed the median and collided with a pickup truck.
She died at the scene.

"The police don't know what made her cross the median," Gage Bolton said. "The state police said it was a driver that was not experienced. They see it all the time with teenagers."

This is not a story about the dangers facing teen drivers, at least not entirely. Bolton said he doesn't want to ignore that lesson, but at the same time he doesn't want his daughter to be remembered only as a teen traffic fatality.

That's why he has created a scholarship called the Friends of Megan Bolton Memorial Fund. It will honor his daughter's life by benefitting students at the two high schools she attended, Camp Hill and Brunswick High School in Maryland. Bolton is trying to spread the word so the scholarship will be funded and available to students by spring. Friends said Megan would have loved the idea.

"She was always stressing about where she was going to get the money to go to college," said Jenn Spatz, a senior at Camp Hill High School who met Megan in middle school. "If she knew she had made it possible for someone else to go to college, it would make her so happy."

Megan 's friends remember her as a vibrant, quick-witted girl, a gifted artist and athlete whose overriding desire was to see other people happy. "You could call her when you felt like your whole world was falling apart and she could make you feel better," Spatz said.

Megan liked punk rock and other high-energy music and went to great -- even embarrassing -- lengths to spread cheer. "If looking stupid would make people happy, she would do it," said Tessa Miller of Enola, Megan 's cousin and closest friend. "She would give you the last two dollars in her wallet if she had to."

To honor his daughter and help publicize the scholarship, Bolton turned to the World Wide Web, creating a site called Friends of Megan . Its message board contains dozens of tributes to Megan from friends in Pennsylvania and Maryland. Several entries are from Miller, 18, who has coped with her cousin's death by writing letters to her every day on the site or in a private journal. Each opens with the same salutation: "Hey best friend!"

"We never knew how to start e-mails to each other," Miller said. "We used to write 'I miss you,' but that was too sad. So we decided we would always start 'Hey best friend!'" The site also contains a gallery of photos submitted by family and friends: Megan in toddler's pigtails, in field hockey gear, in formal wear for a dance.

For the home page, Bolton borrowed and slightly altered the final stanza of a 19th century poem called "Annette," by Robert Richardson: Warm summer sun shine kindly here Warm southern wind blow softly here; Green sod above, rest light, rest light, We love you, Megan , Good night, good night.

Bolton knew the lyrical farewell because it appears on the tombstone of Mark Twain's daughter, who died in 1896 at age 24. "Parents shouldn't bury their children," Bolton said.

HOW TO HELP - Tax-deductible contributions may be mailed to:
 
Friends of Megan Bolton Memorial Fund
c/o The Greater Harrisburg Foundation
P.O. Box 678
Harrisburg 17108-0678
 
For information or to donate by credit card, call the foundation at 236-5040.
Online: www.friendsofmegan.com